The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the frontier.
But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could make no such
parade in this place. The people brushed by him back and forth, busy upon
their errands, and aware of him scarcely more than if he had been a
spirit looking on from the helpless dead; and so, while these weaving
needs and kindnesses of man were within arm's touch of him, he was locked
outside with his impulses. Barker had, in the natural press of customers,
long parted from him, to become immersed in choosing and rejecting; and
now, with a fair part of his mission accomplished, he was ready to go on
to the next place, and turned to beckon McLean. He found him obliterated
in a corner beside a life-sized image of Santa Claus, standing as still
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