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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: He learned that she was of old New England stock, but he had not needed
this information to perceive that Mrs. Vivian was animated by the genius
of Boston. "She has the Boston temperament," he said, using a phrase
with which he had become familiar and which evoked a train of associations.
But then he immediately added that if Mrs. Vivian was a daughter
of the Puritans, the Puritan strain in her disposition had been mingled
with another element. "It is the Boston temperament sophisticated,"
he said; "perverted a little--perhaps even corrupted. It is the local
east-wind with an infusion from climates less tonic." It seemed to him
that Mrs. Vivian was a Puritan grown worldly--a Bostonian relaxed;
and this impression, oddly enough, contributed to his wish to know more
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