The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: each, while improper acquaintances in vain howled for admission
at the outer wall. For the rest, her ideal of social happiness
was a series of perfectly ordered entertainments, at each of
which there should be precisely the same guests, the same
topics, the same supper, and the same ennui.
XI.
DESCENSUS AVERNI.
MALBONE stood one morning on the pier behind the house. A two
days' fog was dispersing. The southwest breeze rippled the
deep blue water; sailboats, blue, red, and green, were darting
about like white-winged butterflies; sloops passed and
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