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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: base instinct does bring me profit sometimes; I was the only man
out of thirty-two hundred who got his money back on those two operas.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
Is it true that the sun of a man's mentality touches noon at
forty and then begins to wane toward setting? Doctor Osler is
charged with saying so. Maybe he said it, maybe he didn't; I
don't know which it is. But if he said it, I can point him to a
case which proves his rule. Proves it by being an exception to
it. To this place I nominate Mr. Howells.
I read his VENETIAN DAYS about forty years ago. I compare
it with his paper on Machiavelli in a late number of HARPER, and
What is Man? | 
