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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly,
something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with
dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the
world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish
virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into
a corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake
of certain virtuous self-indulgences. It is true that his
tastes were noble; that his ruling passion was to keep
himself unspotted from the world; and that his luxuries were
all of the same healthy order as cold tubs and early rising.
But a man may be both coldly cruel in the pursuit of
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