subject
English, 05.05.2020 04:17 vanleervanleer

An excerpt from An Apology for Idlers by Robert Lewis Stevenson (1877)

1 Idleness which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognised in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself. It is admitted that the presence of people who refuse to enter in the great handicap race for sixpenny pieces, is at once an insult and a disenchantment for those who do. A fine fellow (as we see so many) takes his determination, votes for the sixpences, and in the emphatic Americanism, it “goes for” them. And while such a one is ploughing distressfully up the road, it is not hard to understand his resentment, when he perceives cool persons in the meadows by the wayside, lying with a handkerchief over their ears and a glass at their elbow…It is a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement. Hence physicists condemn the unphysical; financiers have only a superficial toleration for those who know little of stocks; literary persons despise the unlettered; and people of all pursuits combine to disparage those who have none.

2 But though this is one difficulty of the subject, it is not the greatest. You could not be put in prison for speaking against industry, but you can be sent to Coventry for speaking like a fool. It is certain that much may be judiciously argued in favour of diligence; only there is something to be said against it, and that is what, on the present occasion, I have to say. To state one argument is not necessarily to be deaf to all others, and that a man has written a book of travels in Montenegro, is no reason why he should never have been to Richmond.

3 If you look back on your own education, I am sure it will not be the full, vivid, instructive hours of truantry that you regret; you would rather cancel some lack-lustre periods between sleep and waking in the class. For my own part, I have attended a good many lectures in my time. I still remember that the spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide a crime. But though I would not willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing truant. This is not the moment to dilate on that mighty place of education, which was the favourite school of Dickens and of Balzac, and turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the Science of the Aspects of Life. Suffice it to say this: if a lad does not learn in the streets, it is because he has no faculty of learning. Nor is the truant always in the streets, for if he prefers, he may go out by the gardened suburbs into the country. He may pitch on some tuft of lilacs over a burn, and smoke innumerable pipes to the tune of the water on the stones. A bird will sing in the thicket. And there he may fall into a vein of kindly thought, and see things in a new perspective. Why, if this be not education, what is?
Which is the MOST LOGICAL place in the essay for the following sentence?

The greatest difficulty with most subjects is to do them well; therefore, please to remember this is an apology.

ansver
Answers: 1

Another question on English

question
English, 21.06.2019 20:00
What does the word subordinate mean in this sentence? the office manager spoke to her subordinate in a cordial tone.
Answers: 1
question
English, 22.06.2019 03:40
Which sentence is written correctly? oa. according to the weather forecast, it will be sunny all week.ob. do you know weather she will attend the show? oc. we should expect cloudy whether during the weekend.od. i like to stay at home and read a good book during rainy whether.
Answers: 2
question
English, 22.06.2019 07:00
What is the rhyme scheme in this excerpt from longfellow's, "the tide rises, the tide falls? " (10 points) the tide rises, the tide falls, the twilight darkens, the curlew calls; along the sea-sands damp and brown the traveler hastens toward the town, and the tide rises, the tide falls.
Answers: 1
question
English, 22.06.2019 07:30
In what way was the modernist element of disillusionment shown in “the jitling of granny weatherall”? a) the story rejects traditional, chronological order. b) granny feels jilted at both her wedding and her deathbed. c) the narration makes heavy use of symbolism. d) granny’s thoughts are hard to distinguish from real events
Answers: 2
You know the right answer?
An excerpt from An Apology for Idlers by Robert Lewis Stevenson (1877)

1 Idleness which...
Questions
question
Mathematics, 19.10.2021 14:00
Questions on the website: 13722360