"Many are, and if they ARE good, it is a fortunate phase of
conventionality. For instance, I know of a man who by the law of
heredity and the force of circumstances has scarcely a bad habit
or trait, and has many good ones. He meets the duties of life in
an ordinary, satisfactory way, and with little effort on his part I
know of another man who externally presents nearly the same aspect
to society, who is quiet and unobtrusive in his daily life, and
yet he is fighting hereditary taint and habit with a daily heroism,
such as no soldier in the war can surpass. He is not conventional,
although he appears to be so. He is a knight who is not afraid to
face demons. Genuine strength and originality of character do not
consist in saying or doing things in an unusual way. Voluntary
eccentrics are even worse than the imitators of some model or the
careless souls which take .their coloring from chance surroundings.
Conventionality ceases when a human being begins the resolute
development of his own. natural law of growth to the utmost extent.
This is true because nature in her higher work is not stereotyped.
I will now be as definite as you can desire. You, for instance,
Marian Vosburgh, are as yet, even to yourself, an unknown quantity.
You scarcely know what you are, much less what you may become. This
conversation, and the feeling which led to it, prove this. There
are traits and possibilities in your nature due to ancestors of
whom you have not even heard. These combine with your own individual
endowments by nature to make you a separate and distinct being, and
you grow more separate and distinct by developing nature's gifts,
traits, powers,--in brief, that which is essentially your own. Thus
nature becomes your ally and sees to it with absolute certainty that
you are not like other people. Following this principle of action
you cannot know, nor can any one know, to just what you may attain.