Dunsford. Shall we have another reading tomorrow?

Milverton. Yes, if you are both in the humour for it.



CHAPTER II.



As the next day was fine, we agreed to have our reading in the same
spot that I have described before. There was scarcely any
conversation worth noting, until after Milverton had read us the
following essay on Conformity.

CONFORMITY.

The conformity of men is often a far poorer thing than that which
resembles it amongst the lower animals. The monkey imitates from
imitative skill and gamesomeness: the sheep is gregarious, having
no sufficient will to form an independent project of its own. But
man often loathes what he imitates, and conforms to what he knows to
be wrong.

It will ever be one of the nicest problems for a man to solve how
far he shall profit by the thoughts of other men, and not be
enslaved by them. He comes into the world, and finds swaddling
clothes ready for his mind as well as his body. There is a vast
scheme of social machinery set up about him; and he has to discern