"Good-by, Doctor."

As we drove off I saw the Doctor draw his hand hastily across his eyes,
and be said nothing for some minutes.

"Public opinion," said he at length, as if pursuing his meditations
aloud,--"public opinion is, in nine cases out of ten, public folly and
impertinence. We are slaves to one another. We dare not take counsel
of our consciences and affections, but must needs suffer popular
prejudice and custom to decide for us, and at their bidding are
sacrificed love and friendship and all the best hopes of our lives. We
do not ask, What is right and best for us? but, What will folks say of
it? We have no individuality, no self-poised strength, no sense of
freedom. We are conscious always of the gaze of the many-eyed tyrant.
We propitiate him with precious offerings; we burn incense perpetually
to Moloch, and pass through his fire the sacred first-born of our
hearts. How few dare to seek their own happiness by the lights which
God has given them, or have strength to defy the false pride and the
prejudice of the world and stand fast in the liberty of Christians! Can
anything be more pitiable than the sight of so many, who should be the
choosers and creators under God of their own spheres of utility and
happiness, self-degraded into mere slaves of propriety and custom, their
true natures undeveloped, their hearts cramped and shut up, each afraid
of his neighbor and his neighbor of him, living a life of unreality,
deceiving and being deceived, and forever walking in a vain show? Here,
now, we have just left a married couple who are happy because they have
taken counsel of their honest affections rather than of the opinions of
the multitude, and have dared to be true to themselves in defiance of
impertinent gossip."