ive. Custom
or fashion dictates, or your doctor or minister, and they in turn dare
not depart from their schools. Dress, living, servants, carriages,
everything must conform, or be ostracized. Who dares conduct his
household or business affairs in his own way, and snap his fingers at
Dame Grundy?

Many a man has marched up to the cannon's mouth in battle who dared not
face public opinion or oppose Mrs. Grundy.

It takes courage for a public man not to bend the knee to popular
prejudice. It takes courage to refuse to follow custom when it is
injurious to his health and morals. To espouse an unpopular cause in
Congress requires more courage than to lead a charge in battle. How
much easier for a politician to prevaricate and dodge an issue than to
stand squarely on his feet like a man.

As a rule, eccentricity is a badge of power, but how many women would
not rather strangle their individuality than be tabooed by Mrs. Grundy?
Yet fear is really the only thing to fear.

"Whoever you may be," said Sainte-Beuve, "great genius, distinguished
talent, artist honorable or amiable, the qualities for which you
deserve to be praised will all be turned against you. Were you a
Virgil, the pious and sensible singer _par excellence_, there are
people who will call you an effeminate poet. Were you a Horace, there
are people who will reproach you with the very purity and delicacy of
your taste. If you were a Shakespeare, some one will call you a
drunken savage. If you were a Goethe, more than one Pharisee will
proclaim you the most selfish of egotists."

As the strongest man has a weakness somewhere, so the greatest hero is
a coward somewhere. Peter was courageous enough to draw his sword to
defend his master, but he could not stand the ridicule and the finger
of scorn of the maidens in the high priest's hall, and he actually
denied even the acquaintance of the master he had declared he would die
for.

"I will take the responsibility," said Andrew Jackson, on a memorable
occasion, and his words have become proverbial. Not even Congress
dared to oppose the edicts of John Quincy Adams.

If a man would accomplish anything in this world, he must not be afraid
of assuming responsibilities. Of course it takes courage to run the
risk of failure, to be subjected to criticism for an unpopular cause,
to expose one's self to the shafts of everybody's ridicule, but the man
who is not true to himself, who cannot carry out the sea