do not deny that it is more difficult to be heroic, while circumstances
are unheroic round us. We are all too apt to be the puppets of
circumstance; all too apt to follow the fashion; all too apt, like so
many minnows, to take our colour from the ground on which we lie, in
hopes, like them, of comfortable concealment, lest the new tyrant deity,
called public opinion, should spy us out, and, like Nebuchadnezzar ofold, cast us into a burning fiery furnace