“Try me, doctor; your ’doxy shall be my ’doxy if you will only take us in hand, and I shall be ready enough to believe that your science is by revelation.” “Well, here goes. In for a penny, in for a pound. In the first place, I want to do away with the sense of moral responsibility, both for yourself and Dorothy, which is wearing you out. Or, rather, I want to circumscribe its area and intensify its force. Dorothy has, perhaps, and conceivably her mother has also, inherited her peculiar temperament; but you are not immediately responsible for that. She, again, has fostered this inherited trait, but neither is she immediately responsible for the fact.” “How do you mean, doctor? That we can’t help it, and must take our nature as we find it? But that is worse than ever. No; I cannot believe it. Certainly my husband has done a great deal to cure me.” “No doubt he has. And how he has done it, without intention, I dare say, I hope by-and-by to show you. Perhaps you now and then remark, What creatures of habit we are!” “And what of that? No one can help being struck now and then with the fact; especially, no mother.” “Well, and what does this force of habit amount to? and how do you account for it?” “Why, I suppose it amounts to this, that you can do almost anything once you get into the way of it. Why, I don’t know; I suppose it’s the natural constitution of the mind.” “The ‘natural constitution of the mind’ is a conversational counter with whose value I am not acquainted. That you can get into the way of doing almost anything, is simple fact; but you must add, of thinking anything, of feeling anything, before you begin to limit the force of habit.” “I think I begin to see what you mean. We, my child and I, are not so much to blame now for our sullen and resentful feelings, because we have got the habit of them. But surely habits may be cured?” “Ah, once we begin to see that, we are to blame for them. We must ask, How are we to set about the cure? What’s to be _done_? What hopeless idiots we are, the best of us, not to see that the very existence of an evil is a demand for its cure, and that, in the moral world, there’s a dock for every nettle!” “And then, surely, the sins of the fathers visited upon the children, is a bitter law. How could Dorothy help what she inherited?” “Dorothy could not help it, but you could; and what have you two excellent parents been about to defer until the child is budding into womanhood this cure which should have been achieved in her infancy? Surely, seventeen years ago at least, you must have seen indications of the failing which must needs be shown up now, to the poor girl’s discredit.” I grew hot all over under this home thrust, while George looked half dubious, half repentant, not being quite sure where his offence lay.