“That, if true, would be reassuring,” I observed; “but, for myself, I revolt at the bare idea of being so completely in the power of another, however honest or well-disposed he may be. I choose to be my own, and not another’s.” CHAPTER III. FURTHER EXPERIMENTS. Dr. P—— continued his lectures, private instructions, and experiments for some months, and very soon they began to produce their natural effect. No people are more disposed to run after every novelty, or are naturally more fond of the marvellous than the Anglo-Americans. They live in a constant state of excitement, and are always craving some new stimulant. They have been transplanted from the old homestead, are without ancestors, traditions, old associations, or fixed habits transmitted from generation to generation through a long series of ages. They have descended, in great part, from the sects that separated in the seventeenth century from the Anglican Church, which had in the sixteenth century itself separated from the Church of Rome, and to a great extent broken with antiquity. They are a new people,—in many respects a child-people, with the simplicity, freshness, impressibility, unsteadiness, curiosity, caprice, and waywardness of children. They must have their playthings, and they no sooner obtain a new toy than they tire of it, throw it away, and seek another. Yet are they richly endowed, and they possess in the highest degree many of the nobler virtues of our nature. They are a poetical and imaginative, as well as a reasoning and practical people. They have a robust and not unkindly nature,—are susceptible of deep emotions, and capable of heroic deeds. They treat few subjects with absolute indifference, and seldom fail to give any one who has, or professes to have, something to say, a tolerably fair and patient hearing. Whoever is able to touch their fancy, stir their feelings, excite their curiosity, or their marvellousness, is pretty sure of having them run after him—for a time.