It has kept you silent by its oppressive power when you should have spoken out in a ringing protest, and it has borne you away on its swift or turbulent current when you should have stood still and been true to right.

Again, in the company of good and true men, moved by the inspiration of some noble cause, how all your weakness and hesitation has died out! and you have felt the influence of that subtle sphere to which we refer.
Everywhere and at all times are we exposed to the action of these mental and moral spheres, which act upon and impress us in thousands of different ways, now carrying us along in some sudden public excitement in which passion drowns the voice of reason, and now causing us to drift in the wake of some stronger nature than our own whose active thought holds ours in a weak, assenting bondage.
You understand what we mean.

Now take the pervading sphere of an occasion like the one we are describing, and do you not see that to go against it is possible only to persons of decided convictions and strong individuality?
The common mass of men and women are absorbed into or controlled by its subtle power.

They can no more set themselves against it, if they would, than against the rush of a swiftly-flowing river.

To the young it is irresistible.
As Ellis Whitford, with Blanche leaning on his arm, gained the supper-room, he met the eyes of his mother, who was on the opposite side of the table, and read in them a sign of warning.