They are at liberty to choose.
"I don't know that they would 'go down' at present--certainly not among their compeers.

They talk quite naturally and straightforwardly about all kinds of topics of general interest, and they are tremendously keen about their games, but I think some people might call them prigs.

However, I keep them in a constant and wholesome contempt of their own abilities, and never let them despise or criticize anyone unfavourably; not by 'rebuking' it, but by indicating a point of view--and one can always find one--in which the person under fire is infinitely their superior.
"And they are as affectionate as they can be--they like one another and me; and they aren't easily disturbed by circumstances, not having had their morbid sensibilities developed, their innocent perceptions dimmed by alcoholic or other dissipations." I select, rather at random, one or two other passages from his letters at this time.
"I have just been reading Emerson's Essays.

They certainly kindle one's belief in the greatness of life and the nobility of little things; but, after all, the great refreshment of such books to me is--not that they give me new working ideas; I hardly know a book that has ever done that; the stock of ideas is almost constant in the world; but because they show that others are on the same track of admiration and hope as one's self for a goal only hinted at and conjectured to be glorious--on the same track, and farther advanced upon it; like older people, they fill in with experience what one has only guessed at.

I find myself saying, 'I expect that life will be like this and that: it will confirm this and that idea in startling ways:' and then one of these great souls comes softly to me, and says, 'It is true.'" And again: "There are a great number of conventional ideas which are largely current, not only conversationally and among ordinary people, but in books--good and sensible books, written by people of experience--which are, in my opinion, radically and absolutely false, and yet no one takes the trouble to question them.