DR. STOCKMANN.
Don’t you think the plebeians are just as impertinent in other towns as here? Ah, yes, they are, my dear; they’re pretty much of a muchness everywhere. Well, never mind, let the curs snap; that is not the worst; the worst is that all men are party slaves all the land over. Nor is it that–perhaps that’s no better in the free west either; there, too, the compact majority thrives, and enlightened public opinion and all the other devil’s trash flourishes. But you see the conditions are on a larger scale there than here; they may lynch you, but they don’t torture you; they don’t put the screw on a free soul there as they do at home here. And then, if need be, you can live apart. [Walks up and down.] If I only knew whether there were any primeval forest, any little South Sea island to be bought cheap–
