the
term continuous attitude and impression, because it is a small matter
what your temporary and transient impression is. If it becomes
necessary, talk to any extent required, no matter what the immediate
impression may be. But it is the stream and continuity of your life of
which I am now speaking.

The three distinguished successes cited a moment ago in financial and
political life do not drink, smoke, or swear. Mark that latter
fact--they do not swear. I repeat again that this is no Sunday-school
lecture, but the plainest kind of a talk on practical methods of
success. The money you will lay aside in bank, or the property you
will accumulate, is one kind of an asset; but the respect of men, the
confidence of a community, is an asset also, and a more valuable one.
Very well. An oath never yet created respect for any man who used it.

Even men who are habitually profane always feel a contemptuous yet
pitying regret when they hear a foul word fall from a mouth they
expected to be clean. You want people you live among to believe in
you. They are not going to believe in you spontaneously. You are on
trial every day of your first few years among them. As you go in and
out among them they acquire a confidence in you which finally grows
into an unquestioning faith. Beware how you start, in the minds of men
whose good-will you must have, a question as to whether their good
opinion of you is justified or not. Profanity will create such a
question.

I remember having heard the most promising young lawyer in a certain
town swear in the presence of a conservative old banker who had begun
to "take the young man up" and was giving him some business. The
gray-bearded man of money made no comment, but I noted a slight
lifting of the eyebrows. That young man had unconsciously started a
question of himself in the mind of the man whose business friendship
he was seeking. How did that question run?

"What's this? An oath! I'm surprised. How does this young fellow
happen to swear? Perhaps I do not know as much of him as I ought to. I
must look into his antecedents more closely. What kind of training has
he had? What other bad habits has he had, and has he now? Yes,
certainly I must look into this young man a little more before I trust
him further."

That is how the question ran in the old man's mind. And nobody can
tell whether he ever did completely trust the young fellow again or
not. A subconscious inquiry was doubtless always