e of honesty as a business asset, long before the retailer made
the same unique discovery.

Doctor Algernon S. Crapsey says that truth is a brand-new virtue, and
the clergy are not quite sure about it yet. To hold his trade the jobber
found he had to be on the dead level: he had to consider himself the
attorney for his client. Peabody was a merchant by instinct. He had good
taste, and he had a prophetic instinct as to what the people wanted.
Instead of buying his supplies in Newburyport, Boston and New York, he
now established relations with London, direct. And London was then the
Commercial Center of the world, the arbiter of fashion, the molder of
form, the home of finance--frenzied and otherwise. Riggs and Peabody
shipped American cotton to London, and received in return the
manufactured production in its manifold forms.

In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-nine Riggs withdrew from the firm, retaining
a certain financial interest, merely, and Peabody forged to the front,
alone, as a financier. For many years Peabody dealt largely with Robert
Owen, and thus there grew up a close and lasting friendship between
these very able men. Both were scouts for civilization. No doubt they
influenced each other for good. We find them working out a new policy in
business--the policy of reciprocity, instead of exploitation. Robert
Owen always had almost unlimited credit, for he prized his word as the
immediate jewel of his soul. It was exactly the same with Peabody.

In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven Peabody visited England. He was then
thirty-two years old. The merchants from whom he bought discovered a
surprising thing when they met Peabody--he was not the bounding,
bragging, bustling, hustling American. He hustled, of course, but not
visibly nor offensively. He had the appearance of a man who had all the
time there was. He was moderate in voice and gentle in manner, and we
hear of a London banker paying him the somewhat ambiguous compliment of
saying, "Why, you know, he is a perfect gentleman--he does not seem
like an American, at all, you know!" Peabody had the rare gift of never
defeating his ends through haste and anxiety.

The second trip Peabody made to London was in Eighteen Hundred
Thirty-five, and it was on a very delicate and important errand.

The State of Maryland was in sore financial distress. She had issued
bonds, and these were coming due. Certain Southern States had repudiated
their debts, and it looked as if Maryland