ood or bad, and will pass current
everywhere or be worthless, according to his individual reputation for
honor and veracity; that if he lets a note go to protest, his bank of
character will be suspected; if he lets two or three go to protest,
public confidence will be seriously shaken; that if they continue to go
to protest, his reputation will be lost and confidence in him ruined.

If the youth should start out with the fixed determination that every
statement he makes shall be the exact truth; that every promise he
makes shall be redeemed to the letter; that every appointment shall be
kept with the strictest faithfulness and with full regard for other
men's time, if he should hold his reputation as a priceless treasure,
feel that the eyes of the world are upon him, that he must not deviate
a hair's breadth from the truth and right; if he should take such a
stand at the outset, he would, like George Peabody, come to have almost
unlimited credit and the confidence of all, and would have developed
into noble man-timber.

What are palaces and equipages; what though a man could cover a
continent with his title-deeds, or an ocean with his commerce, compared
with conscious rectitude, with a face that never turns pale at the
accuser's voice, with a bosom that never throbs with the fear of
exposure, with a heart that might be turned inside out and disclose no
stain of dishonor? To have done no man a wrong; to have put your
signature to no paper to which the purest angel in heaven might not
have been an attesting witness; to walk and live, unseduced, within
arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire
and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude;--_this is to
be a man_.

"He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And reared the dwelling of his thought so strong
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same;
What a fair seat hath he; from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey."
[_Lines found in one of the books of Beecher's Library._]

A man is never so happy as when he is _totus in se_; as when he
suffices to himself, and can walk without crutches or a guide. Said
Jean Paul Richter: "I have made as much out of myself as could be made
of the stuff, and no man should require more."

Man is the only great thing in the unive