ed
and refuted her. Upon the whole, there was in this man something that
could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an
eloquence to summon mankind to united exertion, or to break the bonds of
slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded
authority; something that could establish or overwhelm an empire, and
strike a blow in the world that would resound through the universe."

Pitt was Paymaster-General for George II. When a subsidy was voted a
foreign office, it was customary for the office to claim one half per
cent. for honorarium. Pitt astonished the King of Sardinia by sending
him the sum without any deduction, and further astonished him by refusing
a present as a compliment to his integrity. He was a poor man.

Washington would take no pay as commander-in-chief of the Continental
armies. He would keep a strict account of his expenses; and these, he
doubted not, would be discharged.

Remember, the main business of life is not to do, but to become; an
action itself has its finest and most enduring fruit in character.

In 1837, after George Peabody moved to London, there came a commercial
crisis in the United States. Many banks suspended specie payments. Many
mercantile houses went to the wall, and thousands more were in great
distress. Edward Everett said, "The great sympathetic nerve of the
commercial world, credit, as far as the United States were concerned, was
for the time paralyzed." Probably not a half dozen men in Europe would
have been listened to for a moment in the Bank of England upon the
subject of American securities, but George Peabody was one of them. His
name was already a tower of strength in the commercial world. In those
dark days his integrity stood four-square in every business panic.
Peabody retrieved the credit of the State of Maryland, and, it might
almost be said, of the United States. His character was the magic wand
which in many a case changed almost worthless paper into gold. Merchants
on both sides of the Atlantic procured large advances from him, even
before the goods consigned to him had been sold.

Thackeray says, "Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's
faces which is honored wherever presented. You cannot help trusting such
men; their very presence gives confidence. There is a 'promise to pay'
in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it to another
man's indorsement." _Character is cr