scal instead of an honest
and honorable man.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+The meanest and most contemptible kind of cheating is quackery.+--The
quack is liar, thief, and murderer all in one. For in undertaking to do
things for which he has no adequate training and skill, he pretends to
be what he is not. He takes money for which he is unable to render a
genuine equivalent. And by inducing people to trust their lives in his
incompetent and unskilled hands he turns them aside from securing
competent treatment, and so confirms disease and hastens death.

+The dishonest man a public nuisance and a common enemy.+--He gets his
living out of other people. Whatever wealth he gets, some honest man who
has earned it is compelled to go without. Dishonesty is the perversion
of exchange from its noble function as a civilizing agent and a public
benefit, into the ignoble service of making one man rich at the expense
of the many. It is because the dishonest man is living at other people's
expense, profiting by their losses, and fattening himself on the
earnings of those whom he has wronged, that dishonesty is deservedly
ranked as one of the most despicable and abominable of vices.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+It is as important to protect our own interest, as to regard the
interests of others.+--No man has any more right to cheat me than I have
to cheat him; and if he tries to take advantage of me it is my duty to
resist him, and to say a decided "no" to his schemes for enriching
himself at my expense.

One rule in particular is very important. Never sign a note for another
in order to give him a credit which he could not command without your
name. That is a favor which no man has a right to ask, and which no man
who regards his duty to himself and to his family will grant. If a man
is in a tight place and asks you to lend him money, or to give him
money, that is a proposition to be considered on its merits. But to
assume an indefinite responsibility by signing another man's note, is
accepting the risk of ruining ourselves for his accommodation. We owe it
to ourselves and our families to keep our finances absolutely under our
own control, free from all complication with the risks and uncertainties
of another's enterprises and fortunes.

Our own rights are as sacred as those of another. There are two sides to
every bargain; and one side is as important as the other. The sacrifice
of a right may be as great an evil as the perpetration o