his career, or disappointment and poverty be his constant and unwelcome
companions--no taint of suspicion should attach to any professional act
or utterance. Not only should we be able to write above the wreck of
bright hopes, "Honor alone remains," but upon our great and successful
achievements should it be possible for others to inscribe the legend, "In
honor wrought; with honor crowned."

It is frequently and confidently asserted that at no time in the history
of the world were the standards of business honor so high as now. The
prevalence of dishonesty, in one form or another, is held to show that
there is a great deal of moral weakness which is unequal to the strain to
which principle is subjected in the keenness of business competition, and
in the presence of the almost unlimited confidence which apparently
characterizes commercial intercourse. The enormous volume of the daily
transactions on 'change, where a verbal agreement or a sign made and
recognized in the midst of indescribable confusion has all the binding
force of a formal contract; the real-estate and merchandise transactions
effected on unwitnessed and unrecorded understandings; the certification
of checks on the promise of deposits or collaterals, and a hundred other
evidences of confidence, are cited as proof that the accepted standards
of business honor are high, and are kept so by public opinion. All of
this is true, in a certain limited sense; but the confidence which is the
basis of all business creates opportunities for dishonesty which changes
its shape with more than Protean facility when detected and denounced.
The keenness of competition in all departments of professional and
business enterprise presents a constant temptation to seize every
advantage, fair or unfair, which promises immediate profit. It is
unfortunately true that the successful cleverness which sacrifices honor
to gain is more easily condoned by public opinion than honest dullness
which is caught in the snares laid for it by the cunning manipulators of