confidence of others. Truthfulness is at the foundation of all
personal excellence. It exhibits itself in conduct. It is
rectitude--truth in action, and shines through every word and
deed. It means reliableness, and convinces other men that it can
be trusted. And a man is already of consequence in the world when
it is known that he can be relied on,--that when he says he knows
a thing, he does know it,--that when be says he will do a thing,
he can do, and does it. Thus reliableness becomes a passport to
the general esteem and confidence of mankind.

In the affairs of life or of business, it is not intellect that
tells so much as character,--not brains so much as heart,--not
genius so much as self-control, patience, and discipline,
regulated by judgment. Hence there is no better provision for the
uses of either private or public life, than a fair share of
ordinary good sense guided by rectitude. Good sense, disciplined
by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical
wisdom. Indeed, goodness in a measure implies wisdom--the
highest wisdom--the union of the worldly with the spiritual.
"The correspondences of wisdom and goodness," says Sir Henry
Taylor, "are manifold; and that they will accompany each other is
to be inferred, not only because men's wisdom makes them good, but
because their goodness makes them wise." (6)

It is because of this controlling power of character in life that
we often see men exercise an amount of influence apparently out of
all proportion to their intellectual endowments. They appear to
act by means of some latent power, some reserved force, which acts
secretly, by mere presence. As Burke said of a powerful nobleman
of the last century, "his virtues were his means." The secret is,