counter, of the half-truths told, and the whole truths suppressed,
of deceptions touching the quality of goods on one side and the
ability to buy on the other, it would be humiliating to tell. If
every lie told in the shops, across mahogany and show-case, by
buyers and sellers, were nailed like base coin to the counter,
there would be no room for the display of goods. It is considered
no mean compliment to a business man to say that he is sharp at a
bargain; yet this sharpness is rarely more than the faculty of
ingenious lying. A man who sells to me an article worth only five
dollars for twice that sum is a "sharp man;" but he cannot make
such a sale to me without telling me, in some way, a lie. The
price he puts upon his merchandise is a lie, essentially, in
itself.

There is a great deal of business lying that by long habit becomes
unconscious. If we take up a newspaper, we shall find that quite a
number of the stores around us, kept by our excellent friends,
have "the largest and finest stock of goods ever displayed in the
city." We shall find that they have been selling for years at
"unprecedentedly low prices," that they are "selling at less than
cost," that they are pushing off goods at rates "ruinously low,"
and that they can offer bargains to buyers that will confound
their competitors. I suppose that none of these advertisers think
they are lying, or, if they do, that their lying is of a harmful
character. Lying in this way is supposed to be part of the
legitimate machinery of trade. Promising definitely to finish work
without the expectation of keeping the promise, or being able to
keep it, is another kind of half unconscious lying. There are men
engaged in various trades, in all communities, whose word is of no
more value, when in the form of a promise to finish within a