The solid and useful virtue of honesty is highly practicable. "Nothing is profitable that is dishonest," is a truthful maxim. "Virtue alone is invincible." "I would give ten thousand dollars for your reputation for uprightness," said a sharper to an upright tradesman, "for I could make a hundred thousand dollars with it." Honesty succeeds, dishonesty fails. The honesty and integrity of A. T. Stewart won for him a great reputation, and the young schoolmaster who began life in New York on less than a dollar a day, amassed nearly forty million dollars, and there was not a smirched dollar in all those millions.
We do not count ourselves among those who believe that "every man has his price," and that "an honest man has a lock of hair growing in the palm of his right hand." No! There are in the world of business many more honest men than rogues, and for one trust betrayed there are thousands sacredly kept.
As a mere matter of selfishness, "honesty is the best policy." But he who is honest for policy's sake is already a moral bankrupt. Men of policy are honest when they think honesty will pay the better; but when policy will pay better they give honesty the slip. Honesty and policy have nothing in common. When policy is in, honesty is out. It is more honorable for some men to fail than for others to succeed. Part with anything rather than your integrity and conscious rectitude. Capital is not what a man has, but what a man is. Character is capital.
For example: A man wishes to succeed in business. His studies and his practical training have fitted him to do this. He seeks out all the methods by which he may reach success. He shrinks from no labor of mind, or, if need be, of body, for this end. In all this he is right. We admire skill, industry, and pluck. There is, however, one kind of means that he may not use. He may not stoop to fraud of any kind. He may desire and seek wealth; he must desire and seek honor and honesty. These are among the ends that morality insists upon, and that should not be sacrificed to anything else.
What contempt we have for a man who robs another, who picks his pocket, or knocks him down in some lonely place and strips him of whatever articles of value he may have. But the man who cheats is a thief, just as truly as the pickpocket and the highwayman.
There is nothing that improves a boy's character so much as putting him on his honor—trusting to his honor. We have little hope for the boy who is dead to the feeling of honor. The boy who needs to be continually looked after is on the road to ruin. If treating your boy as a gentleman does not make him a gentleman, nothing else will.
There are many incidents in Abraham Lincoln's career which illustrate this virtue; and from these we select the following: While tending store, Lincoln once sold to a woman goods to the amount of two dollars, six and a quarter cents. He discovered later that a mistake had been made, and that the store owed the customer the six and a quarter cents. After he had closed the store that night, he walked several miles in the darkness to return the amount.
At another time a woman bought a pound of tea. Lincoln discovered the next morning that a smaller weight was on the scales. He at once weighed out the remainder, and walked some distance before breakfast to return it.
He was once a postmaster in New Salem; but the office was finally discontinued. Several years after, the agent called at his law office, and presented a claim of about seventeen dollars in the settlement of the New Salem affairs. Mr. Lincoln took out a little trunk, and produced the exact sum, wrapped in a linen rag. It had lain there untouched through years of the greatest hardship and self-denial. He said, "I never use any one's money but my own."
Honor lies in doing well whatever we find to do; and the world estimates a man's abilities in accordance with his success in whatever business or profession he may engage. The true gentleman is known by his strict sense of honor; by his sympathy, his gentleness, his forbearance, and his generosity. He is essentially a man of truth, speaking and doing rightly, not merely in the sight of men, but in his secret and private behavior. Truthfulness is moral transparency. Hence the gentleman promises nothing that he has not the means of performing. The Duke of Wellington proudly declared that truth was the characteristic of an English officer, that when he was bound by a parole he would not break his word; for the gentleman scorns to lie, in word or deed; and is ready to brave all consequences rather than debase himself by falsehood.