storm of his riot. In the same way men learn from the revulsions of other forms of self-abandonment from commercial panics, from mortified political ambition, from failures in achieving fame in the pursuits of literature, art, and science, from all forms of debauch, sensual, selfish, or mental what is intrinsic and indestructible in themselves. Escaped for a time

from the realities of their being, and investing their life in delusions, the period inevitably comes when they are compelled to confront the rebuking spirit within, and stand convicted of folly as well as sin. The virtues are then remorsefully recognized as the only sure possessions. It is seen that these teach economic principles, and give to business all it has of permanency by giving to it all it has of honesty. It is seen that these take selfish ambition out of politics, and keep States alive by patriotism. It is seen that these lift the sentiments of the man of letters and the man of science to the level of the beauty the imagination aims to embody, and the truth the intellect seeks to discover. It is seen, in short, that the peculiar combination of virtues which is called integrity is the source of the peculiar combination of faculties we call wisdom. And it is this thorough integrity of nature, which implies integrity in business, integrity in affairs of state, integrity in sentiment, understanding, reason, and imagination, it is this which is especially needed in an age like ours, whose activity and intelligence run so furiously in the direction of industrial and commercial occupations that nothing

less than the austerest ethics can overcome the frightful temptations to excess or to fraud by which those occupations are beset; and we trust that the country will not be compelled to learn through a series of regularly recurring panics, that virtues, ideal in their spiritual essence and power, but tremendously actual in the consequences which follow their violation, are in their immense utility the most practical of all things, though they may draw their vitality from invisible fountains of influence, and refer to motives of action which self-styled practical men are wont to deride as too fine and abstract for the conduct of life.

A GRAND BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW

SCHOOL.1

I HAD the rare privilege, when I was a lad of fifteen, to make the acquaintance and to be favored with the confidence of a business man of "the new school." So many precious remarks fell from his lips during the period, extending to thirty years, in which I was honored by his approval or by his enmity, that I feel injustice would be done both to commerce and to him unless I recorded his conduct and experience in fitting words.

Mr. Smith had risen to eminence from the lowest social grade. As a beggar boy, his exceptional talent for begging had roused the enthusiasm of a set of elderly maidens, who were attracted by his peculiar whine of helplessness and his peculiar brag of honesty. They put him to school. He learned there the fundamental principles of arithmetic, and little else; but his aptitude for trade was developed in a marvellous degree. All the spending-money of the scholars was invariably found, at the end of a vacation, in his pockets. Yet no boy could say that he had been cheated. All the lads felt that their bits

1 As far as the personal pronoun is concerned, this narrative is purely fictitious.

of small silver coin had mysteriously disappeared in their various business relations with Smith; but still they reluctantly confessed that everything was "fair and square." He plucked them, it would seem, pitilessly; but he stood by his own contracts, as he compelled them to stand by theirs. No act of positive dishonesty was ever proved against this plausible, cautious, deferential, and relentless trader. The boys declared that he was shrewd, cunning, and hard, but then he was "so obliging!" They hated him, and at the same time accepted his services. Could they have caught him in any act of juvenile rascality, they would have pounded him into a jelly; but he was so discreet in his early preparation for his future career that at the age of ten he already gave promise of the great merchant and banker he eventually became. He robbed strictly within the rules of boy law. It has always appeared to me that his innate genius for traffic was rarely more beautifully exhibited in his after-career than in his manner of dealing with his school-fellows, most of whom began by despising him as a beggar, and all of whom ended in recognizing him as a capitalist.

On leaving school, young Smith found that his possessions amounted to thirty dollars. Instead of rushing at once to the elderly maiden ladies who had been his patrons, and depositing the money in their laps, he speeded to a wholesale fish-house in the city, and offered himself as a clerk. The senior partner was attracted by his evident talent, and especially by

his juvenile cynicism as to the practical application of the Golden Rule. The old man felt his youth renewed in looking at the premature youngster, and magnanimously gave him a place in his countingroom at a salary of fifty dollars a year. The keen youth, seeing at a glance that his employers were pious skinflints, instantly joined their church, and to all appearance became a pious skinflint himself. But in the course of five or six years he astonished the firm by showing that he knew more of the whole fish business than they did, and had made some money by quiet speculations of his own. They offered to double, treble, quadruple his salary. But Smith was inexorable. Nothing would satisfy him but a partnership in their questionable gains. This they resolutely refused. Smith promptly set up for himself on a small capital of money, but a large capital of knowledge and intelligence, sold "short" and "long," cornered his former employers in two or three heavy operations, and put them into the bankruptcy court in twenty-four months after he had left them. His cleverness was never more evident than in the way in which he accomplished this difficult feat of beating. his former employers by a skilful use of their own methods.

Dominant now in the article of fish, he in the course of a few years ventured cautiously but surely into other departments of commerce. He became a general merchant in other commodities than mackerel and halibut. He at last assumed the dignity of