You cannot be too particular in avoiding the slightest appearance of deception. Rather lose a sale than tell a lie. The truth should be told, at any risk; the telling it is never against your interest, if it seem so. The narrow view is the sale in question; the higher, wiser one is keeping a customer's confidence-that plant of slow growth, but than which there is nothing more valuable; as when you do recommend an article, or advise buying, the customer will, if likely to want, buy it, having faith alike in your judgment and a buyer can soon detect if the seller knows the value of what he is offering for sale and truthfulness; so have faith and tell the truth, acting towards others as you would be acted by. Evasions or excuses are as bad, or worse than lying. All men err; but to insult a man's understanding by making paltry excuses, as though he had not sense enough to see through the flimsy pretext, is really a greater evil; and if asked, "Will an article wear, keep colour?" &c., reply at once, frankly and openly, "Yea" or "Nay," according to the merit of the article in question. Be truthful, neither magnifying nor extenuating, and you have nothing to fear. The end must be successful, if you be honest and truthful. It is an achievement to tell the truth always, and there is not much merit in being truthful otherwise than when it costs us something, or seems to do so. It ought not to require any effort, but should be a sacrifice every man ought to find it easy to make. Yet it is none too easy in practice. How many respectable people deceive their customers rather than lose the chance of selling their goods! They may not tell lies, or say this or that, but they hold their tongues when it serves their purpose and is needful, as they think, to make money. "We must live" is their excuse, and they lie or are reticent to live; or, rather, they are led astray by the bugbear of thinking it necessary not to be left behind in the race which all the world seems running. So many think, if they are to hold their position and not be jostled aside, they must move with the times, which means speculation and increased risks, especially the risk of being untruthful; and for what? to keep up a greater establishment than had hitherto been deemed necessary. Well, my friend, let them get learned in the crooked path, and learn the ways and wiles of the world, and what is considered to be a knowledge of life's wisdom. I would rather you were without this experience, even if at times you lose thereby, than see you millionaires, and always in a state of anxiety, and suspecting everything and everybody. Keep truthful yourself, and believe others to be so until you find them guilty. "Let us speak of a man as we find him, And heed not what others may say; If he's frail, then a kind word will bind him, Believe me, there is no necessity for, or gain in, being untruthful; and it is a matter for serious reflection how men can lead a life of deception, although professedly Christians, and with a belief in future punishments. Untruthfulness saps at the very essence of character-individuality. Every true musician and worker lends his individuality to what he does, and thereby raises or degrades his work, and varies every composition by his execution thereof. Individuality is the choicest flavour of life, without which human endeavour, no matter on what scale it works, is but the dismal tramping of a treadmill. There are exceptions, perhaps pious falsehoods, in which the "motive" must be taken account of before we condemn the individual for an exceptional untruth; as when Tom Pinch gave the halfsovereign in a book to Martin Chuzzlewit, with the words scrawled in pencil, "I don't want it; indeed, I should not know what to do with it if I had it!"-only a half-sovereign, but Tom's all. Dickens truly says of this: "There are some falsehoods, Tom, on which men mount, as on bright wing, towards heaven; whilst there are some truths-cold, bitter, taunting truths-wherein your worldly scholars are very apt and punctual, which bind men down to earth with leaden chains. Who would not rather have to fan him, in his dying hour, the lightest feather of a falsehood such as thine than all the quills that have been plucked from the sharp porcupine-reproachful truth—since time began ?" Just To me there is nothing more degrading, more humiliating, than "telling a lie;" yet I can understand by my own experience that alie may be told" when it seems the lesser of two evils. after I had started-my own future and my father's little all at stake some kind friend circulated the report that I was not of age. My "reference" to other creditors, the late J. J. Murray, wrote me to call and see him, and asked me my age. I guessed his motive; being only nineteen, I was not legally liable for the debts I had contracted. To have said in reply, the truth, "Nineteen," would have ruined my future; worse, it would have entailed a loss upon my parents, who had staked their all upon my success. I told a lie, and said " Twenty-one." The motive must be my excuse. I take this opportunity to admit the error, and to say it bore its punishment, as I have often regretted not telling the truth, and appealing to Mr. Murray to trust me. Still I doubt if he would have done so; he was of that type of business man that had "little faith," and was not likely to trust to a debtor's honour. "It is almost too trite to remark," says Carlyle, "that there was never yet an age of the world in which one part of mankind did not prey upon the rest, the upright and industrious self-denying of all ages having had to support the idle and dishonest; the only difference is that, in the nineteenth century, cunning takes the place of strength, and fraud is substituted for violence, which is a clear gain to the victims, who are now suffered to keep more for themselves, and are less unpleasantly despoiled of the smaller portion which they lose. Gullible, however, by fit apparatus all publics are, and gulled with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like statistics of imposture, indeed, little as yet has been done. With a strange indifference, our economists, nigh buried under tables of the main branches of industry, have altogether overlooked the grand overtopping Hypocrisy branch; as if our whole art of puffery, of quackery, priestcraft, kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and systems of that genus, had not ranked in productive industry at all." What money is spent in advertising! How difficult to tell how man's wants are supplied by true wear-how far by the mere appearance of true wear! It is disgusting to read the barefaced lies of some advertisements, which can only be issued by the author's faith in the gullibility of readers. Nothing but greater knowledge, or rather, I would say, keener observation, will stop this. There is nothing more painful than devoting one's life to acting justly in one's calling, and observing that in the majority of cases it is like throwing pearls before swine, the same not being properly appreciated, through the buyers being unable to perceive the advantages given. Value, and what constitutes real value, as regards material, dye, make, strength, &c., being so little understood, it is a daily occurrence to hear even keen business men, when an article is submitted, asking for a thinner and yet a higher-priced material in an article wherein weight constitutes the principal value; still more their dislike to pay the higher price "a sound colour" costs, and, from their ignorance that a cloth may cost 5d. to 1s. 5d. a yard to dye, think you sell dear simply because they have no real test of the value they are buying; yet any sensible man must admit that tender or badly-dyed goods are worthless at any price. It is this ignorance of real value in buyers, and want of knowledge of their business by employers, which renders possible the palming off of showy, deceptive work for that which is genuine and well done. But if such traders meet with fools enough to let them live, it is a miserable, wretched life of deceit; and there can be no more erroneous notion than that success is ever founded on humbug, as no secure reputation in anything can ever be raised from what is false. To succeed in any enterprise needs great strength of character, and the regulation of every man's plan must depend greatly on the course of events, which come in an order not to be foreseen or prevented. But in accommodating the plans of conduct to the train of events, the difference between two men may be no less than that in the one instance the man is subservient to the events, and in the other the events are made subservient to the man. Some men seem to have been taken along by a succession of events, and, as it were, handed forward in helpless passiveness from one to another, having no determined principles in their own characters by which they could constrain those events to serve a design formed antecedently to them or apparently in defiance of them. The events seized them as a neutral material, not they the events. Others, advancing through life with an internal invincible determination, have seemed to make the train of circumstances, whatever they were, conduce as much to their chief designs as if they had, by some directing interposition, been brought about on purpose. It is wonderful how even the casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to subserve a design which they may, in their first apparent tendency, threaten to frustrate. Always try for sufficient firmness and decision of character to do what is right, and to be above the contempt or fear of the ridicule of those about you. If, as a boy, you have always said your prayers at night before going to bed, have moral courage enough to do the same when you enter on the duties of life; and if placed in a room with a lot of others, rise superior to their remarks, and if persevered in, you will gain their respect for having a character superior to theirs. In life you must be prepared for such trials and struggles. From ideal justice there are so many degrees of human rectitude when self and custom interfere. The struggle is keen through life between the strength of the principle of honesty implanted in us and the desire to make money and succeed in the fight. Human pathology is a strange study, in which a hair's breadth or a minute alteration in the millionth part of a grain might disturb the wonderful mechanism of the brain. Many we blame are in a state of mania, and can be scarcely deemed responsible for their actions. Nothing upsets the moral balance of a man's nature so much as acquisitiveness. After a time such natures seem morally blind-as some are colour-blind: they are to be pitied, losing as they do that moral happiness only to be found in the calm of a contented, peaceful soul. Do not forget "it is one of the first steps towards wisdom to judge of others' actions, especially as they affect ourselves as a third person." This will save you much of that unjustifiable spleen and chafing of spirit which is caused by thinking your interest is treated by them as secondary to their own. Schiller says: "A man, to succeed, should be an enthusiast, tempered with worldly light;" any idea well persevered in, with method and caution, must succeed. Truthfulness means keeping to the "spirit" of integrity, and not merely the letter of it. The truly religious man will be honest, truthful, and charitable in all his dealings. That man is not religious, not truthful, who takes every selfish advantage he can of his fellow-men. It is said, "There is no friendship in business;" true, but a true friend will give his so-called friend the first opportunity of supplying him with what he wants. We find that in life relatives and friends avoid each other, having no faith in their own judgment; they are afraid their relatives or friends will impose upon them. But a man of principle and judgment will act from duty-will not only observe verbal or written promises, but keep to the spirit of truth and honour. "It is told of Mr. Brassey that, near the outset of his career, a portion of a large railway bridge was torn down in a great storm and flood, and he was advised that he must either appeal to the company for help, or rebuild it in a certain inferior style, in order that he might not be altogether ruined by his loss under that contract. He would not listen to any such proposals, but, at his own charge, at once set to work and rebuilt the bridge precisely as if there had been no accident, finishing it within the contract time. And though the destruction of the work had been caused by no blame or neglect of his, he made no appeal to the company, who, however, were so struck by the manner in which he had borne himself in the crisis, that they unanimously voted him a considerable sum over and above the contract price; so that, after all, he was not so great a loser; and the certificate he thus wrote out for himself gained him such a character for integrity and good worth as no money could have purchased for him” (The Way to Fortune "). Believe me, that resolute adherence to honest methods are the profitable ones in the long run. For your own sake, for your friends' sake, try and win always. Always remember, whatever engaged in, their great interest in you; remember their eyes are on you, and that every prize you win-harder to hold as greater to strive for-you show your gratitude and worthiness of the affection and care bestowed on you. Be truthful; in spite of competition, rise above any immoral "custom of the trade;" maintain a firm front and an honest purpose; fight the battle of life with a determined perseverance to rise superior to the |