thing else. To adopt his own characteristic
phrase, he "used the truth." If half the truth, or an untruth, would
have served his purpose better, either most likely would have been
adopted and as readily used.

"You call that witty," said a great statesman once, when some one
related to him the saying of a well-known politician to the same
effect--"you call that witty--I call it devilish." It is a just
description. If the report is reliable that Bismarck, even in grim
jest, spoke of truth in this sense as one of his great resources, the
confession ought to cover his name with infamy. I do not commit myself
to the statement that he ever said this; but whether he did or not, he
is credited with acting upon what is a very general impression of how
truth _may_ be used. With vast masses of people it has become
perilously like a conviction that strict integrity, while good and
desirable as an ideal, is yet too much of a risk for the purpose of
what is popularly known as practical life. The advice said to have
been given by a Yorkshireman to his son who was entering on a business
career would, I imagine, be widely acclaimed as common-sense: "Get
money; get it honestly, if you can--but get it."

We preachers tell young men that whether or not they get on in
business, they cannot afford not to go up in character; and they are
not in the world very long before they realize that its hopes in this
admonition are but inverted fears, that the shake of its head is a
scepticism which troubles not to articulate itself in words. A French
cynic counsels us to always deal with a friend to-day on the
possibility that he may be an enemy to-morrow. And there is a wide and
deeply-rooted prejudice in favour of holding the imperatives of
integrity on the same terms. Our very language in this direction
betrays us. We talk about "smart" business men, "smart" professional
men, and by the adjective we may mean men who, though "keen," are yet
honourable in their methods; or we may mean men who are just as
scrupulous as the law of the land or the arbitrary criterions of
society oblige them to be. And young men feel the impress of this
widely-shared sentiment in a way particularly vivid. They have,
indeed, small chance to escape it. The world is profuse in its
explanations of why men fail, but it has no mercy on the man who fails.
It has its cheap jargon about inheritances and environment, and then
kicks the man who is preached as their