ash, with more or
less expense and loss, somewhere between nine months and nine-and-twenty
years.

And yet the uninitiated "can't understand how an honest merchant can
have two prices for the same goods." An honest man has but one price
for the same goods, and that is the cash price. All outside of that is
barter,--goods for notes. His first inquiry is, What is the market-value
of the note offered? True, he knows that many of the notes he takes
cannot be sold at all; but he also knows that the notes he is willing to
take will in the aggregate be guarantied by a reservation of one, two,
or three per cent., and that the note of the particular applicant for
credit will tend to swell or to diminish the rate; and he cannot afford
to exchange his goods for any note, except at a profit which will
guaranty its payment when due,--which, in other words, will make the
note equal in value to cash.

Now it is just because all business-contingencies cannot be worked into
an unvarying form, as regular as the multiplication-table, and as plain
to the apprehension of all men, that a vast amount of lying and of
dishonesty is imputed, where it does not exist. Merchants are much like
other men,--wise and unwise, far-sighted and short-sighted, selfish
and unselfish, honest and dishonest. But that they are as a class more
dishonest than other men is so far from being true, that I much doubt if
we should overstrain the matter, if we should affirm that they are
the most honest class of men in the community. There is much in their
training which contributes directly, and most efficiently, to this
result. Their very first lessons are in feet and inches, in pounds and
ounces, in exact calculations, in accounts and balances. Carelessness,
mistakes, inaccuracies, they are made to understand, are unpardonable
sins. The boy who goes into a store learns, for the first time, that
half a cent, a quarter of a cent, an eighth of a cent, may be a matter
of the gravest import. He finds a thorough book-keeper absolutely
refusing himself rest till he has detected an error of ten cents in a
business of six months. And every day's experience enforces the lesson.
It is giving what is due, and claiming what is due, from year's end to
year's end. Among merchants it is matter of common notoriety, that the
prompt and exact adherence to orders insisted on by merchants, and
prompt advice of receipt of business and of progress, cannot be expected
from our worthy bret