that time has passed.
The time was, when, among a homogeneous people, a few time-honored
characteristics were both relied on and insisted on: for example, good
parentage, good moral character, a thorough training, and superior
capacity, joined to industry, economy, sound judgment, and good manners.
But Young America has learned to make light of some of these, and to
dispense altogether with others of them.

Once the buyer was required to prove himself an honest, worthy, and
capable man. If he wanted credit, he must humbly sue for it, and prove
himself deserving of it; and no man thought of applying for it who was
not prepared to furnish irrefragable evidence. Once, a reference to some
respectable acquaintance would serve the purpose; and neighbors held
themselves bound to tell all they knew. The increase of merchants, and
fierce competition for customers, have changed this. Men now
regard their knowledge of other men as a part of their capital or
stock-in-trade. Their knowledge has been acquired at much cost of labor
and money; and they hold themselves absolved from all obligation to
give away what they have thus expensively acquired. Moreover, their
confidence has sometimes been betrayed, and their free communications
have been remorselessly used to their disadvantage. Alas, it cannot
be denied that even dry-goods jobbers, with all their extraordinary
endowments, are not quite perfect! for some of them will "state the
thing that is not," and others "convey" their neighbor's property into
their own coffers: men who prefer gain to godliness, and mistake much
money for respectability.

There are very few men, in certain sections of the country, who will
absolutely refuse to give a letter of introduction to a neighbor on the
simple ground of ill-desert. Men dread the ill-will of their neighbor,
and particularly the ill-will of an unscrupulous neighbor; so, when such
a neighbor asks a letter, they give it. I remember such a one bringing a
dozen or more letters, some of which contained the highest commendation.
The writer of one of these letters sent a private note, through the
mail, warning one of the persons addressed against the bearer of his own
commendatory letter. Those who had no warning sold, and lost. It would
be difficult to find a man, however unworthy, who could not, from some
quarter, obtain a very respectable letter of introduction. One of the
greatest rogues that ever came to Boston brought letters from two