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 brethren at the bar. (The few honorable exceptions are respectfully informed that they are not referred to.) We do not expect them to weigh or measure the needless annoyance to which they often subject us, because they have never been, like ourselves, trained to the use of weights and measures; and therefore we are not willing to stigmatize them as dishonest, though they do, in fact, often steal our time and strength and patience, by withholding an answer to a business-letter.