7.  Selling out their reputation.—­It is amazing what multitudes there are who are willing to sell out their reputation, and amazing at what a low price they will make the painful exchange.  Some king remarked that he would not tell a lie for any reward less than an empire.  It is not uncommon in our world for a man to sell out all his honor and hopes for a score or a half score of dollars.

8.  Prisons overflowing.—­Our prisons are all full to overflowing of those who took no thought of honor.  They have not waited for an empire to be offered them before they would violate the sacred rights of man, but many of them have even murdered for a cause that would not have justified even an exchange of words.

9.  Integrity the pride of the government.—­If integrity were made the pride of the government, the love of it would soon spring up among the people.  If all fraudulent men should go straight to jail, pitilessly, and if all the most rigid characters were sought out for all political and commercial offices, there would soon come a popular honesty just as there has come a love of reading or of art.  It is with character as with any new article—­the difficulty lies in its first introduction.

10.  A new virtue.—­May a new virtue come into favor, all our high rewards, those from the ballot-box, those from employers, the rewards of society, the rewards of the press, should be offered only to the worthy.  A few years of rewarding the worthy would result in a wonderful zeal in the young to build up, not physical property, but mental and spiritual worth.

11.  Blessing the family group.—­No young man or young woman can by industry and care reach an eminence in study or art or character, without blessing the entire family group.  We have all seen that the father and mother feel that all life’s care and labor were at last perfectly rewarded in the success of their child.  But had the child been reckless or indolent, all this domestic joy—­the joy of a large group—­would have been blighted forever.

12.  An honored child.—­There have been triumphs at old Rome, where victors marched along with many a chariot, many an elephant, and many spoils of the East; and in all times money has been lavished in the efforts of States to tell their pleasure in the name of some general; but more numerous and wide-spread and beyond expression, by chariot or cannon or drum, have been those triumphal hours, when some son or daughter has returned to the parental hearth beautiful in the wreaths of some confessed excellence, bearing a good name.

13.  Rich criminals.—­We looked at the utter wretchedness of the men who threw away reputation, and would rather be rich criminals in exile than be loved friends and persons at home.