“His first rule was honesty between seller and buyer.  His career is a perfect exemplification of Poor Richard’s maxim:  ’Honesty is the best policy,’ and of the poet’s declaration:  ‘Nothing can need a lie,’ His interest consorted with his inclination, his policy with his principles, and the business with the man, when he determined that the truth should be told over his counter, and that no misrepresentation of his goods should be made.  He never asked, he never would suffer, a clerk to misrepresent the quality of his merchandise.  Clerks who had been educated at other stores to cheat customers, and then to laugh off the transaction as ‘cuteness,’ or defend it as ‘diamond cut diamond,’ found no such slipshod morality at Stewart’s little store, and learned frankness and fairness in representation at the peril of dismissal.  Their employer asked no gain from deceit in trade.  On his part, too, in buying, he rarely gave a seller a second opportunity to misrepresent goods to him.

“A second innovation of the young dry goods dealer was selling at one price—­a custom which has also lasted without interruption, and which has spread to all the great houses.  He fixed his price, after careful consideration, at what he thought the goods could and would bring, and would not deviate from it for any haggling, or to suit individual cases.  Of course, he followed the fluctuations of the market, and marked his goods up or down in accordance with it; but no difference in the price was made to different people.  Perhaps those who had some art in ’beating down’ prices were offended, but people in general were pleased.

“The third principle he adopted was that of cash on delivery.  It is said that his own early experience of buying on credit, and selling on credit, drove him to this rule.

“A fourth principle with him was to conduct business as business—­not as sentiment.  His aim was honorable profit, and he had no purpose of confusing it by extraneous considerations.”

While still engaged in his first struggles in his little store, Mr. Stewart found himself called on to make arrangements to pay a note which would soon become due.  It was for a considerable sum, and he had neither the money nor the means of borrowing it.  It was a time when the mercantile community of New York regarded a failure to pay a note as a crime, and when such a failure was sure to bring ruin to any new man.  Mr. Stewart knew this, and felt that he must act with greater resolution and daring than he had ever before exhibited, if he would save himself from dishonor.  To meet the crisis he adopted a bold and skillful maneuver.  He marked down every article in his store far below the wholesale price.  This done, he had a number of handbills printed, announcing that he would sell off his entire stock of goods below cost, within a given time.  He scattered these handbills broadcast through the city, and it was not long before purchasers began to