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A GOOD NAME.

     Virtue maketh men on the earth famous, in their graves illustrious,
     in the heavens immortal.—­Chilo.

Perhaps there is no man so well known and yet so little thought about in any one community as he who, in the universal opinion, bears a good name.  Upon his brow he wears the modern laurel, the highest emblem of his worth, yet the simplest tribute of his fellow citizens.

There are certain exigencies in the histories of all groups of people when the ordinary machinery of life will not operate.  The citizens require the utmost letter of the bond; they look with suspicion on all who have usually given satisfaction by their services.  A great man is needed.  It is then that the people, with one voice, cry out for succor from him of of whom, in days of greater prosperity, they had no imploring need; and it is then astonishing to what a degree the voice of the people at once becomes the voice of God.

A bank which, owing to its high-sounding title, had attracted the savings of the people, fell into the hands of a clique of scoundrels and was compelled to suddenly suspend, the President flying to a distant land to escape the penalties of his crimes.  When thirteen thousand depositors were thus confronted with total or partial ruin, there was but one man in a great city whom they would trust to enter the desecrated temple of their hopes and set to rights the treasure yet unstolen.  This man came

LIKE CINCINNATUS FROM HIS FARM—­

like a father to his children—­and from the hearts of plundered widows and orphans there breathed relief in every sigh.  In peaceful times this great man was seldom heard of; rogues could be elected over him to places of usual trust; but, in a crisis, his whole biography seemed embossed upon the people’s hearts, rising forth like muscles in an agony.

Again a city—­itself an exhalation, rising like Milton’s hall of Pandemonium—­perished in a night.  Where, in one week, there had been one hundred “leading candidates” for Mayor, in the next week there was none so rash as to offer himself.  A stricken city—­the pity of a Christlike world—­cast its eyes upon one citizen; and he, as an act of supreme duty, took the perilous post of helmsman through a storm that unsettled the deeps of credit and prosperity all over the earth.

In each of these illustrations party politics played no part.  Tall masts were needed for the great ships, and these two men, like red wood patriarchs, touched hard against the zenith of the people’s vision.  Admirable tributes!  Magnificent rewards of life-times of virtue and high character!

THE SILENT GROWTH OF REPUTATION.