It makes a tremendous difference to you whether you have the reputation of always doing exactly as you agree, whether your word is your bond or you must be tied to it by cast-iron agreement. Business men do not like to deal with anybody who has to be watched. They are afraid of the slippery man, the dodger, the man who will try to get out of every agreement which works to his disadvantage.

A bad reputation, people's poor opinion of you will be like a millstone about your neck, always keeping you back. You will be obliged to expend a vast amount of energy in trying to overcome people's adverse opinion. We are all tied together in one great whole so closely that, whether we realize it or not, what others think of us affects us very seriously. We are influenced by the character of the thought currents which come to us from a thousand sources. A great supporting, buttressing, stimulating power comes from the consciousness of being well thought of by all who know us. Our confidence is increased by the confidence and respect of others.

Everything we achieve depends on our self-confidence, and that is strengthened, buttressed, weakened or undermined by the faith or lack of faith of others in us.

If you are ambitious to make the most of yourself, carry yourself always with dignity and assume an attitude of power, not weakness. Do not all

the time cut down other people's estimate of you by saying foolish things, doing foolish things, making bad breaks.

Have an ambition to force yourself up in public opinion, not down. Compel people to say every time they meet you that you are looking up, that you are gaining instead of losing, that you are more of a man than when they saw you last; stronger, manlier, more reliable.

It is not a difficult thing to establish a good reputation, to add to people's estimate of you day by day; but if you are constantly letting down the bars, lowering your average by foolish breaks, you will find it will require a great deal of extra ability to overcome the downward impression you are making.

It takes only a few minutes to undo the work of years. One can slide down in an hour the distance it has taken years to climb up. It is a very easy thing to slide down hill, to float down the stream.

Everywhere we see names traded on because they are immensely valuable, because a great name which has been the synonym of honesty and integrity in a community for many years, stands for something, is worth something.

How often, particularly in the West, we see this sign in a store: Mr. formerly with Tiffany (or Altman, or Park & Tilford), of New York. The proprietors know the values of these names, and they know that the public will be likely

to have more confidence in them because of their former connection with these great and reliable houses.

The reputation and the quality of the concern you work for will mean a great deal to your future, for reputation is contagious. If employees of some concerns in New York, for instance, selected for their integrity and the cleanness of their reputation, were to be mixed up promiscuously with employees of cheap, shoddy concerns, it would not be difficult for a man of discernment to separate them, because the quality of the house, the ideals of the managers and proprietors are contagious. The employees seem to catch the quality of the principles which govern the house. They are quick to take on the characteristics of their employers.

There is something very subtle, very demoralizing, in dealing with inferiority, with cheapness, in dealing with articles of merchandise which are adulterated, second-rate, half made. Somehow this contagious quality, which colors and tints the employees, usually follows them through life, so that the young men who go out of these cheap, inferior houses, and enter business for themselves, duplicate the ideals of their former employers.

If there is anything which a man in a responsible position ought to prize, it is the esteem of the youth and young men who look up to him as their ideal, their hero. And he ought, above everything else, to be sure that the ideal he holds be

fore him is worthy, that his reputation is irreproachable.

It goes without saying that no man can afford to sacrifice his independence for the sake of gaining the good opinion of others; but, if a man is normal, he can not be indifferent to what others think of him; he can not be denounced without pain, without a certain sense of regret, because it is perfectly natural that we should value the good opinion of our fellow-men.

We all know how a mere trifle will sometimes seriously injure a man's or a firm's credit. Just a breath of suspicion that the firm is hard-pressed for money, and the creditors all rush with their bills— a breath of suspicion about the solvency of a banking institution, and immediately there is a run on the bank.

An important step in establishing a reputation is to ground yourself strongly in the good-will of others by making yourself agreeable. This will have everything to do with your credit and your standing in the community; while the young man who despises public opinion will soon find himself without credit and without the support of others' good-will.

Wherever

No one can hide his true character. we go, we are on exhibition. We are holding ourselves up like a bulletin board for everybody to read, not as we would like to be, but as we are, for everybody to estimate and to judge. A thousand

eyes and a thousand judgments are scrutinizing us, weighing us, estimating us wherever we go. We can not get away from them.

Willing or unwilling, we must step upon the scales of a thousand judgments to be weighed and estimated as they will.

The criminal trembles and shrinks from the eyes of the crowd because he fears that there may be some one who may read the fearful thing in his mind and see the crime in the glance of his eye or in his manner. He can not cover up the secret entirely, for there are a thousand things in him trying all the time to tell the truth at every opportunity, and he can not hide or cover them all. He may teach the tongue to lie, but the eye and the manner, never. They are the truth-tellers, the proclaimers who do not hesitate to betray the murderer although it may cost him his life.

There is something within us which tells the truth, regardless of consequences, and can never be trained to deceive or to lie.

We are covered all over with the earmarks of our quality. The things we do voluntarily and habitually are prophetic of ourselves as a whole. Professor Agassiz could reconstruct an entire animal which had lived millions of years before man came to the earth; he could tell where the animal lived, its habits, what it lived upon, from a single fossil bone.

People can tell what kind of a man you are by