"
"Do you really think so?"
"The courage, the ingenuity, and the self-confidence needed are certainly
admirable. And then there is a cringing and almost contemptible littleness
about honesty, which hardly allows it to assert itself. The really honest
man can never say a word to make those who don't know of his honesty
believe that it is there. He has one foot in the grave before his
neighbours have learned that he is possessed of an article for the use of
which they would so willingly have paid, could they have been made to see
that it was there. The dishonest man almost doubts whether in him
dishonesty is dishonest, let it be practised ever so widely. The honest
man almost doubts whether his honesty be honest, unless it be kept hidden.
Let two unknown men be competitors for any place, with nothing to guide
the judges but their own words and their own looks, and who can doubt but
the dishonest man would be chosen rather than the honest? Honesty goes
about with a hang-dog look about him, as though knowing that he cannot be
trusted till he be proved. Dishonesty carries his eyes high, and assumes
that any question respecting him must be considered to be unnecessary.
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