The most important quality that lies at the very foundation of all business, and more especially of the banking business, is honesty. If a man is not honest, first of all with himself and next with those with whom he comes in contact, it is quite impossible for him effectively to gain the confidence that is an absolute requisite in influencing people to entrust the bank with their funds, which, next to life and character, are the most valuable possessions of the greater part of mankind. Honesty includes truthfulness, sincerity, and an ab-sence of every pretension to appear what one is not. Bankers unhesitatingly agree that the policy of honesty is for them an absolute necessity, whatever it may be in any other business; and the more robust the honesty, the stronger effect it is likely to have in producing confidence, which is the soul of the banking business. However honest we may be, we must not assume that everybody else is honest. One who is blind to the minutest signs of honesty or dishonesty can never be a successful credit man. No man ever began a career of theft by stealing a large sum of money. It is the business of the credit man who is judging business to give full weight to the small events which are forming the character and future of the individual. The young man who is seeking a successful career, either in business or in banking, should never permit a single exception to his determination to maintain the strictest standards of honesty and truthfulness.