1. WHO SHALL ESTIMATE THE COST.--Who shall estimate the cost of a
priceless reputation--that impress which gives this human dross its
currency--without which we stand despised, debased, depreciated? Who
shall repair it injured? Who can redeem it lost? Oh, well and truly
does the great philosopher of poetry esteem the world's wealth as
"trash" in the comparison. Without it gold has no value; birth, no
distinction; station, no dignity; beauty, no charm; age, no reverence;
without it every treasure impoverishes, every grace deforms,
every dignity degrades, and all the arts, the decorations and
accomplishments of life stand, like the beacon-blaze upon a rock,
warning the world that its approach is dangerous; that its contact is
death.
2. THE WRETCH WITHOUT IT.--The wretch without it is under eternal
quarantine; no friend to greet; no home to harbor him, the voyage of
his life becomes a joyless peril, and in the midst of all ambition
can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the
surge, a buoyant pestilence. But let me not degrade into selfishness
of individual safety or individual exposure this individual principle;
it testifies a higher, a more ennobling origin.
3. ITS DIVINITY.--Oh, Divine, oh, delightful legacy of a spotless
reputation: Rich is the inheritance it leaves; pious the example
it testifies; pure, precious and imperishable, the hope which it
inspires; can there be conceived a more atrocious injury than to filch
from its possessor this inestimable benefit to rob society of its
charm, and solitude of its solace; not only to out-law life, but
attain death, converting the very grave, the refuge of the sufferer,
into the gate of infamy and of shame.
4. LOST CHARACTER.--We can conceive few crimes beyond it. He who
plunders my property takes from me that which can be repaired by time;
but what period can repair a ruined reputation? He who maims my person
effects that which medicine may remedy; but what herb has sovereignty
over the wounds of slander? He who ridicules my poverty or reproaches
my profession, upbraids me with that which industry may retrieve, and
integrity may purify; but what riches shall redeem the bankrupt fame?
What power shall blanch the sullied show of character? There can be
no injury more deadly. There can be no crime more cruel. It is without
remedy. It is without antidote. It is without evasion.
[Illustration: GATHERING WILD FLOWERS.]
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