Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/209

Rh he demanded of the manufacturer, who laughed.

"I am not conducting this discussion. I will not deprive you of the floor."

"What you say," I ventured to put in, "reminds me of the experience of a friend of mine, a brother novelist. He wrote a story where the failure of a business man turned on a point just like that you have instanced. The man could have retrieved himself if he had let some people believe that what was so was not so, but his conscience stepped in and obliged him to own the truth. There was a good deal of talk about the case, I suppose because it was not in real life, and my friend heard divers criticisms. He heard of a group of ministers who blamed him for exalting a case of common honesty, as if it were something extraordinary; and he heard of some business men who talked it over, and said he had worked the case up splendidly, but he was all wrong in the outcome; the fellow would never have told the other fellows. They said it would not have been business."

We all laughed except the minister and the Altrurian, the manufacturer said, "Twenty-five years hence, the fellow who is going into business, may pity the fellows who arc pitying him for his hard fate now."