REPUTATION.203
Samson's locks were shorn off, but they grew again; Job's goods and cattle were driven off, but restored again; but the good name once lost, the loss is little better than desperate. The shipwreck of a good name, though in the most considerable respects it be incomparably less, yet in this one respect it is in some sort even greater than the loss of a good conscience. And the reason is this, that when we have made shipwreck of our consciences, we fall into the hands of God whose mercies are great, and whose compassions fail not; but when we make shipwreck of our good name, we fall into the hands of men, whose bowels are narrow, and whose tender mercies are cruel, and their charity too weak to raise up our credit again when it is once ruined.'

REPUTATION FROM ENVIRONMENT.
	One may acquire a reputation not only from his ancestors, but from the business from which he enters. If it is bad, he will end it next to impossible to rise above it, and it will become his personal reputation. One also enters into possession of the reputation of the community in which "he lives and gets a public rating to correspond.  The man from Boston has his measure taken before he reaches the West. A gentleman from Kentucky or Kansas or Texas or Arkansas or Chicago is rated abroad as his state or city is rated. Reputation is capital, and one must do business with that capital, whether it is what he likes or not. It may help to make or unmake him. While one's reputation is partly made for him, he is given a chance to make one for himself. If his ancestors and his state and his city and his calling have a good reputation, and he takes a corresponding one for himself, he is fortunate beyond expression. As Dr. Trumbull says: "There is one measure of success that is open to every man, it matters not how lacking he may be in executive ability, or personal  magnetism, or 'tact,' or individuality, or financiering skill, or any other of the traits usually supposed to assist in pushing him to the front. This is the ability to inspire other men with confidence  in his personal integrity and sincerity of character. From the lowest, to the highest, men soon come to be estimated, by all with