Linked indissolubly with this aristocracy of wealth and of blood was one which, in my judgment, was stronger than either, and which extended beyond the lines of those who were born to the purple of wealth or the pride of a great name. I do not know better how to denominate it than this—the aristocracy of honor. Proud of their great homes and positions of leadership, and boastful of their high descent, the aristocrats of the Old South, true to the Cavalier traditions, erected an ethical system that defined and regulated personal and public matters and became the inflexible code of every Southern gentleman. Its foundation was laid in a man’s “honor,” and the honor of a gentleman was the supreme test and standard of every relation, public and private. The extremes of this old Southern ethical code were illustrated, on the one part, by the maxim that “a man’s word is his bond,” which meant that, the word of honor once passed between men, it must be as inviolable as life itself. Practically, it came to mean, as the present generation little knows or appreciates, that ninetenths of the business of the Old South was a mere promise to pay, and that its millions rested from year to year upon the faith and honor that underlay its vast credit system. A gentleman of the Old South might be guilty of not a few peccadillos. He might sin easily and often against himself, but woe to the man who sinned against other men by withholding what was due and had been promised “on honor.” Personally I have known men of large business affairs whose whole fortunes depended on the passing of a word, and who on the instant would have surrendered their last dollar to make good that “word of honor.” Nor was this exceptional. It was bred in the bone and flesh of every old-time Southern boy that upon this word of personal faith the gentleman must take his stand, and at whatever cost of comfort or convenience or self-denial or sacrifice, even to the death, he must make it good. Such was the code of honor upon its business side.