NEWS FOR ISHMAEL.
December's sky is chill and drear,
December's leaf is dun and sere;
No longer Autumn's glowing red
Upon our forest hills is shed;
No more beneath the evening beam
The wave reflects their crimson gleam;
The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold
And wraps him closely from the cold:
His dogs no merry circles wheel,
But shivering follow at his heel;
And cowering glances often cast
As deeper moans the gathering blast.
—Scott.
"Ah what is good must be worked for," wrote the wisest of our sages.
Ishmael felt the truth of this, and worked hard.
His first success at the bar had been so brilliant as to dazzle and astonish all his contemporaries; and upon the fame of that success he prospered exceedingly.
But Ishmael well knew that if it needed hard work to win fame, it needed much harder work to keep it.
He felt that if he became idle or careless now, his brilliant success would prove to be but a meteor's flash, instead of the clear and steady planet light he intended it to become.
He read and thought with great diligence and perseverance; and so he often found a way through labyrinths of difficulty that would have baffled any less firmly persistent thinker and worker.
And thus his success, splendid from the first, was gaining permanency every day.
His reputation was established on a firm foundation, and be was building it up strongly as well as highly.
Strangers who had heard of the celebrated young barrister, and had occasion to seek his professional services, always expected to find a man of thirty or thirty-five years old, and were astonished to see one of scarcely twenty-two.