These words, as he desired, are engraved on the marble over him, and he is remembered at the American Bar as an advocate who upheld its best traditions, and feared not to hold aloft the Lamp of Courage.
III
THE LAMP
OF INDUSTRY
III
THE LAMP OF INDUSTRY
The first task of the advocate is to learn to labour and to wait. There never was a successful advocate who did not owe some of his prowess to industry. From the biographies of our ancestors we may learn that the eminent successful ones of each generation practiced at least enough industry in their day to preach its virtues to aspiring juniors.
Work soon becomes a habit. It may not be altogether a good habit, but it is better to wear out than to rust out. Nothing, we are told, is impossible to industry. Certainly without industry the armoury of the advocate will lack weapons on the day of battle.
There must be years of what Charles Lamb described with graceful alliteration as “the dry drudgery of the desk’s dead wood” before the young advocate can hope to dazzle juries with eloquent perorations, confound dishonest witnesses by skilful cross-examination, and lead the steps of erring judges into the paths of precedent.
All great advocates tell us that they have had either steady habits of industry or grand outbursts of work. Charles Russell had a continuous spate of energy. Many of us can remember him, tireless and active himself, bustling into the robing-room at St. George’s Hall, Liverpool, and finding several members of the Junior Bar standing around the fire.
“Why are you loafing about here?” he asked. “Why don’t you do something?”
“We have nothing to do,” said the Junior Bar.
“Why don’t you go to the races?” he rejoined. “Do something!”