Ishmael's Struggles

Yet must my brow be paler! I have vowed
To clip it with the crown that shall not fade
When it is faded. Not in vain ye cry,
Oh, glorious voices, that survive the tongue
From whence was drawn your separate sovereignty,
For I would stand beside you!

--E.B. Browning.

Ishmael continued his work, yet resumed his studies. He managed to do
both in this way--all the forenoon he delved in the garden; all the
afternoon he went over the chaotic account-books of Reuben Gray, to
bring them into order; and all the evening he studied in his own room.
He kept up his Greek and Latin. And he read law.

No time to dream of Claudia now.

One of the wisest of our modern philosophers says that we are sure to
meet with the right book at the right time. Now whether it were chance,
fate, or Providence that filled the scanty shelves of the old escritoire
with a few law books, is not known; but it is certain that their
presence there decided the career of Ishmael Worth.

As a young babe, whose sole object in life is to feed, pops everything
it can get hold of into its mouth, so this youthful aspirant, whose
master-passion was the love of learning, read everything he could lay
his hands on. Prompted by that intellectual curiosity which ever
stimulated him to examine every subject that fell under his notice,
Ishmael looked into the law books. They were mere text-books, probably
the discarded property of some young student of the Mervin family, who
had never got beyond the rudiments of the profession; but had abandoned
it as a "dry study."