WAS HE SUCCESSFUL? 'Do but grasp into the thick of human life. Every one _lives_ it--to not many is it _known_; and seize it where you will, it is interesting.'--_Goethe._ 'SUCCESSFUL.--Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or intended.'--_Webster's Dictionary._ CHAPTER IX. DIAMOND CUT--PASTE. Elihu Joslin belonged to that class of knaves who are cowardly as well as unscrupulous. He never hesitated to cheat where he had an opportunity, trusting to his powers of blustering and browbeating to sustain him. When these failed, that is, when he encountered persons who were not imposed on nor intimidated by his swaggering, bullying mien, he showed his craven nature by an abject submission. From being an errand boy in an old-established paper house in the city, he had himself become the proprietor of a large business in the same line. He had but a single idea--to make money. And he did make it. His reputation among the trade was very bad. But this did not, as it ought to have done, put him out of the pale of business negotiations. Every merchant knows that there are many rich men in business, whose acts of dishonesty and whose tricks form a subject of conversation and anecdote with their associates in trade, yet who are not only tolerated, but are by some actually courted. Joslin, when quite a young man, had been the assignee of his employer, who hoped to find in him a pliant tool. He soon found his mistake. He had put himself completely in the power of his clerk, and the latter took full advantage of it. The result was, his principal was beggared, and Joslin rose on his ruins.