John Smith

“ Few men have compassed in fifty years of life so much of noble action and inspiring example as did John Smith. He died, as he had lived, a God-fearing, honorable gentleman, rich in the consciousness of a life well spent and in the respect of all who knew him. He was a connecting link between the old world and the new, and we, no less than England, should keep his memory green. ”

“ Meanwhile, Mr. John Smith of Passaic, New Jersey, wrapped in the utter innocence of slumber, dreamed lightly of the voice of an angel—an angel from the United States—which came to him vaguely through a babble. ”

“ His name was really John Smith. Incredibly enough, it had always been John Smith. As far back as people in his circle and neighborhood could remember, it had been John Smith—and they could remember back all the way to when he had been a mere tottering tot—to the swaddling clothes days. He was what might be called a medium man. His height was medium. His middle-age was medium. His hair, eyes, and nose were medium. Unpretentious he looked and adequate. He fulfilled his name, which, as we mentioned above, was John Smith—not Achilles Maravain. ”

“ So society stepped out and met John Smith half-way. It smiled upon him cordially, it took him by the arm, it drew him aside, it opened the fifty-year-old Burgundy and drank to his eyes and waited for him to speak.
But John Smith did not speak. He smiled in a rather vague way. Some men are “strongly silent”; but John Smith was merely “expectantly hushed.” Society shook its head, but still it refused to be disillusionized. Was it not looking upon the man who had married Valerie Eloise St. Vincent? It examined John Smith more in detail. ”

“ And the mountain brook would loiter like upon its windin' way,
Ez if it waited for a child to jine it in its play.
You see, John Smith, just which you are I cannot well recall,
And, really, I am pleased to think you somehow must be all!
For when a man sojourns abroad awhile (as I have done)
He likes to think of all the folks he left at home as one—
And so they are! For well you know there's nothing in a name—-
Our Browns, our Joneses and our Smiths are happily the same;
All represent the spirit of the land across the sea,
All stand for one high purpose in our country of the free! ”

“ Yet he gained the respect of the savages by his courage, steadfastness, honesty and—when occasion demanded—by the weight of his strong arm, for Captain John Smith was no less stern than just.
In the days when news traveled slowly and was often delivered by word of mouth, the truth of distant events was hard to ascertain, and great men were frequently the victims of malice and envy. Smith, like many another, failed to receive at the hands of his countrymen the honor and recognition which he deserved. ”

“ Every observant person, too, when he sees John Smith's name and full address, scratched with painful and elaborate accuracy upon the stern but noseless face of some alabaster knight, while he wonders at the gratuitous trouble which John Smith has taken, must deplore the want of education thus so lamentably evinced. ”

“ Smith has no other purpose during this early period of his life than to learn what he can of the world and the practice of arms—in short to qualify himself for a life of action in an age when brawn is no less essential to success than brain. It is a stern school in which he acquires his training but an effective one, and he makes the most of his opportunities. We see the expansion of his mind keeping pace with the development of his muscle, until the Captain John Smith who joins the colonists bound for Virginia appears as a man of perfect physique and mature judgment. ”

“ John Smith had never found himself in worse straits than now, as shackled to a fellow slave he tramped along the road between Axopolis and the Turkish capital. Hopeless as the situation seemed to be, he did not give himself up to despair, nor wear himself by repining over a condition which was beyond his power to remedy. He had learned from experience that the sun is apt to break through the clouds of the darkest day and when we are least expecting it. ”

“ Now, as of old, thought John Smith, the lawyer is a public officer, charged with public duties, alert to do battle with any tyrant or robber. He flushed with pleasure at this conception of the greatness of the profession.
“As a science,” said the judge, as though in answer to John's thought, “it's the greatest field of the intellect. It's the practise that's laborious and full of compromises.”
“Yes,” said John Smith, lamenting the interrupted lecture on the rights of minority stockholders. Judge Thornton had donned his coat and his hat. ”

“ When Smith fully grasped the situation he threatened the Indians with death, and then finding himself surrounded by hundreds of hostile warriors, he boldly seized Powhatan's brother by the scalp-lock, put a pistol to his breast, and cried, "Corn, or your life!"
All must have perished but for the bravery and strength of one man, John Smith, who for several years kept the struggling colony alive by his personal authority and wise treatment of the Indians. Born in [Pg 46] England in 1579, he was at the time of the settlement of Jamestown twenty-eight years old. ”

“ It was with feelings of curiosity and interest on either side that Captain John Smith, the leader of the colonists, and Opechancanough, the chief of the Pamaunkes, confronted each other. Both men of noble bearing and fearless character, they must have been mutually impressed at the first encounter. The chief’s erect and well-knit frame towered above the forms of his attendant warriors and, together with the dignity and intelligence of his countenance, marked him as a superior being. ”

“ Captain John Smith was a brave and wise man who came from England and settled in Virginia. One day some of his men disobeyed orders and got into a quarrel with the Indians. John Smith was taken prisoner and led into their camp. He showed them his compass, and told them how the needle always turned to the north, which so amused the Indians that, instead of killing him, they took him to their chief, Powhatan, who said, “The white man must die.” ”

“ John Smith! Isn't that gorgeous? See how she kneels over him, and sticks out her hands while he lays on the ground, and that big fellow with a club tries to hammer him up! Talk about woman's love! There it is for you! Modocs, I believe. Anyway, some Indians out West there, somewheres; and the publisher tells me that Captain Shackanasty, or whatever his name is there, was going to bang old Smith over the head with a log of wood, and this here girl she was sweet on Smith, it appears, and she broke loose, and jumped forward, and says to the man with a stick, 'Why don't you let John alone? ”

“ Here was a fix for John Smith! Night; foreign country; a dead woman on the beach; only two of my race present, and they scared like the deuce; surrounded by a score or two of the swarthy, blood-thirsty natives of a semi-barbarous land! O, how I wished that crutch of mine were but clicking on the side-walk in front of Trinity church, New York; or the State House, Philadelphia. ”

“ John Smith, and many other worthy men were there, all guarded in thought and purpose against any compromise of truth, but all filled with the spirit of the Master: “That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me.” It was decided that one man from each party should speak, setting forth clearly the grounds of union, and Smith and Stone were selected as the speakers. ”

“ John Smith began life in the year 1580, in the glorious reign of Good Queen Bess. It was a world of turmoil into which our hero came, but a most fitting field for so adventurous a spirit. In France, the gallant Henry of Navarre was fighting for a kingdom and his faith against the Catholic League. In the Low Countries, the sturdy Dutchmen, under Maurice of Orange, were defending their homes from the invasion of the arrogant and bigoted Spaniard, who deemed it his duty to punish every Protestant people. ”

“ He had been the ruling spirit and the preserver of the Virginia colony. In fact, he has often and justly been called the "Father of Virginia." His strong hand had also opened wide the door of New England.
We must think of Captain John Smith as the hero of the first struggle of English civilization with the wilderness of America. Wherever he was, his genius and resolute will had made him a leader. There was never a braver man. After a life full of romantic adventures and daring exploits, he died in London in 1631 at the age of fifty-two. ”

“ Nobody denies the services John Smith rendered to the infant colony—and yet such was his arrogance, his boastfulness, his intolerant, dogmatic temper, that men took offence, and grudgingly yielded him the honour which was his due. ”

“ It was not strange that the name of one of the couple was also Smith, for we know that the name is the most common among civilized 214people. I know a city of my own country in which I read in the directory exactly one hundred and five plain "John Smiths," and I doubt not that there are plenty of them in Great Britain. ”

“ Thus, dear public, am I, John Smith, tormented for having sacrificed a leg for my country. How often have I felt that I would be far happier if I were still a mark for the bullets at Malvern Hill, Bull Run, or Antietam! This accursed quizzical disposition on the part of the public has made me feel, at times, that life was actually a burden to me!
One day I met an elderly lady in Philadelphia who stopped me on the street, asked a profusion of questions, and wound up by giving me an accurate history of her son. ”

“ SMITH, JOHN (1579–1631) , usually distinguished as Captain John Smith, sometime president of the English colony in Virginia, was the elder son of George Smith, a well-to-do tenant-farmer on the estate of Lord Willoughby d’Eresby at Willoughby, near Alford in Lincolnshire. The life of this Virginian hero falls conveniently into five periods. The first of these, up to 1596, that of his early youth, is thus described by himself in his Travels: “He was born (1579) in Willoughby in Lincolnshire, and was a scholar in the two free schools of Alford and Louth. ”

“ John Smith was triumphant. The very might of Thornton's ability and power had brought the gas company to their knees! This crucial stage of the gas fight thrust entirely out of his mind the deep moral and ethical consideration of the relations of the Slattery person to the discussion of “Lear.” The law, as of old, was a great profession. Would any of the Boone County folks be able to believe that he, John Smith, was so near the heart of big things as to sit here while Judge Thornton won this great bloodless victory for the people? ”

“ Don’t trust ‘em, reader; they are sure to do you! there’s deceit in their straps, prevarication in their trousers, and connivance in their distended braces. We never met but one exception to the above rule—it was John Smith. Every reader has a friend of the name of John Smith—in confidence, that is the man. ”

“ Persecution drove numbers of Nonconformists to America, and the story of Captain John Smith shows how hardly society then pressed on the race of adventurers, even where the bitterness of the struggle did not produce religious enthusiasm.
Smith lived a generation too late. Born in 1579, he was a child of nine when the Armada perished, and only sixteen when Drake and Hawkins died at sea. ”

“ When John Smith returned to his native land he found the colonization [174] of Virginia occupying a prominent place in the minds of his countrymen. It was a project precisely fitted to satisfy the nobler ambition which now fired him to devote his talents and energies to his country’s service. It promised to combine with a useful career a sufficient element of novelty and adventure, and he lost no time in allying himself with the chief promoters of the movement. ”

“ In—in my—business”—she looked into John Smith's girlish eyes and hesitated—“everything is uncertain. It's a feast or a famine. A wave of reform may strike the town to-morrow, and the lid goes on. The protection you pay for may be taken from you next week. You've no rights. You ain't human. So I fix the fifty a month for the old man while I can, see?”
“Gibbs—Gibbs!” said the judge. “Relation of yours?”
“In a way. Does it make any difference?”
“It goes to the consideration,” said the lawyer. ”

“ FOR a time M. Remi looked, then there came into his beady black eyes a supercilious light, and finally he permitted a sneering smile to curl the corners of his mouth. “It is a strange thing, Monsieur,” he told the little clerk easily, from the depths of his infinite wisdom, “that whenever and wherever an American is arrested or is threatened with arrest he gives his name as John Smith. If there had been any doubt as to this—er—M. Smith’s attempt to hide his true identity, the mere fact that he signed the name John Smith would have tended to dissipate that doubt. ”

“ The bonds! He had dreamed of them, and fear for their safety had been born in that dream,—a strange,vivid vision of a desperate struggle with some straight staring, rugged faced, hulking man, some man who seemed to be—to be John Smith! In the dream he had lost the bonds! For a long time he sat listening, listening, then started to rise from the bed. It was an effort. Illness had sapped his strength, he was weak as a child, but the will of him came to his rescue, that merciless, all compelling will against which no man or thing had ever stood. ”

“ As a protection against telepathy he gave his whole attention to Judge Thornton's paper on “Lear.” The indescribable agony of the old king's frenzy, the whirling tempest of the tragedy in which he wandered to his doom clutched at the boy's heart. The wolfish Goneril and Regan, the sweet Cordelia, the bared gray head, the storm, the night—— By some occult warning John Smith knew that Nellie was not pleased with his absorption, and that the discussion had begun.
“This treatment is so original,” said the lady president. “Everybody must be full of questions. ”