Samuel Smith

“ Of fame, early won, the record illume;
As chaplets of love, made sempervirescent,
Are saved from the night and the damps of the tomb.
Come back to be buried,—mowed down by the Reaper,
Whose pitiless scythe spares nor manhood nor bloom ”

“ To my mind it's as much out of place here as that brass coal-hod you've got over there would be on a cathedral altar."
"Samuel Ruggles!" cried Jack, striking a theatrical attitude, "you talk like a pig-sticker or a coal-baron. Your soul, Samuel, is steeped in commercialism; you know not the color that delights men's hearts nor the line that entrances. The lamp, my boy, is meat and drink to me, and companionship and a joy unspeakable. Your dull soul, Samuel, is clay, your meat is figures, and your drink profit and loss ”

“ Then to thy glorious Source, though, babe, wast borne.
Dear infant angel, safe in joy and God!
Babe of fair promise, child of fondest prayer!
Hail, rescued spirit! painful is the rod;
But never will we mourn that thou art there.
Bright gem, we would not tear thee from thy crown,
Nor bid thy harp, sweet seraph, silent lie;
Stay in thy mansion, infant, still our own,
Never to grieve again, or fear, or die.
Short was thy pilgrim path, a sunny hour;
Life was to thee too sweet a boon to last. ”

“ Dear master of the tuneful lyre,
How shall we breathe the word, "Farewell"?
How shall we touch the trembling wire,
Which vibrates with thy mystic spell?
The world seems poor, of thee bereft;
The evening sky without the sun ”

“ Hail it with shouts,—the banner of the free!
Bears it the brilliant stripes of gleaming white?—
Our cause is righteous, and our aim is pure.
Bears it the red?—we battle for the right;
Red blood may flow, but Freedom shall endure. ”

“ The spring has ripened into fall,
The buds have turned to flowers.
What long, wide paths our feet have trod,
Since the far days of old!
But love has changed each woe to good,
The silver moon to gold. ”

“ Samuel Rogers spent most of a week with him in Edinburgh the year before his death, and did not remark his absence of mind all the time. Anyhow, during his thirteen years' residence at Glasgow College, Smith seems to have had more to do with the business of the College, petty or important, than any other professor, and his brethren in the Senate of that University cannot have seen in him any marked failing or incapacity for ordinary business. ”

“ Smith had important male backers of his literary works now, if not of explorations. When he wrote the Seaman's Grammar in 1629, Sir Samuel Saltonstall was the backer. Among his friends was a collector and scientist whose house was called "Tradescant's Ark." If he had not been close to Smith how could his collection include Powhatan's discarded robe, Indian combs, rattles, bows and arrows, feathered crowns and tobacco pipes? Smith even willed him a fourth of his library. ”

“ You think you've seen landscapes before, but you haven't. You've only seen fifty cents' worth of good canvas spoiled by ten cents' worth of paint. I put it that way, Samuel, because that's the only way you'll understand it. Look at it! Did you ever see such a sky? Why, it's like a slash of light across a mountain-pool! I tell you—Samuel—that's a masterpiece!"
While they were discussing the merits of the landscape and the demerits of the transaction there came a knock at the door and the Moneybags walked in. Before he opened his lips Jack had taken his measure. ”

“ The numerous descendants of these worthy people intermarried with many of the staunchest and most industrious families of New England. Samuel, the son of Robert and Mary, born January 26th, 1666, wedded Rebecca Curtis, January 25th, 1707. Their son, the second Samuel, was born January 26th, 1714; he married Priscilla Gould, and was the father of Asael, born March 7th, 1744. Asael Smith took to wife Mary Duty, and their son Joseph was born July 12th, 1771. On the 24th of January, 1796, Joseph married Lucy Mack, at Tunbridge, in the State of Vermont. ”

“ In this letter Smith makes no complaint of his condition of health, but he seems to have got worse again in the course of the winter, for we find Gibbon writing Cadell, [Pg 415] the bookseller, with some apparent anxiety on the 11th of February 1789: "If you can send me a good account of Adam Smith, there is no man more sincerely interested in his welfare than myself." If, however, he were ill then, he recovered in the summer, and was in excellent spirits in July, when Samuel Rogers saw him often during a week he spent in Edinburgh. ”

“ It is very unlikely that Smith ever joined in any such complaint, for Henry Mackenzie told Samuel Rogers an anecdote which conveys an entirely contrary impression. Mackenzie was speaking of Smith's wealth of conversation, and telling how he often used to say to him, "Sir, you have said enough to make a book," and he then mentioned that Blair frequently introduced into his sermons some of Smith's thoughts on jurisprudence, which he had gathered from his conversation, and that he himself had told the circumstance to Smith. "He is very welcome," was the economist's answer; "there is enough left." ”

“ When Captain Samuel Argall, the privateer, turned up in July with letters from the Company criticizing Smith and telling of the third supply to be brought by Lord Delaware, Smith was embittered. A month later four ships of the supply came in early bearing—of all people—Smith's former enemies: Ratcliffe, Archer and Martin, all captains now. The Sea Venture and other ships had not been heard from, but Smith had had enough and he was hurt by lack of confidence in his command. He was thinking of returning to England anyhow before his enemies sped him on his way. ”

“ Smith left Scotland for Oxford in June 1740, riding the whole way on horseback, and, as he told Samuel Rogers many years afterwards, being much struck from the moment he crossed the Border with the richness of the country he was entering, and the great superiority of its agriculture over that of his own country. Scotch agriculture was not born in 1740, even in the Lothians; the face of the country everywhere was very bare and waste, and, as he was rather pointedly reminded on the day of his arrival at Oxford, even its cattle were still lean and poor, compared with the fat oxen of England. ”

“ Bring joyful hosannas to honor His name;
With glad acclamations His altar draw near;
Bow low to His footstool; Jehovah is here.
He speaks in creation; He rules o'er the flood,
Through Nature's wide realm the Omnipotent God ”

“ Know this, and 'grave it on thy memory,
Thy father and thy mother, fearing God,
Did, on this day which gave thee life and light,
To Him that life and light devote. Know, then,
Thou must not think thyself thine own on earth. ”

“ Very level-headed man is Mr. Samuel Lambert; no frills and no swelled head. It was Tommy Wing who was doing the mandarin act 32 the other day at the Carlton—not me. Got dead intimate with him on the voyage over and has stuck to him like a plaster ever since. Calls him ‘Sam’ already—did to me.”
“Behind his back or to his face?” spluttered Mac, tugging at his pipe.
“Give it up,” said Lonnegan, pulling his hat over his face to shield his eyes from the sun.
Mac raised himself to a sitting posture, as if to reply, fumbled in his watch-pocket for a match, instead ”

“ Come, thou slave of the desk—eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die—or bust, Samuel, which is very nearly the same thing!"
"Old John" at Solari's took their order—a porter-house steak with mushrooms, peas, cold asparagus, a pint of extra dry—in honor of the day, Jack insisted, although Sam protested to the verge of discourtesy—together with the usual assortment of small drinkables and long smokables—a Reina Victoria each. ”

“ But he could spare a thought for individuals as well as for the race, and did a great deal towards securing his friend an introduction into congenial society. Doughty Street was a legal quarter, and among those with whom the Smiths soon made friends were Sir Samuel Romilly, James Scarlett (afterwards Lord Abinger) , and Sir James Mackintosh. To these were added as time went on, Henry Grattan, Alexander Marcet, John William Ward (afterwards Lord Dudley) , Samuel Rogers, Henry Luttrell, "Conversation" Sharp, and Lord Holland. ”

“ And clusters ripening on the trellis still.
Threescore and ten!—Oh, is it fact, or dreaming?
How strangely wrong our judgment is of men!
In form and feature strong and youthful seeming,
We lose the date, and think age young again. ”

“ When Samuel Rogers met him in Paris shortly after the outbreak of the Revolution, he expressed to Rogers the highest admiration for Smith, [Pg 193] then recently dead, of whom he had seen much in Paris as well as Geneva, and he had at one time begun to translate the Theory of Moral Sentiments into French, abandoning the task only when he found his work anticipated by the Abbé Blavet's translation in 1774. ”

“ Various and many have been the falsehoods written from Kirtland to this place, but [they] have availed nothing. We have no uneasiness about the power of our enemies in this place to do us harm.
Brother Samuel H. Smith and family arrived here soon after we did, in good health. Brothers Brigham Young, Daniel S. Miles, and Levi Richards arrived here when we did. They were with us on the last part of our journey, which ended much to our satisfaction. They also are well. They have provided places for their families, and are now about to break the ground for seed. ”

“ Of fair flowers torn.
Sweet cricket, thy music
Will quickly be still,
When the tempests of winter
Roar loud on the hill;
But I go when the storm comes,
Where all my friends dwell,—
No more shall my heart say
To gladness farewell!
July 25, 1831
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ Why hast thou hair upon thy mouth? Worship ye an Okee? How mighty are thy medicine-men? And how canst thou build such great canoes with wings?"
Smith endeavored to satisfy him. He dilated upon the power of King James, though in his mind that sovereign could not be compared for regal dignity to this savage; the bravery of the colonists, the wonder of silken garments and jewels worn by the men and women of his land. And remembering his duty as a Christian, he tried to explain the mysteries of the Christian faith to this heathen, but he found his vocabulary unequal to this demand. ”

“ Written June 6, 1857, for the dedication of Newton Cemetery; also sung at dedication of Rose Hill Cemetery, Chicago, Ill.
Deep 'mid these dim and silent shades
The slumbering dead shall life,
Tranquil as summer evening fades
Along the western sky. ”

“ The parents of two children who had died were moved by some phantasy to revisit their dead carcasses, “whose benumbed bodies reflected to the eyes of the beholders such delightful countenances as though they had regained their vital spirits.” This miracle drew a great part of the King's people to behold them, nearly all of whom died shortly afterward. These people spoke the language of Powhatan. Smith explored the bays, isles, and islets, searching for harbors and places of habitation. He was a born explorer and geographer, as his remarkable map of Virginia sufficiently testifies. ”

“ He was now twenty-five years of age, and emphatically a soldier of fortune. The tale of his prowess and adventures had preceded him, and he was eagerly welcomed in London by kindred spirits who were preparing to emigrate to America to form the colony of Virginia under the grant and direct patronage of James I. By the time the enterprise was ripe for execution, Smith had made himself so useful in counsel and preparation that the king named him as one of the councillors of the prospective colony. ”

“ Smith's case now seemed truly desperate. He knew enough of the savages to have very little hope of life. Yet he was not inclined to give up while a shadowy chance remained. Taking from his pocket a small compass, which he carried to aid him in his forest journeys, he gave it to the Indian chief, showing him how the needle always pointed to the north. But while the chief was looking curiously at this magic toy, as it seemed to him, the other Indians bound their captive to a tree, and bent their bows to shoot him. ”

“ Smith found himself very wide awake indeed. Never in all his life did he remember being more so, not even in the hour of its great catastrophe, or when his godfather, Ebenezer, after much hesitation, had promised him a clerkship in the bank of which he was a director. His nerves seemed strung tight as harp-strings, and his every sense was painfully acute. Thus he could even smell the odour of mummies that floated down from the upper galleries and the earthy scent of the boat which had been buried for thousands of years in sand at the foot of the pyramid of one of the fifth dynasty kings. ”

“ His uncle, Robert Douglas of Strathendry, and three of his uncle's sons were military officers, and so was his cousin, Captain Skene, the laird of the neighbouring estate of Pitlour. Colonel Patrick Ross, a distinguished officer of the times, was also a relation, but on which side I do not know. His mother herself was from first to last the heart of Smith's life. He being an only child, and she an only parent, they had been all in all to one another during his infancy and boyhood, and after he was full of years and honours her presence was the same shelter to him as it was when a boy. ”

“ He used, according to the elder Alison (Sinclair, Old Times and Distant Places, p. 9) , to watch some particular student of expressive countenance, and be guided by such hearer's attentiveness or listlessness. The lectures became famous, especially after Smith's publication of the ‘Moral Sentiments.’ Lord Shelburne sent his younger brother Thomas to study under Smith, and Voltaire's friend, Theodore Tronchin, a physician at Geneva, sent a son for the same purpose in 1761.
Smith, as Mr. Rae shows from the college records, took a very active part in business during his professorship. ”