Smith

“ Five million Smiths obeyed the call.
To Smith the praise that he has earned,
For by his blood he saved us all.
Now then, Smith!
You're neither rich nor gifted.
But here's a job that must be done,
A job we may not shirk. ”

“ Smith is an infinitely close and acute observer of sophisticated social life, tinged with a faint and agreeable refined sadness, by an aura of shyness which amounts to a spiritual virginity. He comes to us trailing clouds of glory from the heaven of pure and unfettered speculation which is our home. He is an elf of utter simplicity and infinite candour. He is a flicker of absolute Mind. ”

“ On a hunting expedition Smith stumbled upon a natural oil well, and instantly staked his claim; a few months later he was rich, grown into affluence as rapidly as that patch of wilderness grew into streets and houses where you could buy anything from an evening's gambling to a tin of Boston baked pork-and-beans. Smith was really a tremendous fellow, a sort of human dynamo of energy and pluck, with rare judgment in his great square head⁠—the kind of judgment that in higher walks of life makes statesmen. ”

“ So William Smith yearned to be king of five hundred men, and the proper complement of women and children--to be master of five hundred pairs of hands--to see peace and plenty and industry all about him--to walk among his workmen, and chat and smile with them--to walk among the women and children, and pat the youngsters on the head, and pass kind words with the mothers. ”

“ Smith is a mulatto, of medium size, strongly built, fascinating countenance, yet plain looking, with indelibly marked features. He is now in the sunset of life, and his head is thickly sprinkled with gray hairs. Although he is in the autumn of his years, he is still vigorous, attending to his own business, preaching occasionally, and looking after the interest of “our people.” ”

“ Smith was a merchant, of considerable wealth and social influence, and the young ladies were belles par-excellence. Mrs. Smith was the domestic of the concern, who carried on the establishment, a little, busy, fussy sort of woman, that went sailing it round the house with a huge bunch of keys dangling at her side, an incessant scold, with a voice sharp and clear like a steamboat bell; a managing, thrifty sort of person, a perfect terror to negroes; up of a morning betimes, and in the kitchen, fussing with the cook about breakfast. ”

“ Smith has produced a fiction, somewhat over-bold in speculation, occasionally careless in execution, but full of significance, brilliant—almost dazzling—in some of its conceptions, and everywhere teeming with grace and beauty. ”

“ Seeing their interest Smith went on to explain other marvels of the sun, and moon, and stars, and the roundness of the earth, until those who heard were quite sure he was a great "medicine man."
Thus Smith fought for his life. But at length utterly exhausted, he could say no more. So while the chief still held the little ivory compass, and watched the quivering needle, his followers led Smith away to his own camp fire. Here lay the other white men dead, thrust through with many arrows. And here the Indians warmed and chafed his benumbed body, and treated him with all the kindness they knew. ”

“ Smith, with his brother Hyrum and their fellows, had suffered severely, but later their confinement had been more easy, and the news of the triumphant gathering of his people, together with the excitement of the escape, had induced in Smith a mood which spurned past failures with a foot that sped to a new goal. The acclamation, the sincere and touching joy, with which Smith was received by men and women and children, were enough to raise any man in his own esteem, and to set free the ambition which had been perhaps drooping in confinement. ”

“ The Warrior chief can frame his plan
With all that wisdom can devise,
And then,—ah, then it needs the man,
And "Now then, Smith!" he loudly cries.
The Statesman in a parlous place
May totter on unstable ground. ”

“ For the single case of the name `Smith' is sufficient to indicate what profundities of origin and significance lie in all our names. The case of Smith is no mere accident; the case would be the same with any one of the common names which we account prosaic or absurd. `Jones' is more mean and preposterous even than Smith, and even those who bear the name of Jones do not probably remember that it is but a corruption of the name that Christ loved. There is not one of us that is not noble in origin, whatever we may be in essence. ”

“ “Smith is notoriously hot-tempered, but the sight of some nondescript and miry creature sitting cross-legged amongst a lot of loose straw, and swinging itself to and fro like a bear in a cage, made him pause. Then this tramp stood up silently before him, one mass of mud and filth from head to foot. Smith, alone amongst his stacks with this apparition, in the stormy twilight ringing with the infuriated barking of the dog, felt the dread of an inexplicable strangeness. ”

“ Here a fanatic, by name Smith, lived invisible for several years, and tested all the romance of a hermit's life in this damp, dark, miserable hole, when he emerged into the broad light of the sun and into the sight and companionship of his fellow-men. ”

“ Anyone whose name is Smith may be connected with a Smith who was a lawyer in the reign of Henry VIII, or a Smith who was a Colonel in the British army at Blenheim, or a Smith who was a Cavalier, or a Smith who was a Puritan, or a Smith who was a Bishop, or a Smith who was hanged. All this kind of historic information exists in a very perfect form. But it must be remembered that the origin of a great family should be not merely historic, but also prehistoric. Every single practical and triumphant thing in this world has begun, not with an accuracy, but with a legend. ”

“ And so soliloquizing, as a homesick creature will,
Incontinent, I wandered down the noisy, bustling hill,
And drifted, automatic-like and vaguely, into Lowe's,
Where Fortune had in store a panacea for my woes.
The register was open, and there dawned upon my sight
A name that filled and thrilled me with a cyclone of delight,—
The name that I shall venerate unto my dying day,—
The proud, immortal signature: "John Smith, U. S. A."
Wildly I clutched the register, and brooded on that name ”

“ Smith's finely mottled face. The face, no doubt, is a notable one,--solemn, inexpressible, unreadable, the face of the heaven-born hotel keeper. It is more than that. It is the strange dominating personality of the man that somehow holds you captive. I know nothing in history to compare with the position of Mr. Smith among those who drink over his bar, except, though in a lesser degree, the relation of the Emperor Napoleon to the Imperial Guard. ”

“ Pancras with him, had gone the way of all flesh, one had become an idiot, inconsequence of ill treatment; one girl was unable to walk without the aid of crutches; and the remainder were more or less crippled and mutilated in various parts of their persons. Smith was a sad spectacle to look upon, stunted in growth, his legs twisted by standing so many hours at the frames, his countenance haggard and care-worn; altogether he presented the appearance of a man of seventy years, who had seen much service, rather than a person of twenty-one years, just entering upon manhood. ”

“ This friendship of Smith, Black, and Hutton, if not so famous as the friendship between Smith and Hume, was not less really memorable. Each of them had founded—or done more than any other single person to found—a science; they may be called the fathers of modern chemistry, of modern geology, and of modern [Pg 336] political economy; and for all their great achievements, they were yet men of the most unaffected simplicity of character. ”

“ Smith did follow her, and was flogged, of course.
I was as indignant as he was at this tale of injustice; it reminded me of my box of sweets last year, which I had never seen back.
Smith’s rage was beyond all bounds. “I won’t stand it!” said he; “that’s all about it, Fred!”
“What can we do?” asked I.
That was the question. And there was no answering it. So we slunk back to our places, nursing our wrath in our bosoms, and vowing all sorts of vengeance on the Henniker. ”

“ The University cannot help at the same time expressing their sincere regret at the removal of Dr. Smith, whose distinguished probity and amiable qualities procured him the esteem and affection of his colleagues; whose uncommon genius, great abilities, and extensive learning did so much honour to this society; his elegant and ingenious Theory of Moral Sentiments having recommended him to the esteem of men of taste and literature throughout Europe. ”

“ Smith succeeded in discovering a great truth,—the most fruitful in consequences, the most useful in practice, the origin of all the principles of the science, and one which unveiled to him all the mysteries of the growth and distribution of wealth. ”

“ I thought, “if he does choose to form wrong conclusions, why should I afflict myself? No one was even speaking of him when he entered the office. What business of mine is it to put him right?”
And then, as usual, I forgot all about the injury I had done him, all my treachery, all my meanness, and instead felt rather aggrieved, and persuaded myself it was I, not he, who was the injured person.
At dinner-time I ostentatiously went out arm-in-arm with Hawkesbury, and when on returning I met Smith on the stairs I brushed past him as if I had not seen him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ John Smith drew a long breath of inconceivable relief on making this discovery, and then darting through the wicket, he pursued his journey with as much expedition as his weakness and fatigue permitted him to use. ”

“ Smith came every morning to see how his big concerns were going in earth and rock, before he took them up in his town offices in the mystic symbolism of paper and figures, and business policy and confidence,—all that vast idealism which is so much more really the business of the world than are the products of the earth we live on. ”

“ Every old woman in the village was up in arms. Smith, coming upon him near the farm, promised to break his head for him if he found him about again. But he twisted his little black moustache with such a bellicose air and rolled such big, black fierce eyes at Smith that this promise came to nothing. Smith, however, told the girl that she must be mad to take up with a man who was surely wrong in his head. ”

“ Smith, who has never heard of Leader, turns slowly round on his chair, and his brain, stupefied with strong wine and tobacco, gradually becomes aware of a village by a river bank seen in black silhouette upon a sunset sky. ”

“ Smith was, by all records, a hardened man and not unacquainted with beautiful women, but he never saw this girl but his tongue did not cleave to the roof of his mouth, and he was not reduced from the cool, sane man of affairs, to a stammering fool. ”

“ Smith, in her despair, might impale herself on a variety of reversible toasting-fork, and die mingling the inventor's name with maledictions and groans, while Smith, in the anguish of his soul, could live in the barn, from whence he could use an ingenious kind of breech-loading gun—patent applied for—to perforate artists who came around to sketch the falls. ”

“ Smith, how much more ought you to doubt the authority of every other man now on the earth? If Mr. Smith's perfect scheme should be rejected, surely all other schemes or doctrines, which can be shown to be ten times more imperfect, should also be rejected. If any are to be received, surely that one should be received which seems to contain all the elements of a true doctrine, and in which there cannot be detected the least evidence of imposture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Oh ces Ecossois! ces chiens d'Ecossois! ils viennent me plaire et m'affliger. Je suis comme ces folles jeunes filles qui écoutent un amant sans penser an regret, toujours voisin du plaisir. Grondez-moi, battez-moi, tuez-moi! mais j'aime Mr. Smith, je l'aime beaucoup. Je voudrois que le diable emportât tous nos gens de lettres, tous nos philosophes, et qu'il me rapportât Mr. Smith. Les hommes supérieurs se cherchent. Rempli d'estime pour Mr. Garrick, désirant le voir et l'entretenir, Mr. Smith a voulu être introduit par moi. ”

“ Holding these views, it is not surprising that Smith welcomed an escape from this chair to one which proposed as its object an inquiry of a very different nature: wherein consists the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of a state, and of the great society of mankind. Here was a stepping-stone to the Wealth of Nations. ”

“ By Heaven, Smith, I'm going to write a volume on this."
"Oh, you're going to write about it."
"I am."
"And then what?" asked Smith taking the newspaper from Kingsbury and opening it.
"What then? Why—why, some of us ought to give our country an example. I'm willing to do it—when I have time——"
"Here's your chance, then," urged Smith, studying the society column. "Here's all about the charity [Pg 283] bazar at Semois-les-Bains this afternoon. The Countess sells dolls there. Our Ambassador will be on hand, and you can meet her easily enough. ”