fe.

One would like to know whether he went down to Willoughby and had a
reckoning with his guardians; whether he found any relations or friends
of his boyhood; whether any portion of his estate remained of that
"competent means" which he says he inherited, but which does not seem
to have been available in his career. From the time when he set out for
France in his fifteenth year, with the exception of a short sojourn in
Willoughby seven or eight years after, he lived by his wits and by the
strong hand. His purse was now and then replenished by a lucky windfall,
which enabled him to extend his travels and seek more adventures.
This is the impression that his own story makes upon the reader in a
narrative that is characterized by the boastfulness and exaggeration
of the times, and not fuller of the marvelous than most others of that
period.

The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare. We
should be thankful for one glimpse of him in this interesting town. Did
he frequent the theatre? Did he perhaps see Shakespeare himself at the
Globe? Did he loaf in the coffee-houses, and spin the fine thread of
his adventures to the idlers and gallants who resorted to them? If he
dropped in at any theatre of an afternoon he was quite likely to hear
some allusion to Virginia, for the plays of the hour were full of chaff,
not always of the choicest, about the attractions of the Virgin-land,
whose gold was as plentiful as copper in England; where the prisoners
were fettered in gold, and the dripping-pans were made of it; and
where--an unheard-of thing--you might become an alderman without having
been a scavenger.

Was Smith an indulger in that new medicine for all ills, tobacco? Alas!
we know nothing of his habits or his company. He was a man of piety
according to his lights, and it is probable that he may have had the
then rising prejudice against theatres. After his return from Virginia
he and his exploits were the subject of many a stage play and spectacle,
but whether his vanity was more flattered by this mark of notoriety than
his piety was offended we do not know. There is certainly no sort of
evidence that he engaged in the common dissipation of the town, nor gave
himself up to those pleasures which a man rescued from the hardships of
captivity in Tartaria might be expected to seek. Mr. Stith says that
it was the testimony of his fellow soldiers and adventurers that "they
never knew a soldier, before him, so