nd leaves the marks of his
feet all over it, ripping out the dates on his goloshes
as he passes. It is impossible to get up a revolution or
a new religion, or a national awakening of any sort,
without his turning up, putting himself at the head of
it and collaring all the gate-receipts for himself. Even
after his death he leaves a long trail of second-rate
relations spattered over the front seats of fifty years
of history.

Now the lives of great men are doubtless infinitely
interesting. But at times I must confess to a sense of
reaction and an idea that the ordinary common man is
entitled to have his biography written too. It is to
illustrate this view that I write the life of John Smith,
a man neither good nor great, but just the usual, everyday
homo like you and me and the rest of us.

From his earliest childhood John Smith was marked out
from his comrades by nothing. The marvellous precocity
of the boy did not astonish his preceptors. Books were
not a passion for him from his youth, neither did any
old man put his hand on Smith's head and say, mark his
words, this boy would some day become a man. Nor yet was
it his father's wont to gaze on him with a feeling
amounting almost to awe. By no means! All his father did
was to wonder whether Smith was a darn fool because he
couldn't help it, or because he thought it smart. In
other words, he was just like you and me and the rest of
us.

In those athletic sports which were the ornament of the
youth of his day, Smith did not, as great men do, excel
his fellows. He couldn't ride worth a darn. He couldn't
skate worth a darn. He couldn't swim worth a darn. He
couldn't shoot worth a darn. He couldn't do anything
worth a darn. He was just like us.

Nor did the bold cast of the boy's mind offset his physical
defects, as it invariably does in the biographies. On
the contrary. He was afraid of his father. He was afraid
of his school-teacher. He was afraid of dogs. He was
afraid of guns. He was afraid of lightning. He was afraid
of hell. He was afraid of girls.

In the boy's choice of a profession there was not seen
that keen longing for a life-work that we find in the
celebrities. He didn't want to be a lawyer, because you
have to know law. He didn't want to be a doctor, because
you have to know medicine. He didn't want to be a
business-man, because you have to know business; and he
didn't want to be a school-teacher, because he had seen
too many of them. As far as h