"He is very regular, temperate and industrious; rises in winter and summer at the dawn of day; generally reads or writes some time before breakfast; breakfasts about seven o'clock on three small Indian hoe cakes, and as many dishes of tea, and often rides immediately to his different farms, and remains with his laborers until a little after two o'clock, then returns and dresses. At three he dines, commonly on a single dish, and drinks from half a pint to a pint of Madeira wine. This with one small glass of punch, a draught of beer, and two dishes of tea (which he takes half an hour before the setting of the sun) constitutes his whole sustenance until the next day. But his table is always furnished with elegance and exuberance; and whether he has company or not, he remains at the table an hour in familiar conversation, then every one is called upon to give some absent friend a toast. After he has dined, he applies himself to business, and about nine retires to rest; but when he has company he attends politely upon them till they wish to withdraw." _Relation of Other Prominent Americans to the Liquor Traffic_ Among the early prominent American characters the total abstainer was a rare article, and the prohibitionist almost unknown. Governor John Winthrop was probably a total abstainer, and the romantic character of John Smith seems quite clear from the drinking habits of the period. "Never was warrior known," says an old writer, "from debts and dice and oaths so free," and his own words as to the object of life show a loftiness of purpose almost unknown among his contemporaries, and should be preserved for the example they furnish to posterity. "Seeing we are not born for ourselves but each to help the other, and our abilities are much alike at the hour of our birth and the minute of our death; seeing our good deeds and our bad by faith in Christ's merits is all we have to carry our souls to heaven or hell; seeing honor is our lives' ambition and our ambition after death to have an honorable memory of our life; and seeing by no means we would be abated of the dignities and glories of our predecessors let us imitate their virtues so as to be worthily their successors." So wrote the man of whom old Thomas Fuller said, "He had a prince's heart in a beggar's purse," and to whom one of his comrades, a survivor of the starving time, paid this touching tribute: "Thus we lost him that in all our proceedings made justice his first guide--ever hating baseness, sloth, pride and indignity more than any dangers; that never allowed himself more than his soldiers with him; that upon no occasion would he send them where he would not go himself; that would never see us want what he either had or could by any means get us; that would rather want than borrow or starve than not pay; that loved actions more than words and hated falsehood and covetousness worse than death; whose adventures were our lives and whose loss our deaths."