There is, we think, but little doubt that the Hebrew Samson, the Greek Hercules, the Spanish Cid, the Scandinavian Thor, and the English Arthur of the Round Table, were each the John Smith of his nation and time, a multiform unity swinging round the circle of varied labor, hard work, and heroic deeds, accomplishing under one name—a family one, possessed at various times by several individuals—the work of all reapers, sewing-machines, cow-milkers, cotton and woollen factories. These national heroes, like the John Smiths, their descendants now, were arrayed in warm climates in a fragmentary style of short dress; in the middle regions in a Highland garb, appropriately frilled or furred; and in the north with a canine material, heroic in quality, and modishly artistical,—a bark. The most reliable studies trace the smith genealogy back to Vulcan’s workshop, the original Smith being one of those employed on designs for Achilles’s shield,—a claim which experts in coats-of-arms will not readily stamp as a forge-ry. [Illustration: ORIGINAL FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF JOHN SMITH. (p. 110) ] As there is no period of history without its John Smith, so there is no profession that does not enroll, no trade that does not contain, no occupation, from an office-holder’s up to that of an honest man’s, that does not embrace his name. Everywhere, on the sea and land; between every parallel of latitude, almost between every pair of sheets; at every pole and at every polling-place; on all rivers and in every strait; at every point, and even at Point-no-point; on the top, at the middle and bottom of every hill, enterprise, company, board of directors, and job; in all churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples; preaching, singing, and listening; talking all tongues, as well as curing, drying, and eating them; in prisons, police-stations, pulpits, grand-jury and other boxes; to-day hung, to-morrow putting on his black cap and sentencing the culprit to the rope’s end, and the day following condemning a pair to a less hempen noose; in the pugilistic ring, or ecclesiastical fight; the actor on the stage, and at the same time the spectator in the box, looking at himself personating his own character,—for every character is his,—everywhere, and in everything, is found this jolly, morose, lazy, active, sleepy, wakeful, fighting, pacific, coarse, refined, fat, lean, tall, short, blue-eyed, black-eyed John Smith.