Among the comic situations which Mr. Smith unconsciously creates are, that of a conveyancer, in a large city, endeavoring to trace a title through a J. S., or trying to ascertain which of the one hundred in the directory is the rightful defendant in a judgment, or the mortgagor in a mortgage, constituting a lien on the property sought to be transferred; or a country cousin, for the first time in New York or Philadelphia, consulting the directory to find her puzzled way to the forgotten residence of her cousin John Smith, or innocently asking a polite but humorous gentleman, in the street whether he knows John Smith’s house; or a clergyman in a city prayer-meeting asking John Smith to lead in prayer, and finding three or four, with closed eyes, responding to the request; or a notary making up his mind where to leave a notice of protest of a large note on the indorser John Smith, who wittily wrote his name without any address under it. Indeed, it would be one of the _causes célèbres_ for a jury to determine whether a child might not guiltlessly mistake his parent who bore only this undistinguishing name; whether a forgery of the name could be committed; whether an express company be bound to deliver a trunk to this _nominis umbræ_; or whether a wife, Mrs. John Smith, could be lawfully convicted of eloping with any one. Then when John Smith comes to die, in the churchyard, and afterwards when the dead arise—but we stagger under the vision of puzzled bones and stop. We cannot write more lucidly the history of the John Smith of Pocahontas fame. It grows mythical the more we look at it; an abstraction dancing over the coals of the early settlement of Virginia, a face and figure flitting like a twisting flame, up, around, and through the grate; seeming as we try to fix our attention upon him like a dozen different men, one falling in love with the young squaw, another surveying the James and Rappahannock, another mastering the turbulent spirits of a dissolute and discontented settlement; another caught and brought before Powhatan, while a graceful girl of twelve summers gently puts away the descending club; another sailing to England, and peeping out ever and anon among the friendly faces that make the living frame to her young virgin face, yet again dissolving and melting into the gray dimness of the morning light. Of only one thing do we feel certain in regard to John Smith in general, the average John Smith, that the portrait here presented, taken by instantaneous photography, representing his multitudinous character, is the only genuine and original likeness ever published. CHAPTER IV. OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW ENGLAND STATES.