This Country of OursMarshall, H. E. (Henrietta Elizabeth)
History
This Country of Ours
Marshall, H. E. (Henrietta Elizabeth)
United States -- History
In fact she became the rage. She was the talk of the town. Even
coffee-houses and taverns were named after her,-La Belle Sauvage
(the beautiful savage). And it is interesting to remember that a
great publishing house in London takes its name from one of these
old taverns. Books go out to all the world from the sign of La
Belle Sauvage, thus forming a link between the present and that
half-forgotten American "princess" of so long ago.
In spite of all the homage and flattery poured upon her, Pocahontas
yet remained modest and simple, enchanting all who met her. And
among all the new delights of England she had the joy of seeing once
again the great White Chief she had loved and called her father in
days gone by.
Her joy was all the greater because she had believed him to be
dead. When Smith first came to see her her feelings were so deep
that at first she could not speak. She greeted him in silence,
then suddenly turning away she hid her face and wept. But after a
little she recovered herself, and began to speak of the old days,
and of how she had thought he was dead. "I knew no other," she
said, "until I came to Plymouth."
In many ways Pocahontas showed her joy at again recovering her old
friend. But when she found that Smith was not going to treat her
as an old friend, but as if she were a great lady, and call her
Princess like all the others round her, she was hurt.
"You did promise the Powhatan that what was yours should be his,
and he did promise the like to you," she said. "A stranger in his
land you called him father, and I shall do the same by you."
"Lady," replied Smith, "I dare not allow that title, for you are
a King's daughter."
But from the man who had known her in those strange, wild days in
far-off Virginia, from the man she had looked upon as a great and
powerful chief, Pocahontas would have no such nonsense. She laughed
at him.
"You were not afraid," she said defiantly, "to come into my father's
country, and cause fear in him, and in all his people save me.
And fear you here that I should call you father? I tell you then
I will. And you shall call me child. And so I will be forever and
ever your countryman."
Pocahontas took all the strangeness of her new surroundings very
simply. But some of her attendants were utterly overwhelmed with
wonder and awe at the things they saw. One man in particular, who
was accounted a very clever man among his own people, had been sent
by the Powhatan to take particular note of everything in England.
Among other things he had been charged to count the people! So
on landing at Plymouth he provided himself with a long stick and
proceeded to make a notch in it for every man he met. But he met
so many people that he could not make notches fast enough; so in
a very short time he grew weary of that and threw his stick away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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