the hearts of all good Americans. She was the heroine of the first
American romance; and she is said to have been as beautiful as all our
heroines should rightly be.

When Smith, with his Indian escort, got back to Jamestown, he was just in
season to prevent the colony from running away in the boat. Soon after a
new consignment of emigrants and supplies arrived from England; but again
there were fewer men than gentlemen, and Smith sent back a demand for
"rather thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths,
masons, and diggers up of trees' roots, well provided, than a thousand of
such as we have." There spoke the genuine pioneer, whose heart is in his
work, and who can postpone "gentility" until it grows indigenously out of
the soil. The Company at home were indignant that their colony had not ere
now reimbursed them for their expenditure, and much more; and they sent
word that unless profits were forthcoming forthwith (one-fifth of the gold
and silver, and so forth) they would abandon the colony to its fate. One
cannot help admiring Smith for refraining from the obvious rejoinder that
to be abandoned was the dearest boon that they could crave; but a sense of
humor seems to have been one of the few good qualities which the Captain
did not possess. He intimated to the Company that money was not to be
picked up ready made in Virginia, but must be earned by hard work with
hands and heads in the field and forest. It is his distinction to have
been the first man of eminence visiting the new world who did not think
more of finding gold, or the passage to India, or both, than of anything
else. Smith knew that in this world, new or old, men get what they work
for, and in the long run no more than that; and he made his gentlemen
colonists take off their coats and blister their gentlemanly hands with
the use of the spade and the ax. It is said that they excelled as
woodcutters, after due instruction; and they were undoubtedly in all
respects improved by this first lesson in Americanism. The American ax and