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Of horrid war; or guides with ease,
The happier times of honest peace.
Firm, united, etc.

Behold the chief who now commands,
Once more to serve his country, stands
The rock on which the storm will beat,
The rock on which the storm will beat,
But, armed in virtue firm and true,
His hopes are fixed on Heaven and you.
When hope was sinking in dismay,
And gloom obscured Columbia's day,
His steady mind from changes free,
Resolved on death or liberty.
Firm, united, etc.

THE NOBLEST MEN

ANONYMOUS

THE

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Are men whose hands are brown with toil;

Who backed by no ancestral graves

Hew down the woods and till the soil;

And win thereby a prouder name

Than follows king's or warrior's fame.

The working men, whate'er their task,
Who carve the stone, or bear the hod,
They wear upon their honest brows

The royal stamp and seal of God;
And worthier are their drops of sweat
Than diamonds in a coronet.

God bless the noble working men,

Who rear the cities of the plain!
Who dig the mines, who build the ships,
And drive the commerce of the main !
God bless them! For their toiling hands
Have wrought the glory of all lands.

THE SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA

ROBERT MACKENZIE

BUT, happily for Virginia, there sailed with these

reprobate founders of a new empire a man whom Providence had highly gifted with fitness to govern his fellow men. His name was John

Smith. No writer of romance would have given his hero this name; but, in spite of his name, this man was truly heroic. He was still under thirty, a strong-limbed, deepchested, massively built man. From boyhood he had been a soldier roaming over the world in search of adventures, wherever hard blows were being exchanged. He was mighty in single combat. Once, while opposing armies looked on, he vanquished three Turks, and, like David, cut off their heads, and bore them to his tent. Returning to England when the passion for colonizing was at its height, he caught at once the prevailing impulse. He joined the Virginian expedition; ultimately he became

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JOHN SMITH

its chief. His fitness was so manifest, that no reluctance on his own part, no jealousies on that of his companions, could bar him from the highest place. Men became kings of old by the same process which now made Smith a chief. The dissolute persons "sailed in their ships up the James River. Landing there, they proceeded to construct a little town, which they named Jamestown, in honor of the King. This was the first colony which struck its roots in American soil. The colonists were charmed with the climate and with the luxuriant beauty of the wilderness on whose confines they had settled. But as yet it was only a wilderness. The forest had to be cleared that food might be grown. The exiled gentlemen labored manfully, but under grievous discouragements. "The axes so oft blistered their tender fingers, that many times every third blow had a loud oath to drown the echo."

Smith was a man upon whose soul there lay a becoming reverence for sacred things. He devised how to have every man's oaths numbered; "and at night, for every oath, to have a can of water poured down his sleeve.” Under this treatment the evil assuaged.

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The emigrants had landed in early spring. Summer came with its burning heat; supplies of food ran low. Had we been as free from all sins as from gluttony and drunkenness," Smith wrote, "we might have been canonized as saints."

From those poor

The colonists sickened and died. blistered fingers dropped forever the unaccustomed ax. Before autumn every second man had died. But the

hot Virginian sun, which proved so deadly to the settlers, ripened the wheat they had sowed in the spring, and freed the survivors from the pressure of want. Winter brought them a healthier temperature and abundant supplies of wild fowl and game.

When the welfare of the colony was in some measure secured, Smith set forth with a few companions to explore the interior of the country. He and his followers were captured by the Indians, and the followers were summarily butchered. Smith's composure did not fail him in the worst extremity. He produced his pocket compass, and interested the savages by explaining its properties. He wrote a letter in their sight to their infinite wonder. They spared him, and made a show of him in all the settlements round about. He was to them an unfathomable mystery. He was plainly 'superhuman.

Whether his power would bring them good or evil, they were not able to determine. After much hesitation they chose the course which prudence seemed to counsel. They resolved to extinguish powers so formidable, regarding whose use they could obtain no guarantee. Smith was bound and stretched upon the earth, his head resting upon a great stone. The mighty club was up

lifted to dash out his brains.

But Smith was a man who

The Indian chief had a

won golden opinions from all. daughter, Pocahontas, a child of ten or twelve years. She could not bear to see the pleasing Englishman destroyed. As Smith lay waiting the fatal stroke, she caught him in her arms and interposed herself between him and the club.

was set free.

Her intercession prevailed, and Smith

Five years later, "an honest and discreet" young Englishman called John Rolfe loved this young Indian girl. He had a sore mental struggle about uniting himself with "one of barbarous breeding and of a cursed race." But love triumphed. He labored for her conversion, and had the happiness of seeing her baptized in the little church of Jamestown. Then he married her. After a time he took her home to England. Her appearance was pleasing; her mind was acute; her piety was sincere; her manners bore picturesque evidence of her forest upbringing. The English King and Court regarded her with lively interest as the firstfruits of the wilderness. Great hopes were founded on this union of the two races. She is the brightest picture - this young Virginian wife and mother - which the history of the doomed native races presents to us. But she did not live to revisit her native land. Death parted her very early from her husband and her child.

The

When Smith returned from captivity the colony was on the verge of extinction. Only thirty-eight persons were left, and they were preparing to depart. With Smith hope returned to the despairing settlers. They resumed their work, confident in the resources of their chief. Fresh arrivals from England cheered them. character of these reënforcements had not as yet improved. Vagabond gentlemen" formed the majority of the settlers—many of them, we are told, "packed off to escape worse destinies at home." The colony, thus composed, had already gained a very bad reputation - so bad that some, rather than be sent there, "chose to be hanged, and were."

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Over these most undesirable subjects Smith ruled with

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