Chapter 5 ‘Smith’ 
N his happiest whimsical way John Smith, 
being then quite an old man, explained to 
me that all men were once named Smith, 
but, departing from righteousness, one after 
another had been obliged to take some other 
surname until at last comparatively few Smiths 
were left. He had forgotten, I think (and so 
had I, but afterwards I turned up my record of 
the occurrence), how inconvenient he had found 
it, years previously, to be one of the still fairly 
numerous John Smiths. 
A quite irrelevant interruption by a curate 
served to heighten my curiosity on this matter 
by delaying the satisfaction of it. Why was 
Mr. Smith resting a bandaged foot on a chair 
that afternoon, when he would normally have 
been out on the farm? Had he a bad toe, hurt 
by a new boot two days previously, and now 
made so much worse by neglect that the doctor 
had been sent for? ‘This much I heard, and 
likewise that there was a laugh about the narrative 
somewhere. But I had to wait for that laugh, 
and help be civil to the curate, who arrived at 
this point on a duty visit, Mr. Smith being one 
of his best parishioners. 
The talk at least brought out some sidelights 
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