[Gutenberg 49961] • John Smith's Funny Adventures on a Crutch / Or The Remarkable Peregrinations of a One-legged Soldier after the War

Tis volume was published in 1890 and tells of the remarkable peregrinations of a one-legged soldier after the war.

From the Preface:

It is verily more difficult to write a good pre-

face for a book than to write the book itself.

We don't mind telling the reader, very confiden-

tially, that this is not, by any means, our first

effort at a preface for this work : and we earn-

estly hope that the public will not pronounce

this ninth one so stupid as we deemed the eight

preceding ones that we tore up.

It will be perceived that our hero bears the

historic name of John Smith. Original old John

Smith, the Virginia settler, met with many

adventures — some of them funny and others

not so funny — among the latter was the affair

with Miss Pocahontas and her stern old parent :

and we claim, for our own John Smith, as many

adventures as his illustrious namesake — some

of them quite as funny and others funnier.

Nothing in this narrative of real incidents is

at all calculated to reflect on the excellent

character of Mr. Smith : and this is because we

esteem him very highly and not from any dread

of the law ; for John Smith is so multitudinous,

that one could handle the name with impunity,

and not incur any risk of prosecution for libeL

What would a court say to an action against a

writer for libeling John Smith, yeoman ! — espe-

cially when the writer should plead that he

never meant that John Smith, but quite another,

unknown to the court.

There are those who will shrewdly guess that

the hero of the narrative represents the author

himself, the chief grounds for such inference

being a striking similarity in the number of

nether limbs. That, however, should scarcely

be taken as conclusive; for, since "this cruel

war is over," there are nearly as many one-

legged men in the country as there are John

Smiths !

Philadelphia, January, 1869