“Bert.”
COLONISTS AND PIONEERS
JOHN SMITH, THE CAPTAIN OF MANY ADVENTURES
STORIES of the strange adventures of Columbus, John Cabot, and other explorers made a restless lad of little motherless John Smith, of Willoughby, England. When he was fourteen he had made ready to run away from home; but then his father died and left him the owner of an estate, in the charge of guardians. Those mean men cared more for the property than for the boy who was to have it when he was old enough. So they gave him only a little pocket-money and hired him out by law as apprentice to a tradesman, who treated the well-to-do lad as if he were a slave.
