 His most well-known work is the poem "Evolution", which begins with the line "When you were a tadpole and I was a fish".The line later became the title of an essay about this "one-poem poet" written by Martin Gardner.According to Lewis Allen Brown's 1909 biographical sketch of Smith,

Gardner, who consulted "Who's Who In America 1906–07" adds that Smith went to school in Louisville, KY, 1864–1872.