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Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
CHAPTER I - START IN LIFE
I WAS born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family,
though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who
settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and
leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had
married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good
family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson
Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are
now called - nay we call ourselves and write our name - Crusoe; and so
my companions always called me.
I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an
English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous
Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against
the Spaniards. What became of my second brother I never knew, any
more than my father or mother knew what became of me.
Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head
began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who
was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far
as house-education and a country free school generally go, and
designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but
going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly against
the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the
entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there
seemed to be something fatal in that propensity of nature, tending
directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.
My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel
against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into
his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very
warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons, more than
a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father's house and my
native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect
of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease
and pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one
hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad
upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in
undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things
were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was
the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low
life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in
the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the
miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part
of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and
envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the
happiness of this state by this one thing - viz. that this was the
state of life which all other people envied; that kings have
frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great
things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two
extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his
testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have
neither poverty nor riches.
He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of
life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that
the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so
many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they
were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of
body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and
extravagances on the one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries,
and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distemper upon
themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that
the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtue and
all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a
middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health,
society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were
the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men
went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of
it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head, not
sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, nor harassed with perplexed
circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the body of rest, nor
enraged with the passion of envy, or the secret burning lust of
ambition for great things; but, in easy circumstances, sliding gently
through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without
the bitter; feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day's
experience to know it more sensibly,
After this he pressed me earnestly, and in the most affectionate
manner, not to play the young man, nor to precipitate myself into
miseries which nature, and the station of life I was born in, seemed
to have provided against; that I was under no necessity of seeking my
bread; that he would do well for me, and endeavour to enter me fairly
into the station of life which he had just been recommending to me;
and that if I was not very easy and happy in the world, it must be my
mere fate or fault that must hinder it; and that he should have
nothing to answer for, having thus discharged his duty in warning me
against measures which he knew would be to my hurt; in a word, that as
he would do very kind things for me if I would stay and settle at home
as he directed, so he would not have so much hand in my misfortunes as
to give me any encouragement to go away; and to close all, he told me
I had my elder brother for an example, to whom he had used the same
earnest persuasions to keep him from going into the Low Country wars,
but could not prevail, his young desires prompting him to run into the
army, where he was killed; and though he said he would not cease to
pray for me, yet he would venture to say to me, that if I did take
this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I should have leisure
hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel when there
might be none to assist in my recovery.
I observed in this last part of his discourse, which was truly
prophetic, though I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself
- I say, I observed the tears run down his face very plentifully,
especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed: and that when
he spoke of my having leisure to repent, and none to assist me, he was
so moved that he broke off the discourse, and told me his heart was so
full he could say no more to me.
I was sincerely affected with this discourse, and, indeed, who could
be otherwise? and I resolved not to think of going abroad any more,
but to settle at home according to my father's desire. But alas! a
few days wore it all off; and, in short, to prevent any of my father's
further importunities, in a few weeks after I resolved to run quite
away from him. However, I did not act quite so hastily as the first
heat of my resolution prompted; but I took my mother at a time when I
thought her a little more pleasant than ordinary, and told her that my
thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should
never settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it,
and my father had better give me his consent than force me to go
without it; that I was now eighteen years old, which was too late to
go apprentice to a trade or clerk to an attorney; that I was sure if I
did I should never serve out my time, but I should certainly run away
from my master before my time was out, and go to sea; and if she would
speak to my father to let me go one voyage abroad, if I came home
again, and did not like it, I would go no more; and I would promise,
by a double diligence, to recover the time that I had lost.
This put my mother into a great passion; she told me she knew it would
be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject; that he
knew too well what was my interest to give his consent to anything so
much for my hurt; and that she wondered how I could think of any such
thing after the discourse I had had with my father, and such kind and
tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that, in
short, if I would ruin myself, there was no help for me; but I might
depend I should never have their consent to it; that for her part she
would not have so much hand in my destruction; and I should never have
it to say that my mother was willing when my father was not.
Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet I heard
afterwards that she reported all the discourse to him, and that my
father, after showing a great concern at it, said to her, with a sigh,
"That boy might be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes
abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that ever was born: I can
give no consent to it."
It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though,
in the meantime, I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of
settling to business, and frequently expostulated with my father and
mother about their being so positively determined against what they
knew my inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where
I went casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement at
that time; but, I say, being there, and one of my companions being
about to sail to London in his father's ship, and prompting me to go
with them with the common allurement of seafaring men, that it should
cost me nothing for my passage, I consulted neither father nor mother
any more, nor so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to
hear of it as they might, without asking God's blessing or my
father's, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences,
and in an ill hour, God knows, on the 1st of September 1651, I went on
board a ship bound for London. Never any young adventurer's
misfortunes, I believe, began sooner, or continued longer than mine.
The ship was no sooner out of the Humber than the wind began to blow
and the sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and, as I had never
been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body and
terrified in mind. I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had
done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my
wicked leaving my father's house, and abandoning my duty. All the
good counsels of my parents, my father's tears and my mother's
entreaties, came now fresh into my mind; and my conscience, which was
not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has since,
reproached me with the contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty
to God and my father.
All this while the storm increased, and the sea went very high, though
nothing like what I have seen many times since; no, nor what I saw a
few days after; but it was enough to affect me then, who was but a
young sailor, and had never known anything of the matter. I expected
every wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the ship
fell down, as I thought it did, in the trough or hollow of the sea, we
should never rise more; in this agony of mind, I made many vows and
resolutions that if it would please God to spare my life in this one
voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go
directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I
lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such
miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the goodness of his
observations about the middle station of life, how easy, how
comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to
tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would,
like a true repenting prodigal, go home to my father.
These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm
lasted, and indeed some time after; but the next day the wind was
abated, and the sea calmer, and I began to be a little inured to it;
however, I was very grave for all that day, being also a little
sea-sick still; but towards night the weather cleared up, the wind was
quite over, and a charming fine evening followed; the sun went down
perfectly clear, and rose so the next morning; and having little or no
wind, and a smooth sea, the sun shining upon it, the sight was, as I
thought, the most delightful that ever I saw.
I had slept well in the night, and was now no more sea-sick, but very
cheerful, looking with wonder upon the sea that was so rough and
terrible the day before, and could be so calm and so pleasant in so
little a time after. And now, lest my good resolutions should
continue, my companion, who had enticed me away, comes to me; "Well,
Bob," says he, clapping me upon the shoulder, "how do you do after it?
I warrant you were frighted, wer'n't you, last night, when it blew but
a capful of wind?" "A capful d'you call it?" said I; "'twas a
terrible storm." "A storm, you fool you," replies he; "do you call
that a storm? why, it was nothing at all; give us but a good ship and
sea-room, and we think nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but
you're but a fresh-water sailor, Bob. Come, let us make a bowl of
punch, and we'll forget all that; d'ye see what charming weather 'tis
now?" To make short this sad part of my story, we went the way of all
sailors; the punch was made and I was made half drunk with it: and in
that one night's wickedness I drowned all my repentance, all my
reflections upon my past conduct, all my resolutions for the future.
In a word, as the sea was returned to its smoothness of surface and
settled calmness by the abatement of that storm, so the hurry of my
thoughts being over, my fears and apprehensions of being swallowed up
by the sea being forgotten, and the current of my former desires
returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises that I made in my
distress. I found, indeed, some intervals of reflection; and the
serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes;
but I shook them off, and roused myself from them as it were from a
distemper, and applying myself to drinking and company, soon mastered
the return of those fits - for so I called them; and I had in five or
six days got as complete a victory over conscience as any young fellow
that resolved not to be troubled with it could desire. But I was to
have another trial for it still; and Providence, as in such cases
generally it does, resolved to leave me entirely without excuse; for
if I would not take this for a deliverance, the next was to be such a
one as the worst and most hardened wretch among us would confess both
the danger and the mercy of.