Robinson C

The
Life and Adventures
of
Robinson Crusoe


By
Daniel Defoe

* * * * *

_With Illustrations by H. M. Brock_

* * * * *London
Seeley, Service & Co. Limited
38 Great Russell Street




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, livedafterwards 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-colonelto 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 otherfriends, 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. Heasked 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, torise
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 themiseries 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 togreat
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...