115 But all my devices to get it into the water failed me, though they cost me infinite labor too. It lay about one hundred yards from the water, and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was uphill towards the creek. Well, to take away this discour120 agement, I resolved to dig into the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity. This I began, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains; but who grudges pains that have their deliverance in view? But when this was worked through, and this difficulty managed, it 125 was still much at one, for I could no more stir the canoe than I could the other boat. 130 Then I measured the distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock or canal, to bring the water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the water. Well, I began this work; and when I began to enter into it, and calculate how deep it was to be dug, how broad, how the stuff to be thrown out, I found that by the number of hands I had, being none but my own, it must have been ten 135 or twelve years before I should have gone through with it; for the shore lay high, so that at the upper end it must have been at least twenty feet deep; so at length, though with great reluctancy, I gave this attempt over also. 140 This grieved me heartily; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it. From "Robinson Crusoe." GLOSSARY. Xury; longboat; shoulder-of-mutton sail; main; periagua; dub; preposterous; reluctancy. STUDY. From the preceding selection explain why Robinson's "head ran mightily" upon the thought of getting away from his island. What plan did he first decide upon, and why did he give it up? What effect did this first failure have upon his desire to escape? What scheme did he hit upon next? What important problem did he fail to figure out? How does he account for not considering this problem more carefully? Explain the making of the boat. What efforts did he make to launch it? What lesson does he suggest as a result of his experience? Does it seem to you likely that one could really be as shortsighted as Crusoe was? DANIEL DEFOE Robinson Crusoe is one of the books that everybody is supposed to know about. Its author was the son of a butcher named Foe, and he was forty years of age before he added the two letters that made his name Defoe. He was born in London, probably in 1661. He was edu- 5 cated for the nonconformist ministry, which means that he belonged to one of the numerous sects outside the established or English church. While Defoe was always preaching with his pen he does not seem to have done much of it in the pulpit. He 10 engaged in various small businesses, was a trooper, became a bankrupt, an accountant, and finally found his place as a pamphleteer. In Defoe's time there were no newspapers such as we now have. If a man or a party had a cause to maintain he put his argument into a small pam- 15 phlet for distribution among the people. Many of the best writers of the day were thus drawn into the service of the political parties, and some of them were willing to accept such service without regard to their own views on the questions at issue. Defoe was one of the greatest of 20 these pamphlet writers. In this work he developed the easy and flowing style that every newspaper writer covets. 25 In 1702 Defoe wrote a pamphlet in which he satirized the methods used in opposing the nonconformists. For this he was prosecuted and condemned to the pillory. But the people, instead of coming to gloat over his shame, came in crowds to bring flowers and to show their approval of the stand he had taken. To avoid having him made a hero, his persecutors hurried him to Newgate prison. Here he passed his time issuing a popular paper and get-30 ting acquainted with the careers of various rogues and criminals. Out of this knowledge he made many of his stories of criminal and outcast life. He also turned it to account by entering the service of the government as a spy, a fact that rendered him very unpopular when dis- 35 covered many years later. Defoe died in obscurity in 1731. Nearly all of Defoe's two hundred fifty works in prose and verse are now forgotten. But one of them retains its popularity after nearly two hundred years. It has been translated into all the languages of modern Europe, 40 as well as many others. This book, Robinson Crusoe, appeared in 1719 when Defoe was fifty-eight years of age. It is the story of a man who, after a shipwreck, came ashore alone on a small island off the coast of South America. How he contrived to get along, what he thought, his strange 45 adventures, his plans for escape, are all told so well that we feel sure as we read that it all must have happened just SO. Defoe had an amazing power of "lying like the truth.” Dr. Samuel Johnson said that there were only three 50 books that he could wish to be longer: Don Quixote, The Pilgrim's Progress, and Robinson Crusoe. The only way to make up for its not being longer is to read the book over and over, and this is what most readers want to do. THE BUILDERS EBENEZER ELLIOTT Spring, summer, autumn, winter, Come duly, as of old; Winds blow, suns set, and morning saith, The song of Homer liveth, Thy splendid name, Pythagoras, But Babylon and Memphis Are letters traced in dust: Read them, earth's tyrants! ponder well They rose, while all the depths of guilt They fell, because on fraud and force Truth, mercy, knowledge, justice, They build their temples in the soul, And work with God's right hand. |