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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,