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 | |  | | E-book Category: Adventure, Classic
E-book Title: Robinson Crusoe
Author: Daniel Defoe
Book Description: 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 afterward at York, from
whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named
Robinson, a good family in that country, and from whom I was called
Robinson Kreutznear; 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 which 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 and mother did know what was become 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 goes, 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
propension 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 my
father's house and my native country, where I might be well
introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortunes by application
and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was
for 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 labor 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
one thing, viz., that this was the state of life which all other
people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable
consequences 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 just
standard of true felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty
nor riches. More... | 
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