Robinson Crusoe | Page 3

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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