THE FARTHER ADVENTURES O F ROBINSON CRUSOE, &c. &c. THA HAT homely proverb used on fo many occafions in England, viz. That what is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh, was never more verified than in the story of my LIFE. Any one would think, that after thirty-five years affliction, and a variety of unhappy circumstances, which few men, if any, ever went through before, and after near seven years of peace and enjoyment in the fulness of all things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adapted to make a man compleatly happy; I fay, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propenfity to rambling, which I gave an account of in my first setting out into the world to have been fo predomiVOL. II. B nant nate in my thoughts, fhould be worn out, the volatile part be fully evacuated, or at leaft condenfed, and I might at 61 years of age have been a little inclined to ftay at home, and have done venturing life and fortune any more. Nay farther, the common motive of foreign adventures was taken away in me; for I had no fortune to make, I had nothing to feek: If I had gained ten thousand pounds, I had been no richer; for I had already fufficient for me, and for those I had to leave it to; and that I had was vifibly increafing; for having no great family, I could not spend the income of what I had, unless I would fet up for an expenfive way of living, fuch as a great family, fervants, equipage, gaiety, and the like, which were things I had no notion of, or inclination to; fo that I had nothing indeed to do but to fit still, and fully enjoy what I had got, and see it increase daily upon my hands. Yet all these things had no effect upon me, or at leaft not enough to refift the ftrong inclination I had to go abroad again, which hung about me like a chronical diftemper; particularly the defire of seeing my new plantation in the island, and the colony I left there, run in my head continually. I dreamed of it all night, and my imagination run upon it all day; it was uppermost in all my thoughts, and my fancy worked fo steadily and strongly upon it, that I talked of it in my fleep; in fhort, nothing could remove it out of my mind; it even broke fo violently into all my discourses, that it made my conversation tiresome; for I could talk of nothing else, all my discourse run into it, even to impertinence, and I faw it myself. I have often heard perfons of good judgment fay, that all the ftir people make in the world about ghosts and apparitions, is owing to the strength of imagination, and the powerful operation of fancy in their minds; that there is no such thing as a spirit appearing, or a ghoft walking, and the like; that people's poring affectionately upon the paft converfation of their deceased friends fo realifes it to them, that they are capable of fancying upon fome extraordinary circumftances that they fee them, talk to them, and are answered by them, when, in truth, there is nothing but shadow and vapour in the thing; and they really know nothing of the matter. For my part, I know not to this hour whether there are any fuch things as real apparitions, fpectres, or walking of people after they are dead, or whether there is any thing in the ftories they tell us of that kind, more than the product of vapours, fick minds, and wandering fancies: But this I know, that my imagination worked up to fuch a height, and brought me into fuch excefs of vapours, or what else I may call it, that I actually fuppofed myself often-times upon the spot, at my old castle behind the trees, faw my old Spaniard, Friday's father, and the reprobate failors whom I left upon the island; nay, I fancied I talked with them, and looked at them fo fteadily, though I was broad awake, as at persons just before me; and this I did till I often frightened myself with the images my fancy reprefented to me: one time in my fleep I had the villainy of the three pirate failors fo lively related to me by the first Spaniard and Fryday's father, that it was furprizing; they told me how they barbarously attempted to murder all the Spaniards, and that they fet fire to the provifions they had laid up, on pur. pose to distress and starve them, things that I had never heard of, and that were yet all of them true in fact: but it was fo warm in my imagination, and fo realized to me, that to the hour I faw them, I could not be perfuaded but that it was or would be true; alfo, how I refented it when the Spaniard complained to me, and how I brought them to justice, tried them before me, and ordered them all three to be hanged: what there was really in this, shall be seen in its place: for however I came to form fuch things in my dream, and what fecret converse of fpirits injected it, yet there was, I fay, very much of it true. I own, that this dream had nothing literally and fpecifically true: but the general part was so true, the base and villainous behaviour of these three hardened rogues was fuch, and had been fo much worse than all I can defcribe, that the dream had too much fimilitude of the fact, and as I would. afterwards have punished them severely; fo if I had hanged them all, I had been much in the right, and should have been justifiable both by the laws of GOD and man. But to return to my ftory. In this kind of temper I had lived fome years; I had no enjoyment of my life, no pleasant hours, no agreeable diverfion but what had fomething or other of this in it, so that my wife, who faw my mind fo wholly bent upon it, told me very seriously one night, that fhe believed there was fome fecret powerful impulse of Providence upon me, which had determined me to go thither again; and that she found nothing hindred my going but my being engaged to a wife and children. She told |