OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. ‘167

 

other hand, it was my duty also to hope in him, pray to him, and
quietly to attend the dictates and directions of his daily providence.

These thoughts took me up many hours, days—nay, I may say, weeks
and months; and one paiticular effect of my cogitations on this oc-
casion I cannot omit; namely, one morning early, lying in my bed,
and filled with thoughts about my danger from the appearance of
savages, I found it discomposed me very much ; upon which those words
of the Scripture came into my thoughts, ‘Call upon me in the day of
trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.”

Upon this, rising cheerfully out of my bed, my heart was not only
comforted, but I was guided and encouraged to pray earnestly to God
for deliverance. When I had done praying, I took up my Bible, and
opening it to read, the first words that presented to me were, ‘‘ Wait
on the Lord, and be of good cheer, and he shall strengthen thy heart:
Wait, I say, on the Lord.’”” It is impossible to express the comfort
this gave me; and in return, I thankfully laid down the book, and was
no more sad, at least not on that occasion.

In the midst of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it
came into my thoughts one day, that all this might be a mere chimera
of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when
I came on shore from my boat. This cheered me up a little too, and
I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing
else but my own foot; and why might not I come that way from the
boat, as well as I was going that way tothe boat? Again, I considered
also, that I could by no means tell for certain where I had trod, and
where I had not; and that if at last this was only the print of my own
foot, I had played the part of those fools, who strive to make stories
of spectres and apparitions, and then are themselves frighted at them
more than anybody else.

Now I began to take courage, and to peep abroad again ; for I had
not stirred out of my castle for three days and nights, so that I began
to starve for provision; for I had little or nothing within doors, but
some barley-cakes and water. Then I knew that my goats wanted to
be milked too, which usually was my evening diversion: and the poor
creatures were in great pain and inconvenience for want of it ; and
indeed it almost spoiled some of them, and almost dried up their milk.

Heartening myself, therefore, with the belief that this was nothing
but the print of one of my own feet (and so I might be truly said to
start at my own shadow), I began to go abroad,again, and went to m
country house to milk my flock: but to see with what fear I argu
forward, how often I looked behind me, how I was ready, eypry
and then, to ‘ay down my basket. and run for my life; it wg