16 ROBINSON CRUSOE.

prevent any of my father’s further importunities, in a few weeks
after, I resolved to run quite away from him. However, I
did not act quite so hastily as the first heat of my resolution
prompted, but I took my mother at a time when I thought hera
little more pleasant than ordinary, and told her that my thoughts
were so entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should never
settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it,
and my father had better give me his consent than force me to
go without it; that I was now eighteen years old, which was too
late to go apprentice to a trade, or clerk to an attorney; that I
was sure if I did I should never serve out my time, but I should
certainly run away from my master before my time was out, and
go to sea; and if she would speak to my father to let me go
one voyage abroad, if I came home again, and did not like it, I
would go no more; and I would promise, by a double diligence,
to recover the time that I had lost.

This put my mother into a great passion ; she told me she
knew it would be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any
such subject ; that he knew too well what was my interest tu
give his consent to anything so much for my hurt ; and that
she wondered how I could think of any such thing after the
discourse I had had with my father, and such kind and tender
expressions as she knew my father had used to me; aud that,
in short, if I would ruin myself, there was no help for me 3 but
I might depend I should never have their consent to it ; that
for her part, she would not have so much hand in my destruc-
tion ; and I should never have it to say that my mother was
willing when my father was not.

Though my mother refused to name it to my father, yet I
heard afterwards that she reported all the discourse to him,
and that my father, after showing a great concern at it, said 1g
her, with a sigh, “ That boy might be happy if he would stay at
home ; but if he goes abroad he will be the most miserable
wretch that ever was born: I can give no consent to it.”

It was not till almost a year after this ihat I broke loose,
though, in the mean time, I continued obstinately deaf to all
proposals of settling to business, and frequently expostulated
with my father and mother about their being so positively
determined against what they knew my inclinations prompted
me to. But being one day at Hull, whither I went casually,
and without any purpose of making an elopement at that time ;
but, I say, being there, and one of my ccmpanions being going
by sea to London in his father’s ship, and prompting me to go
with them, with the common allurement of a seafaring man,