258 ROBINSON CRUSOE,

This put me in mind of the life I lived in my kingdom, the
island ; where I suffered no more corn to grow, because I did
not want it ; and bred no more goats, because I had no more
use for them ; where the money lay in the drawer till it grew
mouldy, and had scarce the favor to be looked upon in twenty

ears.

» All these things, had I improved them as I ought to have
done, and as reason and religion had dictated to me, would
have taught me to search farther than human enjoyments for a
full felicity ; and that there was something which certainly was
the reason and end of life, superior to all these things, and
which was either to be possessed, or at least hoped for, on this
side the grave.

But my sage counsellor was gone: I was like a ship with-
out a pilot, that could only run afore the wind. My thoughts
ran all away again into the old affair; my head was quite
turned with the whimseys of foreign adventures; and all the
pleasant, innocent amusements of my farm, my garden, my
cattle, and my family, which before entirely possessed me, were
nothing to me, had no relish, and were like music to one that
has no ear, or food to one that has no taste: in a word, I re-
solved to leave off housekeeping, let my farm, and return to
London ; and in a few months after I did so.

When I came to London, I was still as uneasy as I was be-
fore ; I had no relish for the place, no employment in it, noth-
ing to do but to saunter about like an idle person, of whom it
may be said he is perfectly useless in God’s creation, and it is
not one farthing’s matter to the rest of his kind whether he be
dead or alive. This also was the thing which, of all circum-
stances of life, was the most my aversion, who had been all my
days used to an active life ; and I would often say to myself,
“A state of idleness is the very dregs of life ;” and, indeed, I
thought I was much more suitably employed when I was twenty:
six days making a deal board.

It was now the beginning of the year 1693, when my nephew,
whom, as I have observed before, I had brought up to the sea,
and had made him commander of a ship, was come home from
a short voyage to Bilboa, being the first he had made. He
came to me, and told me that some merchants of his acquaint-
ance had been proposing to him to go a voyage for them to
the East Indies, and to China, as private traders. ‘ And now,
uncle,” says he, “ if you will go to sea with me, I will engage
to land you upon your old habitation in the island ; foriwe are
to touch at the Brazils.”