ROBINSON CRUSOE 245

happy and easy a manner; I say, what business had I to rush
into new hazards, and put myself upon adventures fit only for
youth and poverty to run into?

With those thoughts I considered my new engagement ; that I
had a wife, one child born, and my wife then great with child of
another; that I had all the world could give me, and had no
need to seek hazard for gain; that I was declining in years, and
ought to think rather of leaving what I had gained than of
secking to increase it; that as to what my wife had said of its
being an impulse from Heaven, and that it should be my duty to
go, | had no notion of that ; so, after many of these cogitations,
I struggled with the power of my imagination, reasoned myself
out of it, as I believe people may always do in like cases if
they will: in a word, I conquered it, composed myself with such
arguments as occurred to my thoughts, and which my present
condition furnished me plentifully with; and particularly, as the
most effectual method, I resolved to divert myself with other
things, and to engage in some business that might effectually tie
me up from any more excursions of this kind; for I found that
thing return upon me chiefly when I was idle, and had nothing
to do, nor anything of moment immediately before me. To this
purpose, | bought a little farm in the county of Bedford, and
resolved to remove myself thither. I had a little convenient
house upon it, and the land about it, | found, was capable of
great improvement ; and it was many ways suited to my inclina-
tion, which delighted in cultivating, managing, planting, and
improving of land; and particularly, being an inland country,
I was removed from conversing among sailors and things re-
lating to the remote parts of the world. I went down to
my farm, settled my family, bought ploughs, harrows, a cart,
waggon-horses, cows, and sheep, and, setting seriously to work,
became in one half-year a mere country gentleman. My
thoughts were entirely taken up in managing my _ servants,
cultivating the ground, enclosing, planting, &e. ; and I lived,
as LT thought, the most agreeable life that nature was capable
of directing, or that a man always bred to misfortunes was
capable of retreating to.

I farmed upon my own land ; I had no rent to pay, was limited
by no articles; 1 could pull up or cut down as I pleased; what I
planted was for myself, and what I improved was for my family ;
and having thus left off the thoughts of wandering, I had not the
least discomfort in any part of life as to this world. Now I
thought, indeed, that I enjoyed the middle state of life which
my father so carnestly recommended to me, and lived a kind of