Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1875 — Robinson Crusoe. [ARTICLE]

Robinson Crusoe.

I never sit down and ponder on Robinson Crusoe’s case without feeling sad and sympathetic. He wasn’t any relative of mine, of course; he didn’t even belong to my lodge, nor vote my ticket, but it must be awful for a young and healthy man to be cast away on an uninhabited Island for years and years and be deprived of the society of everybody except a dog and seventeen goats. I don’t wonder that there were times when Mr. Crusoe sat down and wished that he were dead. Mrs. Crusoe, a dashing young woman, would have good reason to believe him dead, and he knew •he’d be «utring around to strawberry festivals and have her eyes on the watch for a second husband. If Rob was ever rescued he’d go home and find a strange man in the house, and strange red-head-ed children galloping up and down. Then he’d have to go away and die of a broken heart, as poor Enoch Arden did. No, he wouldn’t, either —he’d go for that strange man and those red-headed children like a Chinaman for a mouse, and he’d tell Mrs. Crusoe just what he thought of her conduct. And there were hundreds of other things to worry him and make him feel out of sorts. He hadn’t a shirt which buttoned behind, his shoe-blacking was a bogus article, his stock of cuffs and collars soon ran out, and he might put on a diamond pin as big as his fist and there was no one around to remark the style he carried. He was a good ways from any grocer’s, the mails were always behind time, and there hasn’t even one street-car or omnibus line on the island. If he wanted to go anywhere he had to walk, or paddle his way in his old dugout. Owing to the high price of gas he couldn’t use it in his house, and the street lamps weren’t lighted half the time. At home Mr. Crusoe had been used to going to ward caucuses, spelling schools, husking bees and dog fights, and he suddenly found himself deprived of all these pleasures. For a period of fifteen years and four months he never had a chance to cast his vote, or take something to drink at a candidate’s expense, ana at last he became so reckless that he didn’t, care whether Andrew Jackson or Busan B. Anthony was President of the United States of America. In addition to being deprived of good society Mr. Crusoe labored under many annoyances. If he found a button oft his shirt he might get up and rave and howl, but there was no one these to hear, and his howling didn’t do any good. He had to get up and build his own fires, make his own bed, wash his own clothes In the coffee-pot, and if he lost his hat

around the house it didn’t do any good to yell out: “Sarah Jane Crusoe, where in blazes is my hat!” for Sarah Jane was far, far off. I can imagine how a man must feel to be deprived of the sight of his mother-in-law for nearly twenty years, and how lonely life must be without plenty of perfumed hair-oil, calf-skin boots and now and then a horse-race or a State election to bet on. Many and many a time I have dropped the book and brushed the tears away as I realized that Mr. Crusoe might have died fifty times and no one would have had interest enough to start a subscription for a monument to him.— M, Quad. in Our Fireside jPriend.