I do not suppose you have read much that he wrote except one book; that, I know you have read; and this bustling, bouncing, inconsistent, indefatigable, unsuccessful, earnest scold of a man was named Daniel Defoe;[98] and the book you have read is _Robinson Crusoe_--loved by all boys better than any other book; and loved by all girls, I think, better than any other book--that has no love in it. You will wonder, perhaps, that a man without academic graces of speech should have made a book that wears so and that wins so. But it wears and wins, because--for one thing--it is free from any extraneous graces of rhetoric; because he was not trying to write a fine book, but only to tell in clearest way a plain story. And if you should ever have any story of your own to tell, and want to tell it well, I advise you to take _Robinson Crusoe_ for a model; if you ever want to make a good record of any adventures of your own by sea, or by land, I advise you to take _Robinson Crusoe_ for a model; and if you do, you will not waste words in painting sunsets, or in decorating storms and sea-waves; but, without your straining, and by the simple colorless truth of your language, the sunsets will show their glow, and the storms rise and roar, and the waves dash and die along the beach as they do in nature. _Of Queen Anne._ Though not in great favor with the courtiers of Queen Anne, Defoe did serve her government effectively upon the Commission in Edinburgh, which brought about in this Queen’s time (and to her great honor) the legislative union of England and Scotland. She came, you know, to be called the “Good Queen Anne;” and we must try and get a better glimpse of her before we push on with our literary story. Royal duties brought more ripeness of character than her young days promised. I have said that she was not so attractive personally as her sister Mary; not tall, but heavy in figure--not unlike the present good Queen of England, but less active by far; sometimes dropsical--gouty, too, and never getting over a strong love for the table. She had great waves of brown hair--ringleted and flowing over her shoulders; and she had an arm and hand which Sir Godfrey Kneller--who painted her--declared to be the finest in all England; and whoso is curious in such matters can still see that wonderful hand and arm in her portrait at Windsor. Another charm she possessed was a singularly sweet and sympathetic voice; and she read the royal messages to the high court of Parliament with a music that has never been put in them since. If she had written them herself, I am afraid music would not have saved them; for she was not strong-minded, and was a shallow student; she _would_ spell phonetically, and played havoc with the tenses. Nor was she rich in conversation, or full. Swift--somewhere in his journal--makes merry with her disposition to help out--as so many of us do--by talk about the weather; and there is a story that when, after King William’s death, the