The Junior Classics, Volume 5: Stories that never grow old
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The Junior Classics, Volume 5: Stories that never grow old
Children's literature
I have already observed how I brought all my goods into this pale,
and into the cave which I had made behind me. But I must observe,
too, that at first this was a confused heap of goods, which, as
they lay in no order, so they took up all my place--I had no room
to turn myself; so I set myself to enlarge my cave, and work
farther into the earth, for it was a loose sandy rock, which
yielded easily to the labor I bestowed on it; and so, when I found
I was pretty safe as to beasts of prey, I worked sideways, to the
right hand, into the rock; and then, turning to the right again,
worked quite out, and made me a door to come out on the outside of
my pale or fortification. This gave me not only egress and
regress, as it was a back way to my tent and to my storehouse, but
gave me room to store my goods.
And now I began to apply myself to make such necessary things as I
found I most wanted, particularly a chair and a table; for without
these I was not able to enjoy the few comforts I had in the world--
I could not write or eat, or do several things, with so much
pleasure without a table; so I went to work. And here I must
needs observe that, as reason is the substance and origin of the
mathematics, so by stating and squaring everything by reason, and
by making the most rational judgment of things, every man may be,
in time, master of every mechanic art. I had never handled a tool
in my life; and yet, in time, by labor, application, and
contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could
have made it, especially if I had had tools. However, I made
abundance of things, even without tools; and some with no more
tools than an adze and a hatchet, which perhaps were never made
that way before, and that with infinite labor. For example, if I
wanted a board, I had no other way but to cut down a tree, set it
on an edge before me, and hew it flat on either side with my axe,
till I brought it to be thin as a plank, and then dub it smooth
with my adze. It is true, by this method I could make but one
board out of a whole tree; but this I had no remedy for but
patience, any more than I had for the prodigious deal of time and
labor which it took me up to make a plank or board; but my time or
labor was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way as
another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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