Peter, says I, what have you to do here?--Alas! replied I to myself, I am fixed against my will in this dismal mansion, destined, as rats might be, to devour the provisions only, and having eaten all up, to perish with hunger for want of a supply.--Then, says I, of what use are you in the world, Peter?--Truly, answered I, of no other use that I can see but to be an object of misery for Divine vengeance to work upon, and to show what a deplorable state human nature can be reduced to; for I cannot think any one else can be so wretched.--And again, Peter, says I, what have you been doing ever since you came into the world?--I am afraid, says I, I can answer no better to this question than to either of the former; for if only reasonable actions are to be reckoned among my doings, I am sure I have done little worth recording; for let me see what it all amounts to. I spent my first sixteen years in making a fool of my mother; my three next in letting her make a fool of me, and in being fool enough myself to get me a wife and two children before I was twenty. The next year was spent in finding out the misery of slavery from experience. Two years more I repined at the happiness of my benefactor, and at finding it was not my lot to enjoy the same. This year is not yet spent, and how many more are to come, and where they may be passed, and what they may produce, requires a better head than mine even to guess at; but certainly my present situation seems to promise nothing beside woe and misery.--But hold a little, says I, and let me clearly state my own wretchedness. I am here, it is true; but for any good I have ever done or any advantage I have reaped in other places, I am as well here as anywhere. I have no present want of food or unjust or cruel enemy to annoy me; so as long as the ship continues entire and provisions last, I shall do tolerably. Then why should I grieve or terrify myself about what may come? What my frighted imagination suggests may perhaps never happen. Deliverance, though not to be looked for, is yet possible; and my future fate may be as different from my present condition as this is from the hopes with which I lately flattered myself. And why, after all, may I not die a natural death here as well as anywhere? All mankind die, and then there is an end of all----An end of all! did I say? No, there is something within that gives me the lie when I say so. Let me see; Death, my master used to say, is not an end, but a beginning of real life: and may it not be so? May I not as well undergo a change from this to a different state of life when I leave this world, as be born into it I know not from whence? Who sent me into this world? Who framed me of two natures so unlike, that death cannot destroy but one of them? It must be the Almighty God. But all God's works tend to some end; and if He has given me an immortal nature, it must be His intention that I should live somewhere and somehow for ever.