human being left solitary, with all these possible dangers to face.

The voyages on the raft, the house-building, contriving, fearing,
praying, arguing--all these are full of plaintive pathos and yet of
encouragement. He witnesses despair turned into comfortable resignation
as the result of industry. It has required about twelve years. Virtue is
apparently fattening upon its own reward, when--Smash! Bang!--our young
reader runs upon "the--print--of--a--man's--naked--foot!" and security
and happiness, like startled birds, are flown forever. For twelve more
years this new unseen terror hangs over the poor solitary. Then we have
Friday, the funny cannibals later and it is all over. But the vast
solitude of that poor castaway has entered the imagination of the youth
and dominates it.

These two hundred pages are crowded with suggestions that set a boy's
mind on fire, yet every page contains evidence of obvious slovenliness,
indolence and ignorance of human nature and common things, half of which
faults seem directly to contribute to the result, while the other half
are never noticed by the reader.

How many of you, who sniff at this, know Crusoe's real name? Yet it
stares right out of the very first paragraphs in the book--a clean,
perhaps accidental, proof of good scholarship, which De Foe possessed.
Crusoe tells us his father was a German from Bremen, who married an
Englishwoman, from whose family name of Robinson came the son's name
which was properly Robinson Kreutznaer. This latter name, he explains,
became corrupted in the common English speech into Crusoe. That is an
excellent touch. The German pronunciation of Kreutznaer would sound like
Krites-nare, and a mere dry scholar would have evolved Crysoe out of the
name. But the English-speaking people everywhere, until within the past