imprisoned lampoonist would have busied himself with schemes, ideas,
arguments and combinations for getting out, and getting on. This poor
Robin on the island weeps over nothing but his own sorrows, and,
while pretending to bewail his solitude, turns aside coldly from
companionships next only in affection to those of men. He has a dog, two
ship's cats (of whose "eminent history" he promises something that is
never related), tame goats and parrots. He gives none of them a name,
he does not occupy his yearning for companionship and love by preparing
comforts for them or by teaching them tricks of intelligence or
amusement; and when he does make a stagger at teaching Poll to talk it
is for the sole purpose of hearing her repeat "Poor Robin Crusoe!" The
dog is dragged in to work for him, but not to be rewarded. He dies
without notice, as do the cats, and not even a billet of wood marks
their graves.

Could any being, with a drop of human blood in his veins, do that? He
thinks of his father with tears in his eyes--because he did not escape
the present solitude by taking the old man's advice! Does he recall his
mother or any of the childish things that lie so long and deep in
the heart of every natural man? Does he ever wonder what his old
school-fellows, Bob Freckles and Pete Baker, are doing these solitary
evenings when he sits under the tropics and hopes--could he not at
least hope it?--that they are, thank God, alive and happy at York? He
discourses like a parson of the utterly impossible affection that
Friday had for his cannibal sire and tells you how noble, Christian and
beautiful it was--as if, by Jove! a little of that virtue wouldn't have
ornamented his own cold, emotionless, fishy heart!

He had no sentimental side. Think of those dreary, egotistic, awful
evenings, when, for more than twenty years this infernal hypocrite kept