himself company and tried patiently to deceive God by flattering Him
about religion! It is impossible. Why thought turns as certainly to
revery and recollection as grass turns to seed. He married. What was his
wife's name? We know how much property she had. What were the names of
the honest Portuguese Captain and the London woman who kept his money?
The cold selfishness and gloomy egotism of this creature mark him as a
monster and not as a man.

* * * * *

So the book is not in character as an autobiography, nor does it contain
a single softening emotion to create sympathy. Let us see whether it
be scholarly in its ease. The one line that strikes like a bolt of
lightning is the height of absurdity. We have all laughed, afterward
of course, at that--single--naked--foot--print. It could not have been
there without others, unless Friday were a one legged man, or was
playing the good old Scots game of "hop-scotch!"

But the foot-print is not a circumstance to the cannibals. All the stage
burlesques of Robinson Crusoe combined could not produce such funny
cannibals as he discovered. Crusoe's cannibals ate no flesh but that
of men! He had no great trouble contriving how to induce Friday to eat
goat's flesh! They took all the trouble to come to his island to indulge
in picnics, during which they ate up folks, danced and then went home
before night. When the big party of 31 arrived, they had with them one
other cannibal of Friday's tribe, a Spaniard, and Friday's father. It
appears they always carefully unbound a victim before despatching him.
They brought Friday pere for lunch, although he was old, decrepit and
thin--a condition that always unfits a man among all known cannibals
for serving as food. They reject them as we do stringy old roosters for