by Daniel Defoe
nothing could remove it out of my mind; it even broke soviolently into all my discourses, that it made my conversation tiresome;for I could talk of nothing else, all my discourse ran into it, even toimpertinence, and I saw it myself.
I have often heard persons of good judgment say, that all the stirpeople make in the world about ghosts and apparitions, is owing to thestrength of imagination, and the powerful operation of fancy in theirminds; that there is no such thing as a spirit appearing, or a ghostwalking, and the like; that people's poring affectionately upon the pastconversation of their deceased friends so realizes it to them, that theyare capable of fancying upon some extraordinary circumstances that theysee them, talk to them, and are answered by them, when, in truth, thereis nothing but shadow and vapour in the thing; and they really knownothing of the matter.
For my part, I know not to this hour whether there are any such thingsas real apparitions, spectres, or walking of people after they are dead,or whether there is any thing in the stories they tell us of that kind,more than the product of vapours, sick minds, and wandering fancies. Butthis I know, that my imagination worked up to such a height, and broughtme into such excess of vapours, or what else I may call it, that Iactually supposed myself oftentimes upon the spot, at my old castlebehind the trees, saw my old Spaniard, Friday's father, and thereprobate sailors whom I left upon the island; nay, I fancied I talkedwith them, and looked at them so steadily, though I was broad awake, asat persons just before me; and this I did till I often frightened myselfwith the images my fancy represented to me: one time in my sleep I hadthe villany of the three pirate sailors so lively related to me, by thefirst Spaniard and Friday's father, that it was surprising; they told mehow they barbarously attempted to murder all the Spaniards, and thatthey set fire to the provisions they had laid up, on purpose to distressand starve them; things that I had never heard of, and that were yet allof them true in fact; but it was so warm in my imagination, and sorealized to me, that to the hour I saw them, I could not be persuadedbut that it was or would be true; also how I resented it when theSpaniard complained to me, and how I brought them to justice, tried thembefore me, and ordered them all three to be hanged. What there wasreally in this, shall be seen in its place; for however I came to formsuch things in my dream, and what secret converse of spirits injectedit, yet there was, I say, very much of it true. I own, that this dreamhad nothing literally and specifically true; but the general part was sotrue, the base and villanous behaviour of these three hardened rogueswas such, and had been so much worse than all I can describe, that thedream had too much similitude of the fact; and as I would afterwardshave punished them severely, so if I had hanged them all, I had beenmuch in the right, and should have been justifiable both by the laws ofGod and man.
But to return to my story.--In this kind of temper I had lived someyears, I had no enjoyment of my life, no pleasant hours, no agreeablediversion but what had something or other of this in it; so that mywife, who saw my mind so wholly bent upon it, told me very seriously onenight, that she believed there was some secret powerful impulse ofProvidence upon me, which had determined me to go thither again; andthat she found nothing hindered my going, but my being engaged to a wifeand children. She told me, that it was true she could not think ofparting with me; but as she was assured, that if she was dead it wouldbe the first thing I would do; so, as it seemed to her that the thingwas determined above, she would not be the only obstruction; for if Ithought fit, and resolved to go--Here she found me very intent upon herwords, and that I looked very earnestly at her; so that it a littledisordered her, and she stopped. I asked her why she did not go on, andsay out what she was going to say? But I perceived her heart was toofull, and some tears stood in her eyes: "Speak out, my dear," said I;"are you willing I should go?"--"No," says she, very affectionately, "Iam far from willing: but if you are resolved to go," says she, "andrather than I will be the only hindrance, I will go with you; for thoughI think it a preposterous thing for one of your years, and in yourcondition, yet if it must be," said she again, weeping, "I won't leaveyou; for if it be of Heaven, you must do it; there is no resisting it;and if Heaven makes it your duty to go, he will also make it mine to gowith you, or otherwise dispose of me, that I may not obstruct it."
This affectionate behaviour of my wife brought me a little out of thevapours, and I began to consider what I was doing; I corrected mywandering fancy, and began to argue with myself sedately, what businessI had, after threescore years, and after such a life of tedioussufferings and disasters, and closed in so happy and easy a manner, Isay, what business had I to rush into new hazards, and put myself uponadventures, fit only for youth and poverty to run into?
With those thoughts, I considered my new engagement; that I had a wife,one child born, and my wife then great with child of another; that I hadall the world could give me and had no need to seek hazards for gain;that I was declining in years, and ought to think rather of leaving whatI had gained, than of seeking to increase it; that as to what my wifehad said, of its being an impulse from Heaven, and that it should be myduty to go, I had no notion of that; so after many of these cogitations,I struggled with the power of my imagination, reasoned myself out of it,_as I believe people may always do in like cases, if they will_; and, ina word, I conquered it; composed myself with such arguments as occurredto my thoughts, and which my present condition furnished me plentifullywith; and particularly, as the most effectual method, I resolved todivert myself with other things, and to engage in some business thatmight effectually tie me up from any more excursions of this kind; for Ifound the thing return upon me chiefly when I was idle, had nothing todo, or any thing of moment immediately before me.
To this purpose I bought a little farm in the county of Bedford, andresolved to remove myself thither. I had a little convenient house uponit, and the land about it I found was capable of great improvement, andthat it was many ways suited to my inclination, which delighted incultivating, managing, planting, and improving of land; andparticularly, being an inland country, I was removed from conversingamong ships, sailors, and things relating to the remote part ofthe world.
In a word, I went down to my farm, settled my family, bought me ploughs,harrows, a cart, waggon, horses, cows, sheep; and setting seriously towork, became in one half year a mere country gentleman; my thoughts wereentirely taken up in managing my servants, cultivating the ground,enclosing, planting, &c.; and I lived, as I thought, the most agreeablelife that nature was capable of directing, or that a man always bred tomisfortunes was capable of being retreated to.
I farmed upon my own land, I had no rent to pay, was limited by noarticles; I could pull up or cut down as I pleased; what I planted wasfor myself, and what I improved, was for my family; and having thus leftoff the thoughts of wandering, I had not the least discomfort in anypart of my life, as to this world. Now I thought indeed, that I enjoyedthe middle state of life which my father so earnestly recommended to me,a kind of heavenly life, something like what is described by the poetupon the subject of a country life:
Free from vices, free from care, Age has no pains, and youth no snare.
But in the middle of all this felicity, one blow from unforeseenProvidence unhinged me at once; and not only made a breach upon me,inevitable and incurable, but drove me, by its consequence, upon a deeprelapse into the wandering disposition; which, as I may say, being bornin my very blood, soon recovered its hold of me, and, like the returnsof a violent distemper, came on with an irresistible force upon me; sothat nothing could make any more impression upon me. This blow was theloss of my wife.
It is not my business here to write an elegy upon my wife, to give acharacter of her particular virtues, and make my court to the sex by theflattery of a funeral sermon. She was, in a few words, the stay of allmy affairs, the centre of all my enterprises, the engine that by herprudence reduced me to that happy compass I was in, from the mostextravagant and ruinous project that fluttered in my head as above; anddid more to guide my rambling genius, than a mot
her's tears, a father'sinstructions, a friend's counsel, or all my own reasoning powers coulddo. I was happy in listening to her tears, and in being moved by herentreaties, and to the last degree desolate and dislocated in the worldby the loss of her.
When she was gone the world looked awkwardly round me, I was as much astranger in it in my thoughts as I was in the Brasils when I went firston shore there; and as much alone, except as to the assistance ofservants, as I was in my island. I knew neither what to do, or what notto do; I saw the world busy round me, one part labouring for bread, andthe other part squandering in vile excesses or empty pleasures, equallymiserable, because the end they proposed still fled from them; for themen of pleasure every day surfeited of their vice, and heaped up workfor sorrow and repentance, and the men of labour spent their strength indaily strugglings for bread to maintain the vital strength they
