Daniel Defoe: The True-Born Englishman

"An American Robinson Crusoe" is the outcome of many years of experience with the story in the early grades of elementary schools. It was written to be used as a content in giving a knowledge of the beginning and development of human progress. The aim is not just to furnish an interesting narrative, but one that is true to the course of human development and the scientific and geographical facts of the island on which Robinson is supposed to have lived.

The excuse for departing so widely from the original story is to be found in the use which was desired to be made of it. The story here presented is simply the free adaptation of the original narrative to the demand for a specific kind of content in a form which would be interesting to the children.

The teacher is and should be justified in using with entire freedom any material accessible for the ends of instruction.

The text as here given has been published with an introduction and suggestive treatments as a Teacher's Manual for Primary Grades – "The Teacher's Robinson Crusoe." Explicit directions and ample suggestions are made for the use of the story as material for instruction in all the language arts, drawing, social history, and the manual arts.

Published by the Educational Publishing Company.

There once lived in the city of New York, a boy by the name of Robinson Crusoe. He had a pleasant home. His father and mother were kind to him and sent him to school. They hoped that he would study hard and grow up to be a wise and useful man, but he loved rather to run idle about the street than to go to school. He was fond of playing along the River Hudson, for he there saw the great ships come and go. They were as big as houses. He watched them load and unload their cargoes and hundreds of people get off and on. His father had told him that the ships came from far distant lands, where lived many large animals and black men. His father told him too, that in these faraway countries the nuts on the trees grew to be as large as one's head and that the trees were as high as church steeples.

When Robinson saw the ships put out to sea, he would watch them till they would disappear below the horizon far out in the ocean, and think, "Oh, if I could only go with them far away to see those strange countries!" Thus he would linger along the great river and wish he might find an opportunity of making a voyage. Often it would be dark before he would get home. When he came into the house his mother would meet him and say in a gentle voice, "Why, Robinson, how late you are in getting home! You have been to the river again."

Then Robinson would hang his head and feel deeply ashamed, and when his father, who was a merchant, came home from the store, his mother would tell him that Robinson had again been truant.

This would grieve his father deeply and he would go to the boy's bedside and talk earnestly with him. "Why do you do so?" he would say. "How often have I told you to go to school every day?" This would for a time win Robinson back to school, but by the next week it had been forgotten and he would again be loitering along the river in spite of his father's remonstrances.

In this way one year after another slipped by. Robinson was not more diligent. He was now almost sixteen years old and had not learned anything. Then came his birthday. In the afternoon his father called him into his room. Robinson opened the door softly. There sat his father with a sad face. He looked up and said, "Well, Robinson, all your schoolmates have long been busy trying to learn something, so that they may be able to earn their own living. Paul will be a baker, Robert a butcher, Martin is learning to be a carpenter, Herman a tailor, Otto a blacksmith, Fritz is going to high school, because he is going to be a teacher. Now, you are still doing nothing. This will not do. From this time on I wish you to think of becoming a merchant. In the morning you will go with me to the store and begin work. If you are attentive and skillful, when the time comes you can take up my business and carry it on. But if you remain careless and continue to idle about, no one will ever want you and you must starve because you will never be able to earn a living."

So the next morning Robinson went to the store and began work. He wrapped up sugar and coffee, he weighed out rice and beans. He sold meal and salt, and when the dray wagon pulled up at the store, loaded with new goods, he sprang out quickly and helped to unload it. He carried in sacks of flour and chests of tea, and rolled in barrels of coffee and molasses. He also worked some at the desk. He looked into the account books and saw in neat writing, "Goods received" and "Goods sold." He noticed how his father wrote letters and reckoned up his accounts. He even took his pen in hand and put the addresses on the letters and packages as well as he could.

But soon he was back in his careless habits. He was no longer attentive to business. He wrapped up salt instead of sugar. He put false weights on the scales. He gave some too much and others too little. His hands, only, were in the business, his mind was far away on the ocean with the ships. When he helped unload the wagons, he would often let the chests and casks drop, so that they were broken and their contents would run out on the ground. For he was always thinking, "Where have these casks come from and how beautiful it must be there!" And many times packages came back because Robinson had written the name of the place or the country wrong. For when he was writing the address, he was always thinking, "You will be laid upon a wagon and will then go into the ship." One day he had to write a letter to a man far over the sea. He could stand it no longer. His father had gone out. He threw down the pen, picked up his hat and ran out to the Hudson to see the ships, and from that time on he spent more time loitering along the river than he did in the store.

Robinson's father soon noticed that his son was no longer attending to his work, and one morning sent for him to come to his office. When Robinson came in his father arose from his chair and looked him long and earnestly in the face. Then he said, "I am very sorry, Robinson, that you seem determined to continue your evil ways. If you do not do better you will grow up to be a beggar or worse." Robinson cast his eyes down and said, "I do not want to be a merchant, I would rather sail in a ship around the world." His father answered, "If you do not know anything you cannot be of use on a ship, and no one will want you. In a strange land you cannot live without working. If you run away from your parents you will come to be sorry for it." Robinson wept, for he saw that his father was right, and he promised to obey.

After two or three weeks, Robinson went to his mother and said, "Mother, won't you go to father and tell him that if he will only let me take one voyage and it proves to be unpleasant, I will come back to the store and work hard?" But the mother cried. With tears in her eyes, she said: "Robinson, your brothers are both dead. You are the only child left to us and if you go away, we shall be entirely alone. How easy it would be to be drowned in the sea, or torn to pieces by wild animals away there in a foreign country. Both your father and myself are getting along in years and who will take care of us when we are sick? Do not cause us the grief we must suffer if you go away so far amid so many dangers. I cannot bear to have you speak of it again."

Robinson did not speak of it again, but he did not forget it. He was nineteen years old. It was one day in August that Robinson stood at the wharf looking longingly after the departing ships. As he stood there, someone touched him on the shoulder. It was a ship captain's son. He pointed to a long ship and said, "My father sails to-day in that ship for Africa and takes me with him."