AN AMERICAN
ROBINSON CRUSOE




I

ROBINSON WITH HIS PARENTS


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