6.  For example, if I wanted a board, I had no other way but to cut down a tree, set it before me, and hew it flat on either side with my ax till I had brought it to be as thin as a plank, and then dub it smooth with my adz.

7.  It is true, by this method I could make but one board out of a whole tree; but this I had no remedy for but patience, any more than I had for the prodigious deal of time and labor which it took me to make a plank or board; but my time or labor was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way as another.

8.  However, I made me a table and a chair, as I observed above; and this I did out of the short pieces of boards which I brought on my raft from the ship; but when I had wrought out some boards, as above, I made large shelves, of the breadth of a foot and a half, one over another, all along one side of my cave, to lay all my tools, nails, and ironwork on, and, in a word, to separate everything at large in their places, that I might come easily at them.

9.  I knocked pieces into the wall of the rock to hang my guns and all things that would hang up.  So that, had my cave been seen, it would have looked like a general magazine of all necessary things; and I had everything so ready at my hand that it was a great pleasure to me to see all my goods in such order, and especially to find my stock of all necessaries so great.

Definitions.—­l.  Hab-i-ta’tion, a dwelling place.  Pale, a fence.  Ca’bles, large ropes.  Turf, sod. 3.  For-ti-fi-ca’tion, a place built for defense against attack.  E’gress, going out.  Re’gress, coming back, return.  Stow, to arrange compactly. 4.  Ap-ply’, to employ diligently. 6.  Dub, to cut down or bring to an even surface. 7.  Pro-di’gious, very great.  Deal, part, amount. 9.  Mag-a-zine’, a storehouse,

Exercises.—­How did Robinson Crusoe make a house?  Of what did he make a chair and table?  How did he obtain boards?  What does this lesson teach us in regard to perseverance?

LIV.  ROBINSON CRUSOE’S DRESS. (147)

1.  But had any man in England met such a man as I was, it must either have frightened him or raised a great deal of laughter; and, as I frequently stood still to look at myself, I could not but smile at the notion of my traveling through Yorkshire in such a dress.

2.  I had a great, high, shapeless cap, made of a goat’s skin, with a flap hanging down behind, as well to keep the sun from me as to shoot the rain off from running into my neck; nothing being so hurtful in these climates as the rain upon the flesh under the clothes.

3.  I had a short jacket of goatskin, the skirts coming down to about the middle of the thighs, and a pair of open-kneed breeches of the same; the breeches were made of the skin of an old goat, and the hair hung down such a length on either side that it reached to the middle of my legs like pantaloons.