At sunrise, or thereabouts, you would come down, feeling very much
refreshed; and make a very nice breakfast off of smoked herring and
sea-bread, with a little currant jam, and a few oranges. After this you
would haul ashore a chest or two of the sailors' clothes, and putting a
few large jackknives in your pocket, would take a stroll over the
island, and dig a cave somewhere, and roll in a cask or two of
sea-bread. And you fancy yourself growing after a time very tall and
corpulent, and wearing a magnificent goat-skin cap trimmed with green
ribbons, and set off with a plume. You think you would have put a few
more guns in the palisade than Crusoe did, and charged them with a
little more grape.
After a long while you fancy a ship would arrive which would carry you
back; and you count upon very great surprise on the part of your father
and little Nelly, as you march up to the door of the old family mansion,
with plenty of gold in your pocket, and a small bag of cocoa-nuts for
Charlie, and with a great deal of pleasant talk about your island far
away in the South Seas.
----Or perhaps it is not Crusoe at all, that your eyes and your heart
cling to, but only some little story about Paul and Virginia;--that dear
little Virginia! how many tears have been shed over her--not in garrets
only, or by boys only!
You would have liked Virginia, you know you would; but you perfectly
hate the beldame aunt who sent for her to come to France; you think she
must have been like the old schoolmistress, who occasionally boxes your
ears with the cover of the spelling-book, or makes you wear one of the
girls' bonnets, that smells strongly of pasteboard and calico.
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