Page:Dream Life - Mitchell - 1899? Altemus.djvu/52

 Poll the parrot, and are looking out for your goats, and man Friday.

You dream what a nice thing it would be, for you to slip away some pleasant morning—not to York, as young Crusoe did, but to New York,—and take passage as a sailor; and how, if they knew you were going, there would be such a world of good-byes; and how, if they did not know it, there would be such a world of wonder!

And then the sailor's dress would be altogether such a jaunty affair; and it would be such rare sport to lie off upon the yards far aloft, as you have seen sailors in pictures, looking out upon the blue and tumbling sea. No thought now in your boyish dreams, of sleety storms, and cables stiffened with ice, and crashing spars, and great ice-bergs towering fearfully around you!

You would have better luck than even Crusoe; you would save a compass, and a Bible, and stores of hatchets, and the captain's dog, and great puncheons of sweetmeats (which Crusoe altogether overlooked); and you would save a tent or two, which you could set up on the shore, and an American flag, and a small piece of cannon, which you could fire as often as you liked. At night, you would sleep in a tree—though you wonder how Crusoe did