Page:Dream Life - Mitchell - 1899? Altemus.djvu/53

 it,—and would say the prayers you had been taught to say at home, and fall to sleep,—dreaming of Nelly and Charlie.

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 sailor's clothes, and putting a few large jack-knives 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 palisades 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 cocoanuts 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,