A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

When I came where Mr. Crusoe was he patted me on the shoulder and said, “Good fellow! poor fellow! your enemies are killed and you are safe now.” He couldn’t have been kinder if I had been a dog; and when he took me by the hand and led me back to the house, and made me lie down and drink another cup of coffee, I was pretty well satisfied to be Friday.

MIKE TAKES THE PART OF “MAN FRIDAY.”

He began calling me Friday at once, and never called me anything else except once or twice when he got very angry at something and called me “You Mike!” When I began to talk back to him he stopped me, and said, “Friday, you talk too plain. You mustn’t say, ‘That coffee’s awful good!’ but you must say, ‘Him coffee berry muchee good!’ Remember that you’re a poor, ignorant savage, just beginning to learn English, and don’t let me have to correct you again.”

I was disappointed to find that I had to climb into my goat-skin clothes again; and when I had finished the coffee, and Mr. Crusoe showed me the clothes, and said, “Now, Friday, you must put on these clothes,” I said, “I do wish, Mr. Crusoe, you’d let me go as I am now.” He looked very angry, and said, “What did you say, Friday? Your broken English isn’t very easy to understand.” I knew what he meant then, and said, “Me no likee clothes. Me no wearee clothes in my country.” This pleased him better, but all the same I had to put the clothes on.

I found it pretty easy to talk as Mr. Crusoe wanted me to, and after a while it seemed perfectly natural to be a man Friday. It was a nuisance to have to black myself all over every time after I had been in swimming, and once I tried to get Mr. Crusoe to let me black nothing but my face and hands, but he wouldn’t agree to it. I really began to feel as if I was a real black savage; and as Mr. Crusoe never said anything more about killing me, I could go to sleep without fear of having my brains knocked out with the axe.

The worst thing about it was that Mr. Crusoe would insist on instructing me, as he called it. He would make me sit down by him and listen while he told me that there was more of the world than the island where we were, and there were great nations of white people who built ships and railroads and all sorts of things; just as if I didn’t know all about it a great deal better than he did, who had never been on board a ship but once. However, I had to listen respectfully, and I used to remember that, after all, it was easier to sit still and let a man talk than it was to work hard either afloat or ashore. But one day he tried to tell me what a ship was like. He called it a “big canoe,” and I never heard any man talk such nonsense as he did when he described how a ship is rigged. I really couldn’t stand it, so I said, “You no talkee sense. Gimme rest; you makee me tired,” and I got up and left him. After that he didn’t talk to me any more about ships.

Another thing that bothered me was that Mr. Crusoe would make me tell him all sorts of yarns about my country. He didn’t mean America, nor yet Ireland, but some heathen country not far from our island, where he maintained that I used to live. Of course my stories didn’t suit him until I found out just what he wanted me to tell. I had to tell him that the tribe of savages that I belonged to used to fight with another tribe. That was partly true of the Flanagans in old Ireland, for I have often heard my father say how they used to fight with the Maguires; but I thought things had come to a pretty pass when I had to call a respectable, decent family like the Flanagans a tribe of savages.

Then, too, Mr. Crusoe was bound to make me tell him that there were a whole ship’s company of Spaniards in my country. I had to make believe that they had been shipwrecked there, and whenever we talked about them Mr. Crusoe would sigh, and say that if we only had a boat we would set sail and find the Spaniards, and bring them to the island. Once he said, “We had better make a canoe, Friday, and have it all ready, so that when your father comes we can send him in it to bring the Spaniards here.”

I was so astonished to hear him say that my father was coming that I almost spoke English to him; but I recollected in time that I was Friday, so I only said, “What you meanee?”