For a moment I compared myself to that monarch of the waste--Robinson

Crusoe. We had been both thrown companionless--he on the shore of a

desolate island: I on that of a desolate world. I was rich in the so called

goods of life. If I turned my steps from the near barren scene, and entered

any of the earth's million cities, I should find their wealth stored up for

my accommodation--clothes, food, books, and a choice of dwelling beyond

the command of the princes of former times--every climate was subject to

my selection, while he was obliged to toil in the acquirement of every

necessary, and was the inhabitant of a tropical island, against whose heats

and storms he could obtain small shelter.--Viewing the question thus, who

would not have preferred the Sybarite enjoyments I could command, the

philosophic leisure, and ample intellectual resources, to his life of

labour and peril? Yet he was far happier than I: for he could hope, nor

hope in vain--the destined vessel at last arrived, to bear him to

countrymen and kindred, where the events of his solitude became a fire-side

tale. To none could I ever relate the story of my adversity; no hope had I.

He knew that, beyond the ocean which begirt his lonely island, thousands

lived whom the sun enlightened when it shone also on him: beneath the

meridian sun and visiting moon, I alone bore human features; I alone could

give articulation to thought; and, when I slept, both day and night were

unbeheld of any. He had fled from his fellows, and was transported with

terror at the print of a human foot. I would have knelt down and worshipped

the same. The wild and cruel Caribbee, the merciless Cannibal--or worse

than these, the uncouth, brute, and remorseless veteran in the vices of

civilization, would have been to me a beloved companion, a treasure dearly

587

The Last Man