"Children's Books - Defoe, Daniel - Further Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Children's Books)

before me. To this purpose, I bought a little farm in the county
of Bedford, and resolved to remove myself thither. I had a little
convenient house upon it, and the land about it, I found, was
capable of great improvement; and it was many ways suited to my
inclination, which delighted in cultivating, managing, planting,
and improving of land; and particularly, being an inland country, I
was removed from conversing among sailors and things relating to
the remote parts of the world. I went down to my farm, settled my
family, bought ploughs, harrows, a cart, waggon-horses, cows, and
sheep, and, setting seriously to work, became in one half-year a
mere country gentleman. My thoughts were entirely taken up in
managing my servants, cultivating the ground, enclosing, planting,
&c.; and I lived, as I thought, the most agreeable life that nature
was capable of directing, or that a man always bred to misfortunes
was capable of retreating to.

I farmed upon my own land; I had no rent to pay, was limited by no
articles; I could pull up or cut down as I pleased; what I planted
was for myself, and what I improved was for my family; and having
thus left off the thoughts of wandering, I had not the least
discomfort in any part of life as to this world. Now I thought,
indeed, that I enjoyed the middle state of life which my father so
earnestly recommended to me, and lived a kind of heavenly life,
something like what is described by the poet, upon the subject of a
country life:-