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peared mutually agreeable to each other. If the European was highly charmed with the limbs, features, and wild graces of the naked American, the American was no less taken with the dress, complexion, and shape of an European covered from head to foot. The Indian grew immediately enamoured of him, and consequently solicitous for his preservation. She therefore conveyed him to a cave, where she gave him a delicious repast of fruits, and led him to a stream to slake his thirst. In the midst of these good offices, she would sometimes play with his hair, and delight in the opposition of its colour to that of her fingers : then open his bosom, then laugh at him for covering it. She was, it seems, a person of distinction; for she every day came to him in a different dress, of the most beautiful shells, bugles, and bredes. She likewise brought him a great many spoils, which her other lovers had presented to her, so that his cave was richly adorned with all the spotted skins of beasts, and most parti-coloured feathers of fowls, which that world afforded. To make his confinement more tolerable, she would carry him in the dusk of the evening, or by the favour of moon-light, to unfrequented groves and solitudes, and show him where to lie down in safety, and sleep amidst the falls of waters and melody of nightingales. Her part was to watch and hold him awake in her arms, for fear of her countrymen, and wake him on occasions to consult his safety. In this manner did the lovers pass away their time, till they had learned a language of their own, in which the voyager communicated to his mistress, how happy he should be to have her in his country, where she should be clothed in such silks as his waistcoat was made of, and be carried in houses drawn by horses, without being ex

posed

posed to wind or weather. All this he promised her the enjoyment of, without such fears and alarms as they were there tormented with. In this tender currespondence these lovers lived for several months; when Yarico, instructed by her lover, discovered a vessel on the coast, to which she made signals; and in the night, with the utmost joy and satisfaction, accompanied him to a ship's crew of his countrymen bound for Barbadoes. When a vessel from the main arrives in that island, it seems the planters come down to the shore, where there is an immediate market of the Indians and other slaves, as with us of horses and

oxen.

To be short, Mr. Thomas Inkle now coming into English territories, began seriously to reflect upon his loss of time, and to weigh with himself how many days interest of his money he had lost during his stay with Yarico. This thought made the young man pensive, and careful what account he should be able to give his friends of his voyage. Upon which consideration the prudent and frugal young man sold Yarico to a Barbadian merchant; notwithstanding that the poor girl, to incline him to commiserate her condition, told him that she was with child by him : but he only made use of that information to rise in his demands upon the purchaser.

STEELE

ON SUPERSTITIOUS TERRORS. No. 12.

Ar my coming to London it was some time before I could settle myself in a house to my liking. I was forced to quit my first lodgings by reason of an offi

cious landlady, that would be asking me every morn ing how I had slept. I then fell into an honest family, and lived very happily above a week; when my landlord, who was a jolly good-natured man, took it into his head that I wanted company, and therefore would frequently come into my chamber to keep me from being alone. This I bore for two or three days; but telling me one day that he was afraid I was melancholy, I thought it was high time for me to be gone, and accordingly took new lodgings that very night.

I am now settled with a widow woman, who has a great many children, and complies with my humour in every thing. I do not remember that we have exchanged a word together these five years: my coffee comes into my chamber every morning without asking for it if I want fire I point to my chimney, if water, to my bason; upon which my landlady nods, as much as to say she takes my meaning, and immediately obeys my signals. She has likewise modelled her family so well, that when her little boy offers to pull me by the coat, or prattle in my face, his eldest sister immediately calls him off, and bids him not disturb the gentleman. At my first entering into the family, I was troubled with the civility of their rising up to me every time I came into the room; but my landlady, observing that upon these occasions I always cried Pish, and went out again, has forbidden any such ceremony to be used in the house; so that at present I walk into the kitchen or parlour without being taken notice of, or giving any interruption to the business or discourse of the family. The maid will ask her mistress (though I am by), whether the gentleman is ready to go to dinner, as the mistress (who is indeed

an

an excellent housewife) scolds at the servants as heartily before my face as behind my back. In short, I move up and down the house, and enter into all companies, with the same liberty as a cat or any other domestic animal, and am as little suspected of telling any thing that I hear or see.

I remember last winter there were several young girls of the neighbourhood sitting about the fire with iny landlady's daughters, and telling stories of spirits and apparitions. Upon my opening the door the young women broke off their discourse; but my landlady's daughters telling them that it was nobody but the gentleman (for that is the name that I go by in the neighbourhood as well as in the family), they went on without minding me. I seated myself by the candle that stood on a table at one end of the room; and, pretending to read a book that I took out of my pocket, heard several dreadful stories of ghosts as pale as ashrs that had stood at the feet of a bed, or walked over church-yard by moon-light; and of others that had been conjured into the Red Sea for disturbing people's rest, and drawing their curtains at midnight, with many other old women's fables of the like nature. As one spirit raised another, I observed that at the end of every story the whole company closed their ranks, and crowded about the fire. I took notice in particular of a little boy, who was so attentive to every story, that I am mistaken if he ventures to go to bed by himself this twelvemonth. Indeed they talked so long, that the imaginations of the whole assembly were manifestly crazed, and, I am sure, will be the worse for it as long as they live. I heard one of the girls, that had looked upon me over her shoulder, asking the com

pany

pany how long I had been in the room,

and whether This put me

I did not look paler than I used to do. under some apprehensions that I should be forced to explain myself if I did not retire; for which reason I took the candle in my hand, and went up into my chamber, not without wondering at this unaccountable weakness in reasonable creatures, that they should love to astonish and terrify one another. Were I a father, I should take a particular care to preserve my children from these little horrors and imaginations, which they are apt to contract when they are young, and are not able to shake off when they are in years. I have known a soldier that has entered a breach, affrighted at his own shadow, and look pale upon a little scratching at his door, who the day before had marched up against a battery of cannon. There are instances of persons who have been terrified even to distraction at the figure of a tree, or the shaking of a bulrush. The truth of it is, I look upon a sound imagination as the greatest blessing of life, next to a clear judgment, and a good conscience. In the mean time, since there are very few whose minds are not more or less subject to these dreadful thoughts and apprehensions, we ought to arm. ourselves against them by the dictates of reason and religion, to pull the old woman out of our hearts, (as Persius expresses it in the motto of my paper) and extinguish those impertinent notions which we imbibed at a time that we were not able to judge of their absurdity. Or, if we believe, as many wise and good men have done, that there are such phantoms and apparitions as those I have been speaking of, let us endeavour to establish to ourselves an interest in him who holds the reins of the whole creation in his

hands,

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