's
remonstrances.

II

ROBINSON AS AN APPRENTICE

In this way one year after another slipped by. Robinson was not more
diligent. He was now almost sixteen years old and had not learned
anything. Then came his birthday. In the afternoon his father called him
into his room. Robinson opened the door softly. There sat his father
with a sad face. He looked up and said, "Well, Robinson, all your
schoolmates have long been busy trying to learn something, so that they
may be able to earn their own living. Paul will be a baker, Robert a
butcher, Martin is learning to be a carpenter, Herman a tailor, Otto a
blacksmith, Fritz is going to high school, because he is going to be a
teacher. Now, you are still doing nothing. This will not do. From this
time on I wish you to think of becoming a merchant. In the morning you
will go with me to the store and begin work. If you are attentive and
skillful, when the time comes you can take up my business and carry it
on. But if you remain careless and continue to idle about, no one will
ever want you and you must starve because you will never be able to earn
a living."

So the next morning Robinson went to the store and began work. He
wrapped up sugar and coffee, he weighed out rice and beans. He sold meal
and salt, and when the dray wagon pulled up at the store, loaded with
new goods, he sprang out quickly and helped to unload it. He carried in
sacks of flour and chests of tea, and rolled in barrels of coffee and
molasses. He also worked some at the desk. He looked into the account
books and saw in neat writing, "Goods received" and "Goods sold." He
noticed how his father wrote letters and reckoned up his accounts. He
even took his pen in hand and put the addresses on the letters and
packages as well as he could.

But soon he was back in his careless habits. He was no longer attentive
to business. He wrapped up salt instead of sugar. He put false weights
on the scales. He gave some too much and others too little. His hands,
only, were in the business, his mind was far away on the ocean with the
ships. When he helped unload the wagons, he would often let the chests
and casks drop, so that they were broken and their contents would run
out on the ground. For he was always thinking, "Where have these casks
come from and how beautiful it must be there!" And many times packages
came back because Robinson had written the name of the place or the
country wrong. For when he was writing