trian
and Swiss Allies of the League.

_Thy Mexican pistoles_. Alluding to the riches gained by the Spanish
monarchy from her American colonies.

_Ho! burghers of St. Genevieve_ = citizens of Paris, of which St.
Genevieve was held to be the patron saint.]

* * * * *

NECESSITY THE MOTHER OF INVENTION.

And now I began to apply myself to make such necessary things as I found
I most wanted, as particularly a chair or a table; for without these I
was not able to enjoy the few comforts I had in the world; I could not
write or eat, or do several things with so much pleasure without a
table.

So I went to work; and here I must needs observe that, as reason is the
substance and original of the mathematics, so by stating and squaring
everything by reason, and by making the most rational judgment of
things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic art. I
had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour,
application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but
I could have made it, especially if I had had tools; however, I made
abundance of things, even without tools, and some with no more tools
than an adze and a hatchet, which perhaps were never made that way
before, and that with infinite labour; for example, if I wanted a board,
I had no other way but to cut down a tree, set it on an edge before me,
and hew it flat on either side with my axe, till I had brought it to be
as thin as a plank, and then dubb it smooth with my adze. It is true, by
this method, I could make but one board out of a whole tree, but this I
had no remedy for but patience, any more than I had for the prodigious
deal of time and labour which it took me up to make a plank or board;
but my time or labour was little worth, and so it was as well employed
one way as another.

However, I made me a table and a chair, as I observed above, in the
first place, and this I did out of the short pieces of boards that
I brought on my raft from the ship: but when I had wrought out some
boards, as above, I made large shelves of the breadth of a foot and a
half one over another, all along one side of my cave, to lay all my
tools, nails, and iron-work, and in a word, to separate everything at
large in their places, that I might come easily at them; I knocked
pieces into the wall of the rock to hang my guns and all things that
would hang up. So that had my cave been to be seen, it l