Excerpt from Robinson Crusoe’s Father: The Projector of Savings Banks
Now, this little booklet IS not written in imitation of The Life And Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Many have tried to imitate that fascinating romance and failed ere this. In fact, this is not a romance at all; but a chronicle of hard, cold facts. And you know that facts are often stranger and certainly should be more edifying than fiction.
Crusoe’s father - not his story-book father, but his real father - was Daniel Defoe. Defoe it was, whose fertile imagination conceived all the wonderful experiences and the hair-breadth escapes of Crusoe, so that it may truthfully be said that he was the real father of the man who has these many years been every school-boy’s hero.
Defoe was born in 166 I - practically 250 years ago. He was an Englishman and many of his enemies said that his right name was Foe and that he put the De in front of it because he was ashamed of his mother country. But that was a libel, for Defoe served his country better than he served himself or was served by it. When a young man he embarked in business as a hosiery merchant and later as a tile merchant.
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