if I was a bad
carpenter, I was a worse tailor. However, they were such as I made very
good shift with; and when I was abroad, if it happened to rain, the hair
of my waistcoat and cap being uppermost, I was kept very dry.

After this I spent a great deal of time and pains to make me an
umbrella: I was indeed in great want of one, and had a great mind to
make one; I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they were very
useful in the great heats which are there; and I felt the heats every
jot as great here, and greater too, being nearer the equinox: besides,
as I was obliged to be much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as
well for the rains as the heats. I took a world of pains at it, and was
a great while before I could make any thing likely to hold; nay, after I
thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to
my mind; but at last I made one that answered indifferently well; the
main difficulty I found was to make it to let down: I could make it
spread, but if it did not let down too, and draw in, it was not portable
for me any way but just over my head, which would not do. However, at
last, as I said, I made one to answer, and covered it with skins, the
hair upwards, so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house, and kept
off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the
weather with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest; and
when I had no need of it, could close it, and carry it under my arm.

Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed by
resigning to the will of God, and throwing myself wholly upon the
disposal of his providence. This made my life better than sociable; for
when I began to regret the want of conversation, I would ask myself,
whether thus conversing mutually with my own thoughts, and, as I hope I
may say, with even God himself, by ejaculations, was not better than the
utmost enjoyment of human society in the world?

I cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing
happened to me, but I lived on in the same course, in the same posture
and place, just as before; the chief things I was employed in, besides
my yearly labour of planting my barley and rice, and curing my raisins,
of both which I always kept up just enough to have sufficient stock of
one year's provision beforehand; I say, besides this yearly labour, and
my daily pursuit of going out with my gun, I had one labour, to make me
a ca