Excerpt: "When Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe, nearly two hundred years ago, boys had more time on their hands, fewer books and fewer games than they have now, and they, as well as their fathers, read it and loved it. And when your father and I were boys-though that is rather less than two hundred years ago-we too used often to read it. But boys nowadays do not seem to read Robinson Crusoe as they used to do. It is too long, they think, and there is much in it that they have not time to read. That is why I have written here, in as few words as possible, the tale of Robinson's twenty-eight years in his Island, and I hope that you, and other boys, will like it."

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