Note 298 — Chapter XVIII · COFFEE-HOUSES AND TAVERNS.

News was, of course, one of the prime objects of these gatherings. 'I love News extreamly, I have read Three News Letters to day. I go from Coffee House to Coffee House all day on Purpose,'[298] was literally true of some men. Not that their little newspapers gave them much—but of them hereafter. Yet there was a chance of hearing some news before it got into the papers; and the quidnuncs would go to the Windsor, where was to be had 'also the Translation of the Harlem Courant, soon after the Post is come,' or to Grigsby's, where 'all Foreign News is taken in, and Translated into English immediately after the arrival of any Mail,' or to Elford's, where 'is to be seen and read Gratis, the Journal of the famous Voyage of the Duke and Dutchess Privateer of Bristol that took the rich Aquiápulca Ship containing many remarkable Transactions. Also an Account of a Man living alone 4 Years and 4 Months in the Island of John Fernando, which they brought with them.' This was, of course, Alexander Selkirk, who was brought off the island on February 12, 1709; and this log, or the coffee-house gossip anent it, probably furnished the inspiration for 'Robinson Crusoe,' which Defoe published in 1719.