The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Boat Club, by Oliver Optic

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Title: The Boat Club
or, The Bunkers of Rippleton

Author: Oliver Optic

Release Date: February 9, 2008 [EBook #24557]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOAT CLUB ***

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Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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Internet Archive

[Illustration: THE BOAT CLUB
OLIVER OPTIC]

[Illustration: Tim seized an Oar. _P._ 217.]

THE BOAT CLUB
OR
THE BUNKERS OF RIPPLETON

By

OLIVER OPTIC

_NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED_

NEW YORK
THE MERSHON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1896,
By LEE AND SHEPARD

IN MEMORY OF
_MY NEPHEW_,
WILLIAM PARKER JEWETT
Who Died January 4, 1884,
TO WHOM
This Book
WAS ORIGINALLY DEDICATED

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

"THE BOAT CLUB" was written and published more than forty years ago,
and was the first juvenile book the author had ever presented to the
public. Young people who read it at the age of eighteen have now
reached threescore, and those who read it at ten have passed their
half-century of life. The electrotype plates from which it has been
printed for more than a generation of human life have suffered so much
from severe wear that new ones have become necessary, and they must be
replaced. This condition affords the author the opportunity to revise
the work, in fact, to make a new book of it; and the old boat must be
reconstructed and launched again. The author has something to say on
what suggests itself as a memorial occasion when something historical
may be said. First, it is proper that old things should be respected
and honored, and therefore is presented the--

ORIGINAL PREFACE

OF "THE BOAT CLUB."

The author of the following story pleads guilty of being more than
half a boy himself; and in writing a book to meet the wants and the
tastes of "Young America," he has had no difficulty in stepping
back over the weary waste of years that separates youth from
maturity, and enter