Oliver Optic

CHAPTER I "Boy, come here!" Squire Walker was a very pompous man; one of the most notable persons in the little town of Redfield, which, the inquiring young reader will need to be informed, as it is not laid down on any map of Massachusetts that I am acquainted with, is situated thirty-one miles southwest of Boston. I am not aware that Redfield was noted for anything in particular, unless it... more...

CHAPTER I. THE NAUGHTY GIRL. "Now you will be a good girl, Fanny Jane, while I am gone—won't you?" said Fanny Grant, who has several times before appeared in these stories, to Fanny Jane Grant, her namesake, who has not before been presented to our readers. "O, yes, Miss Fanny; I will be ever so good; I won't even look wrong," replied Fanny Jane, whose snapping black eyes... more...

SIXTEEN YEARS BEFORE. "If you do, Edward, you are no son of mine," said the Honorable Peter Montague, wrathfully, to the young gentleman who stood before him with bowed head. "If you connect yourself in any manner with the family of Richard Medway, I will disown you; I will never speak to you; I will never permit you to come into my presence again!" "But, father—" "I... more...

CHAPTER I. RICHARD GRANT AND FRIEND GET INTO AN AWFUL SCRAPE. "Now, steady as she is," said Sandy Brimblecom, who lay upon the half-deck of the Greyhound, endeavoring to peer through the darkness of a cloudy night, which had settled deep and dense upon the Hudson, and obscured every object on the shore. "Steady as she is, Dick, and we shall go in all right." "Ay, ay; steady it... more...

CHAPTER I. THE IDEA SUGGESTED.   "There are no such peaches this side of New Jersey; and you can't get them, for love or money, at the stores. All we have to do is, to fill our pockets, and keep our mouths closed—till the peaches are ripe enough to eat," said Robert Shuffles, the older and the larger of two boys, who had just climbed over the high fence that surrounded the fine garden... more...

CHAPTER I. MAKING A FLORIDA PORT. "That's it, as true as you live, Captain Alick!" exclaimed Bob Washburn, the mate of the Sylvania, as he dropped the spy-glass from his right eye. "Your dead-reckoning was correct every time." "I have no doubt you are right, Washburn," I replied, referring to an open volume that lay on the shelf under the forward windows of the pilot-house.... more...

CHAPTER I. IN CAPTAIN BOOMSBY'S SALOON. "I don't think it's quite the thing, Alick," said my cousin, Owen Garningham, as we were walking through Bay Street after our return to Jacksonville from the interior of Florida. "What is not quite the thing, Owen?" I inquired, for he had given me no clue to what he was thinking about. "After I chartered your steamer for a year... more...

CHAPTER I. THREE YEARS AFTER. "This is the spot, Bessie," said Levi Fairfield, as he paused on the bank of the brook which flows into the bay near Mike's Point. "But what was the thing you made?" asked Bessie Watson, as she looked with interest at the place indicated, though she could not see anything very remarkable, or even strange. "It was a young saw-mill," laughed... more...

PREFACE "A Lieutenant at Eighteen" is the third of the series of "The Blue and the Gray—on Land." The stirring events of thirty-four years ago, when the first gun of the Great Rebellion awoke the nation from its slumber of thirteen years of peace, transformed the older boys of the day into men. Thousands of them who lacked three or four years of their majority, and some of them even... more...

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... more...