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The Young Ship-Builders of Elm Island

Chapter 2: PREFACE.
By Elijah Kellogg
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AdventureAmerican LiteratureChildren & Young Adult Reading

About This Book

A group of island boys move from seasonal, self-directed labor into apprenticeships and paid work, learning trades such as smithing and shipbuilding while confronting practical dangers, storms, and workplace mishaps. Their experiences include reef gunning, voyages to a nearby city that broaden their ideas, and efforts at local improvements. Through competition, responsibility, setbacks, and acts of service and prayer they develop mechanical skill, independence, and moral resolve. Episodes trace learning, community ties, small triumphs and failures, and the transition from boyhood tasks to steady employment, culminating in durable achievement and greater social standing.

PREFACE.

The natural progress of this series has brought us to a period in the history of our young friends, when, instead of labors in a measure voluntary, pursued at home, amid home comforts, they toil for exacting masters or the public, enter into competition with others, feel the pressure of responsibility, learn submission, and are tied down to rigid rules and severe tasks. The manner in which they meet and sustain these new and trying relations shows the stuff they are made of; that the fear of God in a young heart is a shield in the hour of temptation, the foundation of true courage, and the strongest incentive to manly effort; that he who does the best for his employer does the best for himself; that the boy in whose character are the germs of sterling worth, and a true manhood, will scorn to lead a useless life, eat the bread he has not earned, and live upon the bounty of parents and friends.

ELM ISLAND STORIES.

1. LION BEN OF ELM ISLAND.
2. CHARLIE BELL, THE WAIF OF ELM ISLAND.
3. THE ARK OF ELM ISLAND.
4. THE BOY FARMERS OF ELM ISLAND.
5. THE YOUNG SHIP-BUILDERS OF ELM ISLAND.
6. THE HARD-SCRABBLE OF ELM ISLAND.