Copyright, 1897, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.
| published weekly. | NEW YORK, TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 1897. | five cents a copy. |
| vol. xviii.—no. 907. | two dollars a year. |
A BOAT AND A BOY.
BY JOHN HABBERTON.
Some boys, like some men, have greatness thrust upon them. Bruce Marvelbecame one of these boys one day to his own great surprise.
Bruce was a good shot with either rifle or shot-gun; he could pitch,catch, or strike a ball as well as any other boy of his age, and hecould handle a horse better than some men who travel with circuses.Still, he had spent most of his life in an inland village where thelargest body of water was a brook about six feet wide. It stands toreason, therefore, as boys are very like men in longing most for whatis[Pg 474] farthest from their reach, that Bruce's consuming desire, in theline of sport, was for a sail-boat and for water in which to sail it. Hestudied pictures of sailing-craft, which he found in a pictorialdictionary, until he could redraw any of them from memory; he learnedthe names of all the sails of a full-rigged ship, and he delighted insea stories of all kinds, while he longed for the day in which he couldsee broad water and such boats as were moved by wind, and when he couldsit in a boat and manage the sails and rudder.
Fortune finally seemed to favor him, for in his fifteenth year he wasinvited to spend a month at the sea-shore with an aunt of his