Charlie Bell, The Waif of Elm Island

When the English army, during the war of the Revolution, were driven out of Boston by the batteries of Washington, erected upon Dorchester Heights, those traitors to the liberti...

Ben now jumped into his canoe, and gave chase to the one who had jumped overboard, and was swimming with all his might for the shore. On coming out of the water he ran for the w...

One of old Mr. Yelf’s grandsons was going as cook with John Strout; and in the morning, when John came alongside his vessel, after his return from Elm Island with the net and fi...

It was now the month of October. The early frosts had rendered the air sharp and bracing. The nights were long, affording abundance of sleep, and the forests were clothed in all...

The orphan boy, whom his mother in her dying moments committed in faith to God, had fallen into good hands. He, who through storm and tempest directs the sea-bird to her nest am...

Charles would have been more than human if he could have rested easy without a sail for his canoe, after seeing John’s, and sailing with him in his float. He tried a hemlock bus...

There was a certain article of household use that Charles had for a long time been desirous of making for his mother; but he wanted to surprise her with it. This seemed to him a...

Though every boy, almost, in America knows that baskets are made of ash and oak, it was an entirely new thing to Charles. However, by the instruction of Ben, and the practice of...

The next morning Charles went to look at the willows. He said they were different from the sallies they made baskets of; that the same kind grew in England, but they called them...

One evening they made a rousing fire. Ben got out his shoemaker’s bench, and was tapping a pair of shoes. Boots were not worn by them; they wore shoes and buskins.

The spring was now approaching. Ben had a large amount of lumber cut; but, as the spars had been pretty well culled out before, much the greater proportion of it was logs, fit o...

Charles had business enough. He began to put in practice the lessons he had learned in the winter, and killed four whistlers out of the first flock that came. He launched his ca...

John Strout now came from the West Indies, and went to work with them. He brought home tamarinds, guava jelly, and other good things for Sally; a hat made of palm-leaf for Ben,...

It was now the latter part of summer. The vessel being completed as far as was possible at present, Captain Rhines went home, leaving Ben and Charlie alone. There was now a larg...

It was now the month of September, and time to think of getting ready for sea. Captain Rhines came on to the island, and with him John Strout, who had closed up his fishing, and...

Sabbath morning, after a rainy day and night, Charlie waking up, and looking, as he usually did the first thing, in the direction of Captain Rhines’s, missed the great bulk of t...

As they came to the edge of the woods they espied Uncle Isaac standing beneath the branches of the old maple, and, with his hand over his eyes, looking all around him as though...

There was a moderate breeze, the fag end of a north-wester, and the canoe, which was large, and had excellent oars, sail, and a first-rate steering paddle, went off before it ro...

The next morning, having despatched their breakfast, they sat down under a tree, which, being on high ground, afforded a good position from which to judge of the weather. The qu...

Dinner at length being over (though later than usual, on account of the time occupied in baking the pie, and later, still, by reason of the goodness of it), they prepared to sta...

“We’ll help you,” said Charlie; “it’s a short job for all three of us; and you know we’ve promised to help Uncle Isaac dig potatoes one day, because he shot the arrow into the m...