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 entering fully into the spirit of the scenes he describes