FLORIDA COAST ***




Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]




[Illustration: "Hallo!" cried Harold, his own voice husky with emotion.
.. Frontispiece]




                                  THE
                           YOUNG MAROONERS ON
                           THE FLORIDA COAST


                                   BY
                             F. R. GOULDING



                          WITH INTRODUCTION BY
                          JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
                             (Uncle Remus)



                              ILLUSTRATED



                                NEW YORK
                         DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
                                  1927




                            COPYRIGHT, 1862
                           BY F. R. GOULDING

                            COPYRIGHT, 1881
                           BY F. R. GOULDING

                            COPYRIGHT, 1887
                       BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY



                          PRINTED IN U. S. A.




                              INTRODUCTION


I have been asked to furnish an introduction for a new edition of "The
Young Marooners."  As an introduction is unnecessary, the writing of it
must be to some extent perfunctory.  The book is known in many lands and
languages.  It has survived its own success, and has entered into
literature.  It has become a classic. The young marooners themselves
have reached middle age, and some of them have passed away, but their
adventures are as fresh and as entertaining as ever.

Dr. Goulding's work possesses all the elements of enduring popularity.
It has the strength and vigour of simplicity; its narrative flows
continuously forward; its incidents are strange and thrilling, and
underneath all is a moral purpose sanely put.

The author himself was surprised at the great popularity of his story,
and has written a history of its origin as a preface.  The internal
evidence is that the book is not the result of literary ambition, but of
a strong desire to instruct and amuse his own children, and the story is
so deftly written that the instruction is a definite part of the
narrative.  The art here may be unconscious, but it is a very fine art
nevertheless.

Dr. Goulding lived a busy life.  He had the restless missionary spirit
which he inherited from the Puritans of Dorchester, England, who
established themselves in Dorchester, South Carolina, and in Dorchester,
Georgia, before the Revolutionary War.  Devoting his life to good works,
he nevertheless found time to indulge his literary faculty; he also
found time to indulge his taste for mechanical invention.  He invented
the first sewing-machine that was ever put in practical use in the
South. His family were using this machine a year before the Howe patents
