When Elijah was some ten or eleven years old he was taken to Gorham, and spent some months in the home of Mrs. Lothrop Lewis. Mrs. Lewis had a young daughter whom she wished put into a Portland school, and an exchange of children was made with the Kelloggs, they taking the girl into their home and Mrs. Lewis taking the boy into hers. This exchange was in many respects a grateful one to the boy. The country was the place for him. There was more freedom there, more room and more chance for fun than in town. Perhaps, too, the fact that his father was nine miles away had its alleviations, for the presence of a father, however dearly he was loved, was a damper on the spirit of prankishness. While with Mrs. Lewis, Elijah certainly made mischief for everybody, but at the same time he made friends of everybody, for none could help loving the bright and lively fellow. In due time the boy went back to Portland. But the city was no place for a lad like him. He chafed under its restraints, and cared but little for its schools. He was like a sea-gull shut up in a cage. As the imprisoned gull pines for the freedom of wind and wave so did the heart of Elijah Kellogg long for the free winds and the rolling waters and the ships that went sailing away to distant ports. It was a longing that could not be suppressed, and no one can really blame him that before he was thirteen years old he had found his way on board a ship and become a sailor in downright earnest. I am sure that the boys who read his books are not sorry that the hand that wrote those stories gained some of its cunning by pulling ropes, furling and unfurling sails, taking his trick at the wheel, and sharing actively in whatever pertained to the handling and management of vessels. He loved the sea, and was fascinated by the strange sights and sounds of foreign countries. He was a keen observer for a boy just entering his teens, and he gained much valuable knowledge as he wandered round the world borne along by the wings of a ship. But in his roving he never for one moment forgot his home. His heart was warm and true to the friends who were there. Letters written to his father from different quarters of the world are now in existence, and they bear full testimony to his ardent affection for home and friends. His love for friends was perhaps the strongest element of his nature, even stronger than his love of adventure, and in due time that love brought him back from his travels no longer to sail the seas except in small boats near the shore. In the story of “Charlie Bell,” Mr. Kellogg (unconsciously, no doubt) has given us the picture of a boy’s nature and disposition very much like his own.