Horatio Alger

Helping Himself, or Grant Thornton's Ambition deals with the grit and determination of Grant, a 15 year old farmer's boy whose father is dead and in order to pay his minister father's debts, and to help his mother deal with their abject poverty young Grant postpones his college education to take a job as a Wall Street broker's clerk. The first step is to deal with the avaricious and greedy man who is keeping them from obtaining the meager amount due them and which will at least allow them to eat. Grant's wits, pluck and sheer determination are tested time and time again and each time he rises to the occasion. Read of his struggle to feed his mother and himself and then to rise in the world despite great odds. I can say with great confidence that in the end, he might succeed

Excerpt from Fame and Fortune: Or, the Progress of Richard Hunter In the preparation Of the different volumes, the requisite information will be gathered from personal Observation mainly, supplemented, how ever, by facts communicated by those Who have been brought into practical relations with the class of children whose lives are portrayed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Horatio Alger, Jr., in "Facing the World," gives us as his hero a boy whose parents have both died and the man appointed as his guardian is unjust and unkind to him. In desperation he runs away and is very fortunate in finding a true friend in a man who aids him and makes him his helper in his work as magician.

Horatio Alger Jr. (1832 - 1899) was a prolific 19th-century American writer, best known for his many young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty. His writings were characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on America during the Gilded Age. All of Alger's juvenile novels share essentially the same theme, known as the "Horatio Alger myth" a teenage boy works hard to escape poverty. Often it is not hard work that rescues the boy from his fate but rather some extraordinary act of bravery or honesty. The boy might return a large sum of lost money or rescue someone from an overturned carriage. This brings the boy-and his plight-to the attention of a wealthy individual. In this book: The Disagreeable Woman Rupert's ambition Ragged Dick Adrift in New York