Horatio Jr Alger: 203 books

Hero Harry Walton leaves Professor Henderson to enter the Centerville Gazette as a printer's apprentice, also known as a "printer's devil," in his continued attempt to mirror the life of Benjamin Franklin, his hero. Although this means that he will take a loss in pay, he sees it as a favourable...

There are numerous character in this book but what most fascinating is the life of Benjamin Bradford and his Aunt Jane. Benjamin has a little earnings that worries him how they would survived but his motto wait and hope help him overcome this struggle. We are reminded that we should hope and wait for there is hope and willingness to wait, all things will fall to its rightful place.

That is the City Hall over there, Edgar." The speaker was a man of middle age, with a thin face and a nose like a Hawk. He was well dressed, and across his vest was visible a showy gold chain with a cameo charm attached to it. (Excerpt)

When, three years since, the author published "Ragged Dick," he was far from anticipating the flattering welcome it would receive, or the degree of interest which would be excited by his pictures of street life in New York. The six volumes which comprised his original design are completed, but the...

Excerpt: “Augustus Fitz-Herbert, as all are aware, Having crossed the Atlantic, and got a moustache on, likewise being son of a known millionaire, stands of course on the very top round of the fashion. Being taught to consider himself, from his birth, as one of the privileged ones of the earth,...

Alone and penniless on the streets of New York, runaway orphan Sam Barker turns to theft and petty crime to survive.

Cheated of his inheritance by his scheming stepmother, young Gerald Lane goes to work for a lawyer who sends him on a perilous mission to Montana to recover stolen money.

He congratulated himself upon being still the possessor of twenty-five cents in silver. It was not much, but it seemed a great deal better than being penniless. A week before he would have thought it impossible that such a paltry sum would have made him feel comfortable, but he had passed through a great deal since then.(Excerpt)

Fifteen year old Harry Gilbert worked in a grocery to support his widowed mother, but lost his job to the storekeeper's relative. After escaping a trick trap set by his tormentors, Harry discovers a tin box that changes his life.

A man of middle age, muffled up in an overcoat, got out of a Third Avenue car, just opposite a small drug shop. Quickly glancing up and down the street with a furtive look, as if he wished to avoid recognition from any passerby who might know him, he entered the shop.