From Farm to Fortune

Nat Nason is sixteen, an orphan, and working without wages on his uncle Abner Balberry’s farm in Ohio. Abner is a miser, the quarrels pile up, and one day Nat leaves for New York to make his own way. A stroke of luck puts a fair sum of money in his hands, and a city sharper takes it off him just as quickly, which teaches him he is not as shrewd as he thought. After that he works to deserve success rather than simply catch it, though grit alone does not spare him and he comes close to failing outright more than once. The book’s preface admits that what he wins in the end falls short of what he first imagined. It appeared in 1905, six years after Alger’s death, among the last books issued under his name.