Helping Himself; Or, Grant Thornton's Ambition

“wish we were not so terribly poor, Grant," said Mrs. Thornton, in a discouraged tone. "Is there anything new that makes you say so, mother?” Horatio Alger, Jr. (January 13, 1832 - July 18, 1899) was a prolific 19th-century American author, most famous for his novels following the adventures of bootblacks, newsboys, peddlers, buskers, and other impoverished children in their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of respectable middle-class security and comfort. His novels about boys who suc...