Fame and Fortune

This book continues the story of Ragged Dick. He and his young friend Henry Fosdick realise they can afford to move to a better place, this time to a boarding house. Fosdick has been given a job in a retail store. Because Dick risked his life to rescue a lad, now he has been given a job as messenger in a wholesale firm. Dick, now called by his proper name Richard Hunter, is being paid $10 a week, much more than if he had been a regular messenger boy. The clerk, however, takes a great dislike to him. He is always being accusatory and making sly comments which Dick takes in his offhand manner not getting wound up, but often in his replies adroitly turning the sting back onto the clerk. This does not improve the clerk’s opinion of him! When Dick, is invited to his employer’s home (the parents of the rescued child), and then is gifted a gold watch and chain along with an envelope with a check for $1000, he is amazed! The clerk and others of Dick’s former acquaintances become very jealous when they see the watch. Dick, though, wisely seeks counsel for investing. He and Fosdick realise it is time to have better education, Fosdick having taught him all he knew. There is a man at the boarding house who they learn is a teacher in a private school. They ask if he would take them on as evening students. And so they embark on more learning, including learning French! Everything goes well, except for the increased hateful remarks from the clerk at his job. But then comes the day when Dick is accused and taken in by a policeman to the station house. What are his prospects now? I listened to an audio recording by Librivox. The reader of the first part was the same one who read Ragged Dick, by this time, you get used to the way she does voices. The rest of the story is read by a man. He seems to be able to give a more realistic sound to these happenings with rough boys and the working world in 1800’s New York.