The lessons begin when Dick meets a middle-class boy, Frank, and his uncle. The adult sponsor was Alger’s great innovation in the genre. The uncle tells Dick, “Remember that your future position depends mainly on yourself, and that it will be high or low as you choose to make it.” In Alger’s version of America, a homeless, illiterate child, living in a box in an alley, needs only good advice if he is made of the right stuff. To indicate that not all poor children are made of the right stuff, Alger introduces an Irish villain—Mickey Maguire—whose name conveys his shortcomings.
