Nick Carter, through all the mazes of metropolitan crime, Frank Merriwell’s athletic triumphs, Fred Fearnot, and the interminable victories of The Liberty Boys of’76 over the hated Redcoats.
He cared not so much for love at first as he did for material success: the straw figures of women in boys’books, something with hair, dancing eyes, and virtuous opinions, impeccably good and vacant, satisfied him completely: they were the guerdon of heroism, something to be freed from villainy on the nick by a blow or a shot, and to be enjoyed along with a fat income.
At the library he ravaged the shelves of boys’books, going unweariedly through all the infinite monotony of the Algers—Pluck and Luck, Sink or Swim, Grit, Jack’s Ward, Jed the Poor-house Boy— and dozens more. He gloated over the fat money-getting of these books (a motif in boys’books that has never been sufficiently recognized); all of the devices of fortune, the loose rail, the signalled train, the rich reward for heroism; or the full wallet found and restored to its owner; or the value of the supposedly worthless bonds; or the discovery of a rich patron in the city, sunk so deeply into his desires that he was never after able to quench them.
And all the details of money—the value of the estate usurped by the scoundrelly guardian and his caddish son, he feasted upon, reckoning up the amount of income, if it were not given, or if it were, dividing the annual sum into monthly and weekly portions, and dreaming on its purchasing power. His desires were not modest—no fortune under $250, 000 satisfied him: the income of $100, 000 at six per cent would pinch one, he felt, from lavishness; and if the reward of virtue was only twenty thousand dollars, he felt bitter chagrin, reckoning life insecure, and comfort a present warmth.
He built up a constant exchange of books among his companions, borrowing and lending in an intricate web, from Max Isaacs, from “Nosey” Schmidt, the butcher’s son, who had all the rich adventures of the Rover Boys; he ransacked Gant’s shelves at home, reading translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey at the same time as Diamond Dick, Buffalo Bill, and the Algers, and for the same reason; then, as the first years waned and
