Transcriber’s Note:
Table of Contents added.
herbert randolph emerges from the cellar in whichhe has been kept a prisoner.THE BOY BROKER;
or,
AMONG THE KINGS OF WALL STREET.
by
FRANK A. MUNSEY.
NEW YORK:
FRANK A. MUNSEY & CO., Publishers, 81 Warren Street.
1888.
Copyright, 1888, by
FRANK A. MUNSEY.
[All rights reserved.]
Press of Ferris Brothers.
420 Pearl Street, N. Y.
TO MY DEAR FATHER,
whose rigid new england discipline seemed to me as a boy severe and
unnecessary, this volume is affectionately dedicated with the
grateful acknowledgment that he was right and that
i was wrong. for this training and for all else
i owe him i can pay the debt best by
living the life that will
please him most.
PREFACE.
The best story for boys is the one that will help them mostand give them the greatest pleasure—the story that will makethem more manly, more self reliant, more generous, more nobleand sweeter in disposition. Such a story I have aimed tomake The Boy Broker. The moral or lesson it contains couldbe put into a very short lecture, but as a lecture I am confidentthat it would prove valueless. Boys are benefited little byadvice. They seldom listen to it and less frequently make anypractical application of it. Imitative by nature, they are easilyinfluenced by those with whom they associate, and no associate,in my opinion, has so strong a grasp upon them as the hero ofsome much prized book. He becomes a real being to theiryoung, healthy imagination—their ideal of manliness, bravery,generosity, and nobility. He enters into their lives, theirsports, their adventures, their kind acts, a companion, a modelso much idealized and admired that unconsciously they growto be like him in so far as their surroundings will permit. In agood story plot and action are but the setting to the gem—themeans of conveying a lesson in disguise in such a way that thereader will not suspect he is being taught. Let it once occurto him that he is reading a lecture and the book will at oncebe quietly but most effectually packed away. Many authors,[Pg 6]it seems to me, fail in their purpose by devoting too much timeto the gem and too little to the setting. Others go too far theother way and write stories that give young readers a wrongidea of life—stories whose heroes do improbable and unnaturalacts. While my purpos