The protagonists in Horatio Alger stories are often, if one may play on a metaphor, up a creek without a paddle. In this celebrated Alger novel, the young hero is comfortably ensconced at the Essex Classical Institute until misfortune makes his expensive education impossible. If the problem of financing an education resonates, it is because millions of Americans are frustrated in their ambitions because they now find that the price of education has soared far beyond their capacity to pay, with no prospect of an Alger quirk of fate to help.