This Book

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.




PREFACE

The story contained in this volume is a record of youthful struggles,
not only in the world without, but in the world within; and the success
of the little hero is not merely a gathering up of wealth and honors,
but a triumph over the temptations that beget the pilgrim on the plain
of life. The attainment of worldly prosperity is not the truest
victory, and the author has endeavored to make the interest of his
story depend more on the hero's devotion to principles than on his
success in business.

Bobby Bright is a smart boy; perhaps the reader will think he is
altogether too smart for one of his years. This is a progressive age,
and any thing which Young America may do need not surprise any person.
That little gentleman is older than his father, knows more than his
mother, can talk politics, smoke cigars, and drive a 2:40 horse. He
orders "one stew" with as much ease as a man of forty, and can even
pronounce correctly the villanous names of sundry French and German
wines and liqueurs. One would suppose, to hear him talk, that he had
been intimate with Socrates and Solon, with Napoleon and Noah Webster;
in short, that whatever he did not know was not worth knowing.

In the face of these manifestations of exuberant genius, it would be