Do and Dare - a Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune shows how bad decisions can lead to bad consequences. Herbert Carr is a great role model; honest, loyal, and hardworking. Do and Dare is part of a series of rags to riches stories of boys working hard and achieving the American dream of wealth. The stories can be seen as tracing American cultural and social patterns. Horatio Alger, Jr. authored about seventy books. He was the son of a clergyman, graduated from Harvard. His stories are pure, inspiring and as endearing today as they were when first published.

If you've ever used the phrase "rags to riches," you owe that to Horatio Alger, Jr. (1832-1899), who popularized the idea through his fictional writings that also served as a theme for the way America viewed itself as a country. Alger's works about poor boys rising to better living conditions through hard work, determination, courage, honesty, and morals was popular with both adults and younger readers. Alger's writings happened to correspond with America's Gilded Age, a time of increasing prosperity in a nation rebuilding from the Civil War. His lifelong theme of rags to riches continued to gain popularity but has gradually lessened since the 1920s. Still, readers today often come across Ragged Dick and stories like it in school.

Reproduction of the original.

Hero Herbert Carr is the son of a war widow who had assumed her husband's place as postmaster of the small rural town in Waynesboro. Widow Carr is upset because Squire Walsingham is using his political influence to take the post away from the widow to put into the hands of his nephew, Ebenezer Graham, the local miser and shopkeeper. Walsingham succeeds in his efforts and the post is given to Mr. Graham. Since Mr. Graham is uncertain of how to run a post office, he offers to hire Herbert for a pittance to run things until he learns what must be done. However, Mr. Graham's son, Eben Graham, a fop/spendthrift, returns from Boston where he had been a shop clerk. Fired because of his own arrogance, he returns home seeking employment. Mr. Graham fires Herbert and hires his son. Herbert is at first dismayed, but then encounters his patron, George Melville, a young man who is incredibly wealthy (the amount of his fortune is never disclosed), who had trained to be a lawyer but was forced to abandon his practice due to consumption. He offers Herbert an extravagant amount weekly to engage him in outdoor activities to cure his illness. Henry is extremely happy with this opportunity to care for his mother and readily agrees. When Eben hears about Herbert's windfall, he is outraged, feeling that he would be the better companion. After going to Melville's hotel suite and asking him for Herbert's job (and being refused), he organizes a plot of false accusation to have Herbert arrested on charges of theft from the post office. Although Herbert is taken before the judge, his previous good behavior convinces all involved that he is innocent. Furthermore, George Melville uses his education in law to prove that Eben was the true thief in cross-examination.

Herbert Carr lives with his widowed mother in Wayneboro, Massachusetts and to support his ailing mother, young Herbert takes a number of odd jobs and becomes a paid companion to a wealthy but sickly young man. They survive by operating a small post office until the selfish Ebenezer Graham takes it over. Graham allows Herbert to stay on as an assistant, but when his son returns unexpectedly from Boston, he lets Herbert go.