Out For Business

or Robert Frost's Strange Career

Written by Author: Horatio Alger Jr. and Arthur M. Winfield, pseudonym of Edward Stratemeyer

In the mid 1890s Alger’s interest in assisting needy boys started to wane and in 1896 he left New York entirely to live with his sister Augusta, in Natick, Massachusetts. Plagued by health concerns and with a partial manuscript that he desperately wanted to complete entitled Out for Business (1900), Alger asked a previous editor, Edward Stratemeyer, if he would ghostwrite the remainder of the novel. He readily agreed and although he finished the work by December 1898, Alger couldn’t read it due to an eye condition.

(1900)

PREFACE:

"Out for Business" is a complete tale in itself, but forms the
first of two companion stories, the second being entitled "Falling in
with Fortune." In this tale are related the various haps and mishaps which befall a
sturdy country youth, of high moral aim, who, by the harsh actions of
his step-father, is compelled to leave what had once been the best of
homes, and go forth into the world to make his own way. Robert Frost finds his path to fortune no easy one to tread. The thorns
of adversity line the way, and there is many a pitfall to be avoided.
But the lad is possessed of a good stock of hard, common sense, and in
the end we find him on the fair road to success—and a success richly
deserved. The two stories, "Out for Business" and "Falling in with Fortune,"
give to the reader the last tales begun by that prince of juvenile
writers, Mr. Horatio Alger, Jr., whose books have sold to the extent
of hundreds of thousands of copies, not only in America, but also in
England and elsewhere. The gifted writer was stricken when on the point
of finishing the stories, and when he saw that he could not complete
them himself, it was to the present writer that he turned, and an
outline for a conclusion was drawn up which met with his approval,—and
it is this outline which has now been filled out in order to bring the
tales to a finish, so that both stories might be as nearly as possible
what Mr. Alger intended they should be. It may be that the stories will
not be found as interesting as if Mr. Alger had written them entirely,
nevertheless the present writer trusts that they will still hold the
reader's attention to the end.

Arthur M. Winfield. March 1st, 1900.

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