"You
need be under no anxiety about Luke and his prospects," he said to Mrs.
Larkin. "I shall make over to him ten thousand dollars at once,
constituting myself his guardian, and will see that he is well started
in business. My friend Mr. Armstrong proposes to take him into his
office, if you do not object, at a liberal salary."
"I shall miss him
very much," said Mrs. Larkin, "though I am thankful that he is to be so
well provided for."
"He can come home
every Saturday night, and stay until Monday morning," said Mr. Reed, ...
"Will that satisfy you?"
"It ought to, surely,
and I am grateful to Providence for all the blessings which it has showered
upon me and mine." [...]
No one rejoiced
more sincerely at Luke's good fortune than Linton, who throughout had
been a true and faithful friend. He is at present visiting Europe
with his mother, and has written an earnest letter, asking Luke to join
him. But Luke feels that he cannot leave a good business position,
and must postpone the pleasure of traveling till he is older.
Mr. J. Madison Coleman, the enterprising drummer, has
got into trouble, and is at present an inmate of the State penitentiary
at Joliet, Illinois. It is fortunate for the traveling public, so
many of whom he has swindled, that he is for a time placed where he can
do no more mischief.
So closes an eventful passage in the life of Luke Larkin.
He has struggled upward from a boyhood of privation
and self-denial into a youth and manhood of prosperity and honor.
There has been some luck about it, I admit,
but after all he is indebted for most of his good fortune to his own good
qualities.
Horatio Alger,
"Struggling Upward"
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