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Out of
HARACTER
Any resemblance to a hero is strictly hallucination.
by HAROLD HELFER
LET a man of humble origin lift himself up by his own bootstraps and become somebody, and his story cannot escape inheriting a "Horatio Alger" label in the press and in the public mind.
Yet the fact remains that there could hardly be a less likely candidate for the "Horatio Alger" tag than Horatio Alger himself.
It is true that his name as a prototype of sterling success is probably indelible. It is also true that two generations ago he was a phenomenal literary rage. Yet Horatio Alger is one of the most pitiful figures ever to stride — falter is a better word — across the American scene.
He began life out of character because he was not raggedy and obscure. His father, also named Horatio Alger, was a Unitarian minister. Far from selling papers on a corner, Horatio, Jr., attended the best schools and was graduated from Harvard.
But young Horatio did have a big handicap: his father. The Reverend
Alger of Revere, Massachusetts, was a stern disciplinarian and believed in a routine composed entirely of study and work. He frowned on light thoughts and insisted that his son study for the ministry, even though the boy was ill-suited for the cloth. Not only that, but he stepped in to break up Horatio's first love affair.
The man whose name was to become synonymous with forthrightness and pluck was never able to stand up to his father. He gave up his romance — although there were indications that he never got over his first love — and he studied theology, even if it wasn't what he wanted to do.
Horatio finally did rebel, all right, but there was nothing particularly forthright about it. When the Reverend Alger drove up to Cambridge to see his son on Harvard's graduation platform, Junior wasn't there. He'd skipped the ceremonies to run off to Paris.
There he took up with a Bohemian crowd, and — although it did not come easily or naturally — he finally began to lead what might be said to be a Bohemian life. He didn't go in for spirited liquids and he didn't care for nicotine. But there was a woman.
She was French and she finally seduced him, but she practically had