Sam isn't too much of a goody-two-shoes, like some Horatio Alger heroes. He even tries to rob his roommate. Then he moves to Boston for a new start and decides to try to become respectable. He walks up Tremont street stopping in all the stores looking for work. Sam stumbles into a great job in the usual Alger way and becomes quite successful. Excerpt from Sam's Chance: And How He Improved It Sam's Chance is a sequel to the "Young Outlaw," and is designed to illustrate the gradual steps by which that young man was induced to give up his bad habits, and deserve that prosperity which he finally attains. The writer confesses to have experienced some embarrassment in writing this story. The story writer always has at command expedients by which the frowns of fortune may be turned into sunshine, and this without violating probability, or, at any rate, possibility; for the careers of many of our most eminent and successful men attest that truth is oftentimes stranger than fiction. But to cure a boy of radical faults is almost as difficult in fiction as in real life.