Fun! Lots of coincidence, of course, but less than usual for an Alger - Ben makes his way by sharp observation and quick thinking, more than by accidentally coming across something/someone who puts him on the right path. He does that a couple times (Mr. Taylor, in particular), but the major improvement in his fortunes is due to his noticing something no one else there did. The villains are completely incompetent - I mean the Hills, not the Davenports. And oddly enough, there's no one who's outright villainous - the tramp makes good, Davenport had misgivings at the beginning and gives in rather than fight it, and even the Hills are weak and stupid and greedy but not truly evil - they want to pry him out, but their worst effort is to blacken his name. Makes them much more rounded characters than the cardboard villains who are that way because they're _eeeevil_. And the surprise at encountering an honest boy is more realistic than usual too - not so much "here is a shining example in a black world!" and more "My, what pleasant old-fashioned honesty!" I enjoyed it, I may even reread. The transcription wasn't very successful - there's a note at the end about leaving in some errors, but it claims to have fixed missing quote marks (of which there are still many) and there's no mention of the oddity where many paragraphs break in the middle, after a period (so Mrs.//Hamilton, and the like). I may also go in and fix those (I do like ebooks, where I can do that!). ( )