Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 167

# Catalog Note: The Steamboat Boy

The Steamboat Boy: A Romance of a Rich Boy and a Poor Boy by Edward Willett opens with two parallel narratives. Asa Sproule, a seventeen-year-old orphan from Missouri, discovers his spendthrift father's estate worthless. Examining old papers in a carpet-bag, he finds stock certificates in Consolidated Virginia mining shares. A St. Louis broker reveals these worthless-seeming papers are now worth $210,000 due to a recent bonanza strike. After settling his father's debts, Asa books passage on the steamboat War Eagle to New Orleans to travel before deciding his future.

A second storyline follows Asa Scott, called "Snakeroot," a seventeen-year-old pantry-boy aboard the same steamer. Described as tall, lean, tow-haired, and wearing tattered shore clothes, Snakeroot stands on the levee at St. Louis. An Irish deck hand, drunk and aggressive, approaches him seeking confrontation, suggesting prior antagonism between the two characters.