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ALGER SERIES FOR BOYS.
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME.
BY HORATIO ALGER, JR.
{about 50 titles}

TO
The Boys
WHOSE MEMORY GOES BACK WITH ME
TO THE BOARDING SCHOOL
AT POTOWOME
THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
BY
THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE
----

"PAUL PRESCOTT'S CHARGE" is presented to
the public as the second volume of the Campaign
Series.  Though wholly unlike the first
volume, it is written in furtherance of the same
main idea, that every boy's life is a campaign,
more or less difficult, in which success depends
upon integrity and a steadfast adherence to duty.

How Paul Prescott gained strength by
battling with adverse circumstances, and, under
all discouragements, kept steadily before him
the charge which he received from his dying
father, is fully told; and the author will be
glad if the record shall prove an incentive and
an encouragement to those boys who may have
a similar campaign before them.

PAUL PRESCOTT'S CHARGE.

I.

SQUIRE NEWCOME.

"HANNAH!"

The speaker was a tall, pompous-looking
man, whose age appeared to verge close upon
fifty.  He was sitting bolt upright in a high-
backed chair, and looked as if it would be
quite impossible to deviate from his position
of unbending rigidity.

Squire Benjamin Newcome, as he was
called, in the right of his position as Justice
of the Peace, Chairman of the Selectmen, and
wealthiest resident of Wrenville, was a man
of rule and measure.  He was measured in his
walk, measured in his utterance, and measured
in all his transactions.  He might be
called a dignified machine.  He had a very
exalted conception of his own position, and the
respect which he felt to be his due, not only
from his own household, but from all who
approached him.  If the President of the United
States had called upon him, Squire Newcome
would very probably have felt that he himself
was the party who conferred distinction, and
not received it.

Squire Newcome was a widower.  His wife,
who was as different from himself as could well
be conceived, did not live long after marriage. 
She was chilled to death, as it was thought, by
the dignified iceberg of whose establishment
she had become a part.  She had left, however,
a child, who had now grown to be a boy
of twelve.  This boy was a thorn in the side
of his father, who had endeavored in vain to
mould him according to his idea of propriety. 
But Ben was gifted with a spirit of fun, sometimes
running into mischief, which was constantly
bursting out in new directions, in spite
of his father's numerous and rather prosy lectures.

"Han-nah!" again called Squire Newcome,
separating the two syllables by a pause of
deliberation, and strongly accenting the last
syllable,--a habit of his with all proper names.

Hannah was the Irish servant of all work,
who was just then engaged in mixing up bread
in the room adjoining, which was the kitchen.

Feeling a natural reluctance to appear
before her employer with her hands covered with
dough, she hastily washed them.  All this,
however, took time, and before she responded
to the first summons, the second "Han-nah!"