Yet what could he do?  He was but a boy, and the great world would look with contempt upon his puny form.  But he felt that he was not altogether insignificant.  He had performed an act, that day, which the fair young lady, to whom he had rendered the service, had declared very few men would have undertaken.  There was something in him, something that would come out, if he only put his best foot forward.  It was a tower of strength within him.  It told him that he could do wonders; that he could go out into the world and accomplish all that would be required to free his mother from debt, and relieve her from the severe drudgery of her life.

A great many people think they can “do wonders.”  The vanity of some very silly people makes them think they can command armies, govern nations, and teach the world what the world never knew before, and never would know but for them.  But Bobby’s something within him was not vanity.  It was something more substantial.  He was not thinking of becoming a great man, a great general, a great ruler, or a great statesman; not even of making a great fortune.  Self was not the idol and the end of his calculations.  He was thinking of his mother, and only of her; and the feeling within him was as pure, and holy, and beautiful as the dream of an angel.  He wanted to save his mother from insult in the first place, and from a life of ceaseless drudgery in the second.

A legion of angels seemed to have encamped in his soul to give him strength for the great purpose in his mind.  His was a holy and a true purpose, and it was this that made him think he could “do wonders.”  What Bobby intended to do the reader shall know in due time.  It is enough now that he meant to do something.  The difficulty with a great many people is, that they never resolve to do something.  They wait for “something to turn up;” and as “things” are often very obstinate, they utterly refuse to “turn up” at all.  Their lives are spent in waiting for a golden opportunity which never comes.

Now, Bobby Bright repudiated the Micawber philosophy.  He would have nothing to do with it.  He did not believe corn would grow without being planted, or that pouts would bite the bare hook.

I am not going to tell my young readers now how Bobby made out in the end; but I can confidently say that, if he had waited for “something to turn up,” he would have become a vagabond, a loafer, out of money, out at the elbows, and out of patience with himself and all the world.

It was “now or never” with Bobby.  He meant to do something; and after he had made up his mind how and where it was to be done, it was no use to stand thinking about it, like the pendulum of the “old clock which had stood for fifty years in a farmer’s kitchen, without giving its owner any cause of complaint.”