Despite the belief that Horatio Alger's fiction represents the American gospel to wealth through hard work, none of his characters actually work to get rich. Dick is rewarded by a rich man for saving his daughter's life and through the latter's charity is able to rise from rags to riches. Although Twain makes no overt references to Alger, he was certainly familiar with his work. Twain engages the Alger myth in his novel the "Gilded Age." Those characters who speculate wildly and dream of great riches end up with nothing; but those who work hard in pursuit of their dreams end up like Philip Sterling, someone who has put great energy and industriousness into rising from rags to riches. So Twain was much more enamoured of the Andrew Carnegie version of rags to riches than he was of the Alger myth of rags to charity to riches.