From the exhibition
Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 450
· March 9, 1886

This issue of the pulp magazine contains two serial stories by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham. "The Boy Ferret of New York: A Romance of Mysteries in Metropolitan Life" opens in the city, where a poorly dressed but intelligent twelve-year-old messenger named Will is hired to deliver a letter to "Jerry, the Night Hawk." After navigating a tenement building with hidden doors and secret passages, Will discovers he has been trapped by a criminal organization and dragged before a dozen menacing men. The second serial, "Wizard Will, the Wonder Worker," shifts to rural Maryland, where a city hunter named Schuyler Cluett is rescued from a flooded bridge by Kent Lomax, a virtuous young farmer. Cluett meets Kent's fiancée, the lovely Ruby Raymond, and resolves to steal her from Kent despite owing his life to the rescuer. By the issue's end, Ruby has eloped with Cluett on the eve of her wedding to Kent.
Public domain (pre-1929), restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain