Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 199

This serialized fiction installment, "Featherweight, or On His Muscle, Wits and Honor" by Edward Willett, follows Fred Light, a seventeen-year-old "light weight champion" recently departed from flatboat work on the Ohio River. Upon arriving in Cairo with his German companion Herman Schweitopfel, Fred becomes embroiled in a hotel brawl after a rude clerk and porter attempt to eject him. Fred handily defeats the porter in combat. A well-dressed cotton merchant named Alfred Creswell witnesses this display and approaches Fred afterward with a business proposition: for fifty dollars, Fred must abduct Creswell's orphaned niece Sophie from a store-boat where she is hiding, and deliver her across the river to Missouri. Creswell claims Sophie has run away due to an unsuitable suitor. Fred, skeptical of the easy payment, agrees to investigate before committing to the scheme. The narrative emphasizes Fred's physical prowess, independence, and moral character, establishing the boy as protagonist in what appears an adventure-kidnapping plot.