Ragged Dick: Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks
by Horatio Alger

Ragged Dick: Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks: Flashbacks 1 key example

Chapter 22: Tracking the Thief
Explanation and Analysis—Jim Travis's Crime:

After Dick finds his bank book missing and begins to suspect that his boardinghouse neighbor, Jim Travis, stole it, Alger uses a flashback to show the crime from the perspective of Travis, who is indeed the thief. Not only does the flashback state exactly when and how Travis steals the bank book—it also tells the reader a lot about him as a character: 

Travis, like a very large number of young men of his class, was able to dispose of a larger amount of money than he was able to earn. Moreover, he had no great fancy for work at all, and would have been glad to find some other way of obtaining money enough to pay his expenses.