www.freeclassicebooks.com

"It is a job, however," he thought, "and ten dollars is better than nothing. I can

hang onto it until something better turns up."

With his income now temporarily fixed at the amount of his wages, he was forced

to find a less expensive boarding-place, although at the time he had rented his

room he had been quite positive that there could not be a cheaper or more

undesirable habitat for man. Transportation and other considerations took him to

a place on Indiana Avenue near Eighteenth Street, from whence he found he

could walk to and from work, thereby saving ten cents a day. "And believe me," he

cogitated, "I need the ten."

Jimmy saw little of his fellow roomers. A strange, drab lot he thought them from

the occasional glimpses he had had in passings upon the dark stairway and in

the gloomy halls. They appeared to be quiet, inoffensive sort of folk, occupied

entirely with their own affairs. He had made no friends in the place, not even an

acquaintance, nor did he care to. What leisure time he had he devoted to what he

now had come to consider as his life work--the answering of blind ads in the Help

Wanted columns of one morning and one evening paper--the two mediums which

seemed to carry the bulk of such advertising.

For a while he had sought a better position by applying during the noon hour to

such places as gave an address close enough to the department store in which he

worked to permit him to make the attempt during the forty-five-minute period he

was allowed for his lunch.

But he soon discovered that nine-tenths of the positions were filled before he

arrived, and that in the few cases where they were not he not only failed of

employment, but was usually so delayed that he was late in returning to work

after noon.

The Efficiency Expert