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done a foolish thing in giving up his position because of a girl he did not know

and probably never would.

There came a Saturday when Jimmy, jobless and fundless, dreaded his return to

the Indiana Avenue rooming-house, where he knew the landlady would be eagerly

awaiting him, for he was a week in arrears in his room rent already, and had

been warned he could expect no further credit.

"There is a nice young man wanting your room," the landlady had told him, "and I

shall have to be having it Saturday night unless you can pay up."

Jimmy stood on the corner of Clark and Van Buren looking at his watch. "I hate

to do it," he thought, "but the Lizard said he could get twenty for it, and twenty

would give me another two weeks." And so his watch went, and two weeks later

his cigarette-case and ring followed. Jimmy had never gone in much for jewelry--a

fact which he now greatly lamented.

Some of the clothes he still had were good, though badly in want of pressing, and

when, after still further days of fruitless searching for work the proceeds from the

articles he had pawned were exhausted, it occurred to him he might raise

something on all but what he actually needed to cover his nakedness.

In his search for work he was still wearing his best-looking suit; the others he

would dispose of; and with this plan in his mind on his return to his room that

night he went to the tiny closet to make a bundle of the things which he would

dispose of on the morrow, only to discover that in his absence some one had been

there before him, and that there was nothing left for him to sell.

It would be two days before his room rent was again due, but in the mean time

Jimmy had no money wherewith to feed the inner man. It was an almost utterly

The Efficiency Expert