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CHAPTER VIII - BREAD FROM THE WATERS.
The next day, worn out from loss of sleep, the young man started out upon a last
frenzied search for employment. He had no money for breakfast, and so he went
breakfastless, and as he had no carfare it was necessary for him to walk the
seemingly interminable miles from one prospective job to another. By the middle
of the afternoon Jimmy was hungrier than he had ever been before in his life. He
was so hungry that it actually hurt, and he was weak from physical fatigue and
from disappointment and worry.
"I've got to eat," he soliloquized fiercely, "if I have to go out to-night and pound
somebody on the head to get the price, and I'm going to do it," he concluded as
the odors of cooking food came to him from a cheap restaurant which he was
passing. He stopped a moment and looked into the window at the catsup bottles
and sad-looking pies which the proprietor apparently seemed to think formed an
artistic and attractive window display.
"
If I had a brick," thought Jimmy, "I would have one of those pies, even if I went
to the jug for it," but his hunger had not made him as desperate as he thought he
was, and so he passed slowly on, and, glancing into the windows of the store next
door, saw a display of second-hand clothes and the sign "Clothes Bought and
Sold."
Jimmy looked at those in the window and then down at his own, which, though
wrinkled, were infinitely better than anything on display.
"I wonder," he mused, "if I couldn't put something over in the way of high finance
here," and, acting upon the inspiration, he entered the dingy little shop. When he
emerged twenty minutes later he wore a shabby and rather disreputable suit of
hand-me-downs, but he had two silver dollars in his pocket.
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