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 discouraged Jimmy who crawled into his bed to spend a sleepless night of worry and vain regret, the principal object of his regret being that he was not the son of a blacksmith who had taught him how to shoe horses and who at the same time had been too poor to send him to college.

Long since there had been driven into his mind the conviction that for any practical purpose in life a higher education was as useless as the proverbial fifth wheel to the coach.

“And even,” mused Jimmy, “if I had graduated at the head of my class, I would be no better off than I am now.”

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.