I have your letter and check.  You may not believe it, but the former is worth more to me than the latter.  Not, however, that I spurn the check, which it was just like you to send without a lot of grumbling and reproaches, even if I do deserve them.

Your letter shows me what a rotten mess I have made of myself.  I’m not going to hand you a lot of mush, dad, but I want to try to do something that will give you reason to at least have hopes of rejoicing before I come home again.  If I fail I’ll come home anyway, and then neither one of us will have any doubt but what you will have to support me for the rest of my life.  However, I don’t intend to fail, and one of these days I will bob up all serene as president of a bank or a glue factory.  In the mean time I’ll keep you posted as to my whereabouts, but don’t send me another cent until I ask for it; and when I do you will know that I have failed.

    Tell mother that I will write her in a day or two, probably
    from Chicago, as I have always had an idea that that was one
    burg where I could make good.

    With lots of love to you all,

                                        Your affectionate
                                        son.

It was a hot July day that James Torrance, Jr., alighted from the Twentieth Century Limited at the La Salle Street Station, and, entering a cab, directed that he be driven to a small hotel; “for,” he soliloquized, “I might as well start economizing at once, as it might be several days before I land a job such as I want,” in voicing which sentiments he spoke with the tongues of the prophets.

Jimmy had many friends in Chicago with whom, upon the occasion of numerous previous visits to the Western metropolis, he had spent many hilarious and expensive hours, but now he had come upon the serious business of life, and there moved within him a strong determination to win financial success without recourse to the influence of rich and powerful acquaintances.

Since the first crushing blow that his father’s letter had dealt his egotism, Jimmy’s self-esteem had been gradually returning, though along new and more practical lines.  His self-assurance was formed in a similar mold to those of all his other salient characteristics, and these conformed to his physical proportions, for physically, mentally and morally Jimmy Torrance was big; not that he was noticeably taller than other men or his features more than ordinarily attractive, but there was something so well balanced and harmonious in all the proportions of his frame and features as to almost invariably compel a second glance from even a casual observer, especially if the casual observer happened to be in the nonessential creation class.

And so Jimmy, having had plenty of opportunity to commune with himself during the journey from New York, was confident that there were many opportunities awaiting him in Chicago.  He remembered distinctly of having read somewhere that the growing need of big business concerns was competent executive material—­that there were fewer big men than there were big jobs—­and that if such was the case all that remained to be done was to connect himself with the particular big job that suited him.