CHAPTER IV.

JIMMY HUNTS A JOB.

Once again Jimmy walked out onto Madison Street, and, turning to his
right, dropped into a continuous vaudeville show in an attempt to coax
his spirits back to somewhere near their normal high-water mark. Upon
the next day he again haunted the newspaper office without reward, and
again upon the third day with similar results. To say that Jimmy was
dumfounded would be but a futile description of his mental state. It was
simply beyond him to conceive that in one of the largest cities in the
world, the center of a thriving district of fifty million souls, there
was no business man with sufficient acumen to realize how badly he
needed James Torrance, Jr., to conduct his business for him
successfully.

With the close of the fourth day, and no reply, Jimmy was thoroughly
exasperated. The kindly clerk, who by this time had taken a personal
interest in this steadiest of customers, suggested that Jimmy try
applying for positions advertised in the Help Wanted column, and this he
decided to do.

There were only two concerns advertising for general managers in the
issue which Jimmy scanned; one ad called for an experienced executive to
assume the general management of an old established sash, door and blind
factory; the other insisted upon a man with mail-order experience to
take charge of the mail-order department of a large department store.

Neither of these were precisely what Jimmy had hoped for, his preference
really being for the general management of an automobile manufactory or