through departmental heads, assistants thereto, office managers,
assistant office managers, and various other vocations, all with the
same result; discovering meanwhile that experience, while possibly not
essential as some of the ads stated, was usually the rock upon which his
hopes were dashed.

He also learned something else which surprised him greatly: that rather
than being an aid to his securing employment, his college education was
a drawback, several men telling him bluntly that they had no vacancies
for rah-rah boys.

At the end of the second week Jimmy had moved from his hotel to a still
less expensive one, and a week later to a cheap boarding-house on the
north side. At first he had written his father and his mother regularly,
but now he found it difficult to write them at all. Toward the middle of
the fourth week Jimmy had reached a point where he applied for a
position as office-boy.

"I'll be damned if I'm going to quit," he said to himself, "if I have to
turn street-sweeper. There must be some job here in the city that I am
capable of filling, and I'm pretty sure that I can at least get a job as
office-boy."

And so he presented himself to the office manager of a life-insurance
company that had advertised such a vacancy. A very kindly gentleman
interviewed him.

"What experience have you had?" he asked.

Jimmy looked at him aghast.