With his income now temporarily fixed at the amount of his wages, he was
forced to find a less expensive boarding-place, although at the time he
had rented his room he had been quite positive that there could not be a
cheaper or more undesirable habitat for man. Transportation and other
considerations took him to a place on Indiana Avenue near Eighteenth
Street, from whence he found he could walk to and from work, thereby
saving ten cents a day. "And believe me," he cogitated, "I need the
ten."

Jimmy saw little of his fellow roomers. A strange, drab lot he thought
them from the occasional glimpses he had had in passings upon the dark
stairway and in the gloomy halls. They appeared to be quiet, inoffensive
sort of folk, occupied entirely with their own affairs. He had made no
friends in the place, not even an acquaintance, nor did he care to. What
leisure time he had he devoted to what he now had come to consider as
his life work--the answering of blind ads in the Help Wanted columns of
one morning and one evening paper--the two mediums which seemed to
carry the bulk of such advertising.

For a while he had sought a better position by applying during the noon
hour to such places as gave an address close enough to the department
store in which he worked to permit him to make the attempt during the
forty-five-minute period he was allowed for his lunch.

But he soon discovered that nine-tenths of the positions were filled
before he arrived, and that in the few cases where they were not he not
only failed of employment, but was usually so delayed that he was late
in returning to work after noon.