tly controlled saloons which they leased, and
get them to help him. Then he remembered that he would have to pay out
several hundred any way for fixtures and that he would have nothing left
for his monthly expenses. It was costing him nearly eighty dollars a
month to live.

"No," he said, in his sanest moments, "I can't do it. I'll get something
else and save up."

This getting-something proposition complicated itself the moment he
began to think of what it was he wanted to do. Manage a place? Where
should he get such a position? The papers contained no requests for
managers. Such positions, he knew well enough, were either secured by
long years of service or were bought with a half or third interest. Into
a place important enough to need such a manager he had not money enough
to buy.

Nevertheless, he started out. His clothes were very good and his
appearance still excellent, but it involved the trouble of deluding.
People, looking at him, imagined instantly that a man of his age, stout
and well dressed, must be well off. He appeared a comfortable owner of
something, a man from whom the common run of mortals could well expect
gratuities. Being now forty-three years of age, and comfortably built,
walking was not easy. He had not been used to exercise for many years.
His legs tired, his shoulders ached, and his feet pained him at
the close of the day, even when he took street cars in almost every
direction. The mere getting up and down, if long continued, produced
this result.

The fact that people took him to be better off than he was, he well
understood. It was so painfully clear to him that it retarded his
search. Not that he wished to be less well-appearing, but that he was
ashamed to belie his appearance by incongruous appeals. So he hesitated,
wondering what to do.

He thought of the hotels, but instantly he remembered that he had had no
experience as a clerk, and, what was more important, no acquaintances or
friends in that line to whom he could go. He did know some hotel owners
in several cities, including New York, but they knew of his dealings
with Fitzgerald and Moy. He could not apply to them. He thought of
other lines suggested by large buildings or businesses which he knew
of--wholesale groceries, hardware, insurance concerns, and the like--but
he had had no experience.

How to go about getting anything was a bitter thought. Would he have
to go personally and ask; wait outside an office door, and, t