s was
something, which was about all that could be said. If he could live on
four hundred dollars a year, which he had never yet been able to do,
the addition to his salary would not pay his tailor's bill within two
years; and what was he to do with boot-maker, landlady, and others?

It happened about this time that a clerk in the bank where his old
employer was a director, died. His salary had been one thousand
dollars. For the vacant place Jacob made immediate application, and
was so fortunate as to secure it.

Under other circumstances, Jacob would have refused a salary of
fifteen hundred dollars in a bank against five hundred in a
counting-room, and for the reason that a bank, or office clerk, has
little or no hope beyond his salary all his life, while a
counting-house clerk, if he have any aptness for trade, stands a fair
chance of getting into business sooner or later, and making his
fortune as a merchant. But a debt of four hundred dollars hanging over
his head, was an argument in favor of a clerkship in the bank, at a
salary of a thousand dollars a year, not to be resisted.

"I'll keep it until I get even with the world again," he consoled
himself by saying, "and then I'll go back into a counting-room. I've
an ambition above being a bank clerk all my life."

Painful experience had made Jacob a little wiser. For the first time
in his life he commenced keeping an account of his personal expenses.
This acted as a salutary check upon his bad habit of spending money
for every little thing that happened to strike his fancy, and enabled
him to clear off his whole debt within the first year. Unwisely,
however, he had, during this time, promised to pay some old debts,
from which the law had released him. The persons holding these claims,
finding him in the receipt of a higher salary, made an appeal to his
honor, which, like an honest, but not a prudent man, he responded to
by a promise of payment as soon as it was in his power. But little
time elapsed after these promises were made, before he found himself
in the hands of constables and magistrates, and was only saved from
imprisonment by getting friends to go his bail for six and nine
months. In order to secure them, he had to give an order in advance
for his salary. To get these burdens off of his shoulders, it took
twelve months longer, and then he was nearly thirty years of age.

"Thirty years old!" he said, to himself on his thirtieth birth-day.
"Can it be pos