Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; College graduates -- Fiction; Gangsters -- Fiction
As Jimmy stood there almost dazed by surprise that during an entire day
his ad had appeared in Chicago's largest newspaper, and he had not
received one reply, a man approached the counter, passed a slip similar
to Jimmy's to the clerk, and received fully a hundred letters in return.
Jimmy was positive now that something was wrong.
"Are you sure," he asked the clerk, "that my replies haven't been
sidetracked somewhere? I have seen people taking letters away from here
all day, and that bird there just walked off with a fistful."
The clerk grinned. "What you advertising for?" he asked.
"A position," replied Jimmy.
"That's the answer," explained the clerk. "That fellow there was
advertising for help."
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
possibly something in the airplane line. Sash, door and blind sounded
extremely prosaic and uninteresting to Mr. Torrance. The mail-order
proposition, while possibly more interesting, struck him as being too
trifling and unimportant.
"However," he thought, "it will do no harm to have a talk with these
people, and possibly I might even consider giving one of them a trial."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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