ssary in his private affairs. The result did not make
him feel any happier. To his astonishment, he ascertained that he owed
more than the whole of his next year's salary would pay, while that was
not in itself sufficient to meet his current expenses.

For some weeks after this discovery of the real state of his affairs,
Jacob was very unhappy. He applied for an increase of salary, and
obtained one hundred dollars per annum. This 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 director died. His salary was 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-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 favour 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 honour, which, like an honest but imprudent 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