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 his shoulders, it took twelve
months longer, and then he was nearly thirty years of age.

"Thirty years old!" said he to himself on his thirtieth birth-day. "Can
it be possible? Long before this I ought to have been doing a
flourishing business, and here I am, nothing but a bank-clerk, with the
prospect of never rising a step higher as long as I live. I don't know
how it is that some people get along so well in the world. I'm sure I
am as industrious, and can do business as well as any man; but here I
am still at the point from which I started twenty years ago. I can't
understand it. I'm afraid there's more in luck than I'm willing to
believe."

From this time Jacob set himself to work to obtain a situation in some
store or counting-room, and finally, after looking about for nearly a
year, was fortunate enough to obtain a good place, as bookkeeper and
salesman, with a wholesale grocer and commission merchant. Seven
hundred dollars was to be his salary. His friends called him a fool for
giving up an easy place at one thousand dollars a year, for a hard one
at seven hundred. But the act was a much wiser one than many others of
his life.

Instead of saving money during the third year of his receipt of one
thousand dollars, he spent the whole of his salary, without paying off
a single old debt. His private account-keeping had continued through a
year and a half. After that it was abandoned. Had it been continued, it
might have saved him three or four hundred dollars, which were now all
gone, and nothing to show for them. Poor Jacob! Experience did not make
him much wiser.

Two years passed, and at least half a dozen young men, here and there
around our friend Jacob, went into business, either as partners in some
old houses or under the auspices of relatives or interested friends.
But there appeared no opening for him.

He did not know, that, many times during that period, he had been the
subject of conversation between parties, one or both of which were
looking out for a man, of thorough business qualifications, against
which capital would be placed; nor the fact, that either his first
failure, his improvidence, or something else personal to himself, had
caused him to be set aside for som