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searched his pockets feverishly for the cigarette butt he remembered having found somewhere. It would make a good smoke and give him enough time to level the chaos of a dusty world to his understanding. He searched his pockets carefully with stiff, nervous fingers. There was nothing in them and he slid into their emptiness.

Folding the paper menculously, he shpped it into his and rose from the bench.

The young clerk wore a pink silk shirt, thin lines of shiny green stripes. He pushed back a cuff which protruded below the sleeve of his coat, and stared at Albert Bean.

"Yes," he said, yawning softly against the back of his hand, "this is room 306. What's wrong?"

Albert Bean placed his hat on the counter which surmounted the rail separating him from the clerk, and pulled out the carefully folded newspaper from his pocket.

"I am desirous," he said, holding out the newspaper to the clerk, "of getting the job I seen advertised in the Globe this morning."

The clerk took the paper.

"Man wanted. Light work, good pay, apply room 306, City Hall," he read to himself. "You want this job?"

"Yes."

After asking Albert Bean his name and address, the clerk once again fixed his cuff, and taking a card from a neat pile on his desk, he flourished the point of his pen over it for a moment. Finally, writing the information which Albert Bean gave he blotted the card and tossed it on the counter.

"Take this card to Mr. Sullivan," he said. "You'll find him in that shed just opposite the corner of Boylston and Tremont Street."

Albert Bean took the card in a trembling hand. He surveyed it a moment and then turned it over to study the other side. He was suspicious, afraid that the immaculate young man before him was a coadjutor in the jest the wind had invented.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, ralslng his eyes to the clerk, "but do you know what the work is?"

The clerk turned to his desk and began sharpening a pencil with a pearl-handled knife he drew from his vest-pocket.

Albert Bean waited patiently for the clerk to reply, but finally placing both hands on the counter, he leaned forward "Tell me what the work is, will you?"