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 ring partners needs the rest, and for another thing, Nate don't want me trained too fine for this Shifty McTague. Kayo Kelly, getting romantic, hires a car and takes Mary Ballinger, the stenog at the Commercial House, for a trip to the Trenton Fair. Spence Brock calls around for me in his racer and me and him takes a long ride in the country. When Spence got through Drew City Prep that year, why he went to Princeton to get colleged and when he come out it didn't make no difference if all he learned was to yell, because his old man has $4.75 for every Spaniard in Madrid. Pretty soft, hey? Well, I didn't envy Spence and you can believe that or not, just as you like. I don't know as I'd wanted to of been born rich, because then I'd have nothing to shoot at, what I mean. Being born poor, I've had to hustle all my life and that's kind of give me the hustling habit. Anyway, me and Spence went everywheres together except places where grammer, family, and bank roll is all you got to have, but you must have that!

Well, this day we're clicking off the miles on the state road with me driving, because I sure liked to operate this speed demon of Spence's and the talk swings around to "Rags" Dempster. But to show you what a cheap squawker this Rags is, Spence tells me he has just welshed on a bet with him. It seems that Spence, which thinks I can take Dempsey, bet Rags two hundred and fifty bucks I would win my last scrap by a knockout. Well, that melee was with Kid George at Philly, and after I knock the Kid down four times in the first round, why, the referee stops the fight to


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 save Kid George from further punishment. Personally, I'm glad he does stop it, as I don't want to hit this game boy no more, but Rags won't pay Spence off because he claims it wasn't a clean knockout. Can you imagine a cheater like that? Everybody in the world knows that a fight stopped that way counts the same as a knockout, but this Rags insists that the bet go over to my next fight, which is the one with Shifty McTague, thereby giving himself two chances to win the bet.

Well, when I see how Rags is trying to gyp Spence out of his two hundred and a half I get red-headed and I tell Spence I will flatten Shifty McTague if I have to hit him with the bucket!

"Don't worry, Gale," laughs Spence, "you won't have to do that, you hit too hard with your hands! I'll bet a year or so from now I'll be going around saying: 'Six-Second Smith, the world's champion middleweight? Oh, yes, I know him well. We used to be chums in

"Do you think you'll be saying we used to be chums, Spence?" I cut in, "I mean, is the fact that I'm a prize fighter going to wind you and me up?"

Spence is half turned away and beginning to laugh, but he breaks off and swings around to me in a flash.

"Is that the way I strike you, Gale?" he asks quietly.

Well, after a look into his fine brown eyes I'm ashamed of myself, no fooling!

"No, Spence," I says. "That ain't the way you strike me—and I'm sorry I made that crack!"

Spence shows me all his nice white teeth again.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text: The Nibelungenlied (Shumway)/38

title: The Nibelungenlied (Shumway)/38


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 "Gale," he goes on, kind of impulsive, "I wish you'd let me bring you up to the house some time to meet dad. Now, wait—you'd like him and he'd like you! He's a regular fellow, is dad, and he'd be pleased that we're friends. With one or two exceptions, he loathes the rest of the fellows in our crowd, says they're a lot of spineless young jellyfish—that's the mildest term he uses for them! He's a boxing enthusiast, too—goes to all the championship fights, to mother's supreme disgust. He's tried to sneak me along with him a couple of times, but mother's put her foot down and that—er—ends it. There was a young riot over me going to see you fight that Red Johns and"

"They'd be two young riots if you ever brought me up to your house, Spence," I grins. Father, meet my friend Six-Second Smith, the prize fighter.' Woof!"

Spence laughs, but immediately turns serious again. "You're simply scared because dad has a lot of money," he says. "And I suppose 'Spencer-Brock' as a surname sounds terrifying. Well, Gale, as a matter of fact, our name is actually just Brock. Spencer is mother's family name, and she and my sisters are responsible for the hyphenated arrangement. Dad is really plain John T. Brock, and he made his money originally in—in the manufacturing business. There! No 'born to the purple' or any of that nonsense about that, is there? My mother and sisters would flay me alive if they knew I told anyone this, but I want to set you right on dad. I've told him lots about you, Gale, how you're educating yourself and how you've struggled for a foothold in life. The way you've made


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 your own way since you've been a child interests him immensely. Those things always do. Dad loves a fighter and"

"He might love a fighter, Spence," I butt in. "But a prize fighter would be different! Even if he is a fight fan, he's also a rich millionaire and he'd no more want me up at his home than he'd want a horse in his parlor if he was a nut on racing. No, Spence, I don't want to meet your father yet. Let's wait till I get out of the ring and mean something—wait till you can take me up to the house without making any excuses for me, get me? If you brought me up there now, the chances is your mother and sisters would yell murder and forbid you to go with me any more. And don't say nothing to your father about me being a scrapper, because the minute he hears that he'll bust up our friendship as sure as they's a touch of tomato in catsup!"

So we drop that subject, but three weeks later Spence's father himself brings it up with a crash!

The following day, Rags Dempster shows up at the training camp with a bunch of his dumbell friends. If I had saw them first they never would of set foot over the threshold, but Nate's got their Jack and they're inside before I know it. The first I'm aware that I'm performing for the benefit of my only known enemy is when Tommy O'Ryan, a sparring partner, stabs me on the nose with a straight left. This starts a slight flow of claret—nothing to be alarmed about and ald in the day's work at a training camp. So I just wipe my nose with my glove and continue on, not even floor-


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 ing Tommy for the benefit of the audience, as some guys would of did then and there. I never did believe in beating up a sparring partner which is merely doing what you hire him for when he clouts you. But Rags sees this blood on my face and he howls with joy. So does his friends. The mere sound of Rags Dempster's voice throws me off balance, and Mr. Thomas O'Ryan, a mean hitter, socks me on the sore beak again, this time to my great annoyance, I must say. The red ink starts afresh and so does Rags. He hollers to Tommy to flatten me and he'll give him a hundred bucks, pulling out a bill and waving it around.

Tommy grins, knowing I'm pulling my own punches, and, not even getting action for his money, Rags begins making cracks about me which would make my father turn over in his grave if he thought I was taking 'em. Stepping away from Tommy, I make one lunge at Rags, missing him by a bare inch through being over anxious and excited. The way his friends go through that door would of made me laugh if I hadn't been so crazy mad. Rags's face is the color of cream as he starts on the lam for the great outdoors with me after him, all business. Two-Punch Jackson runs over and grabs Rags just as he's going through the exit, when Nate comes to life. He bawls Jackson to let Rags go and then he swings around on me.

"Where d'ye get 'at stuff?" he bellers. "You got light bandages on—suppose you sock 'at jobbie on the head and break a bone in your hand? 'At would lay you up for a couple of months, wouldn't it? You do your battlin' in the ring, where you git paid for your


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 trouble! This fightin' for nothing is out, git me: Let the stevedores do 'at stuff. Next time somebody calls you names, make out you don't know 'em!"

Well, as the time for this scuffle with Shifty McTague draws near, Nate cuts my workouts down to a few rounds light sparring and a two-mile run with a rubdown every day. This gives me quite a little time to myself, and I use it in trying to get a line on what I'm good at, if anything, apart from box fighting. I'm still cuckoo over this encyclopedia and I pester Nate and Kayo Kelly to read it till they're fit to be tied! Nate says he'll start in on the encyclopedia the minute he gets through reading the telephone book. He can't stop now, he says, because he's right in the middle of a chapter called "Pay Stations," and it's as exciting as being chased by a grizzly. Kayo says any doctor will tell you that reading is bad for the eyes, adding that he bets I'm selling encyclopedias as a side line.

That crack of Kayo's gives me a large idea. Why not sell encyclopedias as a side line? I got to try my luck at something, unless I want to wind up as a pork-and-bean pug, which I didn't, by no means! The more I think about it, the more I get hopped up on the idea. I figure that once the people of Drew City finds out what a swell novel a encyclopedia is, why, they'll sell like ice water would sell on the Sara Desert. Judy gets all excited too when I put the matter up to her, and Spence slaps me on the back and says he'll take at least one set without looking!

That decides me. I get a set of encyclopedias for


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 samples from New York, and, woof—I'm a book agent!

I only wish I could say that from that time on I simply rolled in wealth and I could say it for that matter, but I might as well tell the truth. It seems Drew City was not quite ripe for a encyclopedia shower and I am too late by quite a few years in discovering what a gold mine of knowledge one of them books is. I might as well of been selling noses—nearly everybody had one! The few which didn't, think the bargain price of ninety-eight bucks is the same kind of a bargain that paying a thousand dollars for a cruller would be and they shooed me away. Even my warmest admirer, viz., myself, had to admit that as a book agent I'm a fairly good box fighter. However, this flop don't discourage me from the art of salesmanship by no means. I simply picked the wrong article for my talents, that's all. It wasn't long before I took a flyer at this game again, but with something else for sale and under different conditions. I'm what you call a trying fool!

The night before I left for Irontown to fight Shifty McTague, me and Judy sat out on the back porch and talked about this and that. I promise I'll phone her the minute the massacre's over, like I always did, no matter where the bout is held. Mrs. Willcox usually waited up to get the returns from me too. While we're sitting there, who comes driving up to the house but Rags. As Judy made no attempt to get up and fall on his neck or the like with welcome, why, he rings the bell, and the next minute Mrs. Willcox lets him in the


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 parlor. She is a dear old lady and treats me like a son, but I sure wish she hadn't let Rags Dempster's money make such a difference in those days. No matter what Rags done, Mrs. Willcox didn't seem able to convict him when she remembers that his father owns the big carpet factory. However, I had no kick coming then, because I'm out there alone on the porch with Judy, and at least one of us is enjoying it, when along comes Nate. Without no preliminaries he tells me it's nine o'clock and time all good little fighters was in bed, especially one which is going to do his stuff the following night. Arguing with Nate comes under the head of impossible, so Judy and me adjourns till the next meeting. As we're passing the parlor Rags is still in there with Mrs. Willcox and she burns me up by calling Judy in.

I went on up to my room and I get in bed, but I can't get to sleep while Rags is down there talking to Judy, even if her mother was among those present. In about ten minutes I hear Judy come tripping up the stairs. Passing my door, her little feet hesitates and she calls softly. "Good night, Gale!" I manage to trim: "Good night, you sweet little angel!" down to "Good night, Judy!" and then she whispers: "I wouldn't stay downstairs after you came up, Gale. I left Rags down there with mother. He'll make her sleepy, and that's much better for her than veronal!"

At that I turned over and slept like a log.

Well, before I get through with life, maybe I'll have a evening more exciting than the time I went up to Irontown, Pa., for the purpose of fight-


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 ing Mr. Shifty McTague. I say maybe I will—but I doubt it. Them man-eating ironworkers which craved bloodshed and violence seen enough of both of 'em to do 'em till the next draft! Likewise, Nate got his mind all cleared of a subject which had been bothering him for a long time. None of the four boys I stopped in my adventures as a welterweight give me much trouble, and Nate hankered to know could I fight after being knocked a couple of times, pounded to a jelly, and with the mob yelling for my execution. All these and more questions was answered that evening in dear old Irontown.

It was a night of surprises, so let's start with the first. While my handlers is getting me ready in the dressing room, Nate goes out in the arena to examine the ring and see what's doing generally. When he comes back he looks thoughtful indeed. He tells me that the charming ironworkers is so positive that Shifty McTague will slap me for a goal that they've made Shifty a three to one favorite in the betting. Some of 'em are laying seven to five I don't last four rounds.

"I don't like the look of things, kid," says Nate. "Most of them engine makers has been hittin' up the hooch, and they're due to drop a slew of jack when you flatten this boloney. They seem to think his name is Dempsey instead of McTague and your name is Mud instead of Smith! The referee's O. K.—Jack Dougherty, I know him, but them ironworkers is—listen, don't play around with this McTague at all. Go out there and take him as quick as possible, and the faster we get out of this burg after you bounce him,


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 the more chances we got of livin' to a ripe old age, get me?"

Well, that fails to steady my nerves to any great extent, but I'm outwardly cool when we go down the aisle to the ring. The place is packed to the chandeliers, and, just like Kayo Kelly said, the customers pays plenty of loud attention to the blue silk bathrobe Judy give me. However, I was getting used to the crowd's more or less good-natured razzing, and while I can't say it done me any good, it didn't make me want to run back and lock myself in the dressing room for a good cry either! Shifty McTague is already in the ring, and I walk over and politely shake hands with him, while Nate looks over his bandages. McTague is one of them tall, lanky birds, looking more like a boxer than a hitter. He gets a reception from the mob, most of which had their dough on him, which would of satisfied a actor. I draw a storm of hoots, with a few scattered handclaps. To this day I think the handclaps was from my seconds, Shiney Jepps and Kayo Kelly.

Around the ring is a circle of boxes, all full of dignified-looking gents in dress suits—officials of the locomotive works, Nate finds out. The rest of the mob is so excited before the bell that half of 'em can't even sit down. Nate instructs me to go after Shifty McTague's mid-section exclusively in the first round, as Shifty don't look to him like he could take it. Then—the gong!

I come out and go to touch gloves with Shifty, and he sneers at my extended hands, jabbing my head back


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 with his left. The ironworkers yells with joy, the referee warns Shifty, and, as I clinch with him, I hear hisses for him from the ringside boxes. The referee breaks us, and Shifty tries to nail me with his right on the break-away, but he's out of luck. I slid away from the punch and buried my own right glove to the wrist just above the belt. You should of heard him grunt! His face shows me he don't like it, and he tried to dive into a clinch, but, having found out all I wanted to know about him, I'm anxious to wind matters up and get back to Drew City. I pushed him off and smashed a left and right to the body.

The crowd roars as Shifty drops to one knee. He takes "nine," and when he gets up I spill him again with a torrid right hook to the heart. The ironworkers has all became lunatics, and they are giving Shifty enough advice to last him the rest of his life! Shifty stumbles to his feet again, barely beating the count, and this time he's through for the evening. I chase him all over the ring, but it takes two to make a quarrel, and Shifty has become a pacifist of the worst kind. The frenzied ironworkers is bitterly imploring their boy friend to fight, but nothing stirring!

A minute before the bell the perspiring referee manages to pry Shifty away from me, and I promptly slam him in the wind with my left, sending him back on his heels. I tossed a wicked right at the jaw and missed by a foot, but, never the less, Shifty dives head first to the canvas! His admirers is dumfounded and so am I, for that matter. I expected the fight of my life, and Shifty McTague turns out to be not only a set-up, but


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 a quitter to boot. No fun in that! The disgusted referee bends over Shifty, who's laying comfortably on his back blinking up at the lights. As the referee reaches "ten," Shifty's seconds swarm into the ring yelling "Foul," but the sneering referee shoves 'em away and holds up my glove to the petrified crowd.

Then the fun began!

Them ironworkers has bet nearly every nickel on Shifty McTague. For weeks they'd looked forward to a battle they'd never forget, and here he goes to work and quits in the first round. Half of 'em is full of hooch, and, boy, you should of heard 'em! For weeks afterward I'd wake up in the middle of the night hearing that crazy mob yelling like wolves. While Nate's' wrapping my bathrobe around me and stealing nervous glances at the maniacs, I think of that bet Spence made with Rags—must be a clean knockout or the bet's off, and I never knocked out Shifty McTague any more than I discovered radium. The mob's booing me to a fare-thee-well, as if it's my fault Shifty McTague is no game-cock! Then the matchmaker climbs into the ring—half the attendance is in it already—and shoves his way over to us.

"Do you guys expect to get paid off for this hippodrome?" he snarls at Nate. "Why, them babies out there will lynch you and your boy in a couple of minutes, and then they'll come back and lynch me for makin' this match! Listen to 'em—look at 'em—try to get out of here; 'at's all!"

"Ain't they no coppers in this slab?" asks Nate.


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 Him and the matchmaker's so scared they make me laugh, on the level!

"Listen!" I butt in—and they listen—"I don't know as I blame the crowd. I only boxed two minutes, and I ain't even warmed up. Tell you what I'll do—I'll step the other nine rounds with any boy of my weight you can dig up! Now"

But with a yelp of joy the matchmaker is hollering for the timekeeper to ring the bell for silence. He gets something like quiet, and when the crowd hears the announcement they go wild with delight and scurry back to their seats. The "Entertainment Committee" of the ironworkers' festival gets busy, and while Nate's still telling me I'm cuckoo and wringing his hands, a guy in a bathrobe is boosted into the ring from the other side. Sweet Grandpa, he's a light-heavyweight, or else I'm a Spanish mackeral!

Nate rushes around wildly, waving his arms and yelling murder, but the "Entertainment Committee" pushes him aside. The referee takes time to bend down and whisper in my ear that he'll stop it if it looks like murder, and the ironworkers can cry their eyes out for all he cares. The elephant in the other corner is introduced as "Battling Lee of Harrisburg," and he getsa rousing reception.

Battling Lee refuses to weigh in for Nate, so the bout is announced as "catchweights." I ain't trying to alibi myself. I don't need no alibi, but Battling Lee's got fifteen pounds on me if he's got a ounce. He starts out to win in a round, and he come near doing it too! Having it on me in height, weight, and reach, he gets


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 down to business with the bell. Under Nate's instructions to keep moving all the time, so's this big stiff can't set for a punch, I step around him, using a left jab which he avoids with ease, his long reach helping him to beat me to the punch every time.

In half a minute my nose and lips is bleeding, which brings three thousand cheers from the mob, and then, obeying Nate's frantic howls, I drop long-range tactics and get in close. I know my only chance is to keep boring in and wear him down, he's far too big for me to goal with one punch. Some stiff short-arm jolts to the mid-section sells Battling Lee the idea of keeping me away, and a sudden left swing to the ribs crashes me against the ropes.

I bounce off 'em into a straight right which cuts my ear. The mob jumps on the seats bawling for a knockout, and I commencce to feel dizzy and look wildly at Nate for instructions. He hollers at me to clinch, but Battling Lee measures me with a left jab and then hooks his right to my stomach. This one come near being the business, but the bell stopped hostilities with us clinched in my corner.

I am a very tired boy when I flop on the stool. Nate shoves a orange into my mouth for me to suck and jams the old ammonia under my nose. My left ear is bleeding badly, but caustic stopped that, the stuff biting into me till the water runs out of my eyes. Nate tells me to keep my mouth closed or a uppercut will tear my tongue off, and to stay as close to this guy as I can.

I nod and run right out into a clinch with the bell.


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 This ain't what the ironworkers wants, and they howl for me to stand off and fight, while the bunch in the ringside boxes screams for me to hold on. Battling Lee wrenches away from me and lands solidly with a right to the head. I miss a left and right to the jaw, but connect with a right hook to the heart that stings Lee and makes him back water.

There's where I make a fatal mistake! Half goofy as I am, I think Lee's gone. I rush in wide open to send over the finisher, and that's what Lee's waiting for. He ducks my right and crashes a overhand left to my jaw. I went down like he shot me through the heart, and I suffer from that one punch till long after the fight's over. Honest, I'm in a trance from then on! I crawled to my feet in time to beat a count I can't even hear, cover up, and take a pasting I'll remember to my dying day. That round is two years long! Lee's too excited at the prospects of a knockout to time his blows, or I'd never of weathered the storm. As it is, I am floored three times in that horrible second round, and I'm on my shoulder blades at the bell.

The next four rounds is no fight, but a nightmare! I don't think I hit Battling Lee five solid punches, but he hit me with everything but the 's watch. The house is in one continual uproar, with the ironworkers imploring Lee to murder me, and be done with it, and the guys in the boxes howling for the referee to stop the assassination. Lee is battling me from pillar to post with cutting, slashing punches that rip me to ribbons. I must of been a sight for a dispensary along about the fifth round.


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 Every time I stagger to my corner at the gong a flood of water from Nate's bucket meets me half-ways, and once I see water on Nate too, running down his cheeks from his eyes. But I see all this like a fellow in a dream, and I remember the din from the other side of the ropes bothers me worse than Lee's wallops now.

This Lee is raw too, don't think he ain't. He's so mad because he can't knock me stiff that he does everything but bite me! He butts, lays on me with that extry fifteen pounds, and rabbit punches me in the clinches, that chopping blow with the side of his glove on the back of my neck, just about paralyzing me for a minute afterwards. All I do is cover up, clinch, sock over a right when I think I see a opening, then—take it!

When I come to my corner in the third round Nate says I am weeping, and during the rest between the fourth and fifth he says I sit there and laugh in a high voice till he thinks I have went cuckoo, and he's scared silly. He keeps asking me should he throw in the sponge. I says if he throws in the sponge, he better be in Egypt when I come out of the ring!

Early in the seventh round I commence to notice that Battling Lee's tiring fast. He's been doing all the walloping and he's about punched himself out trying to stop me. Although I'm pretty well shopworn, I guess I ain't as tired as he is, because I've only been catching, while he's been pitching. About the middle of this round Lee cut my right eye with a straight left, and this is one of the times I think I see a opening for


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 my right. I hook him under the chin and his head goes back like it's on a hinge.

They jump up in the ringside boxes and how! themselves hoarse for me to follow up my advantage. I don't need their advice. I'm on top of Lee like a wildcat! I waste a dozen haymakers before my head steadies and I take aim. Then a right swing sends Lee to his knees and the mob groans. Lee waits for "eight" and gets up with a silly grin on his face, like he's thinking "How did that happen?" I show him how it happened right away by dumping him on his face with a left and right to the jaw.

This time a dead silence seems to fall over the arena, broke only by the cheers of my swell rooters in the boxes. Lee looks dead to the world, laying on the floor, and them ironworkers has bet on him in a effort to get back the jack they drop on Shifty McTague. As the referee reaches "nine" without a flicker of a muscle from Mr. Lee, the timekeeper rings the bell, cutting the round short by twelve seconds and robbing me of a clean knockout!

I skip to my corner looking like the battle field after the first day of the Marne. But appearances is deceiving. I feel like a million dollars! The only thing bothers me is my right eye, which is closed as tight as a drum. During the rest Battling Lee's handlers surround the referee and they seems to be quite a argument going on. Lee is sprawled back in his stool, his head rolling around like his necks broke. Then the referee comes over to our corner and asks Nate if he'll accept a draw.


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 He says Battling Lee's in bad shape and the ironworkers will surely mob us if I knock him cold in the next round and they go broke on the fight. A lot of swell sportsmen, hey? The referee's advice is to take a draw and beat it. Nate looks out at the ugly crowd and tells me he thinks the referee's right. Besides, he adds, I can see out of only one eye now, and if by any chance Lee comes around during the rest, he'll probably knock me kicking in the next frame.

I just let Nate go on talking without paying the slightest of attention. I'm thinking of that moleson Battling Lee's chin which'm going to sight at for the knockout in the next round. I'll bring his guard down with a left to the stomach and then I'll crash him with a right hook to the chin! That's what I keep saying to myself over and over. . . left to the body and right to the chin, left to the body and right to the chin. Even humming it to the air of "Casey Jones." When Nate stops for breath I says all his conversation to me is that much apple sauce. Then I says they must be some way he can get my right eye open. Nate grabs my head and turns around so's I can see the threatening mob. He says he's been in these kind of jams at mining camps, and he's positive we'll never leave town alive if I knock Battling Lee for a row of silos.

I says let's stop Lee first and then we'll take on the ironworkers. This Lee has played put and take with me for seven rounds and he's fouled me at least a half dozen times. O. K. Now it's my turn. Am I going to let a mob of burn sports do me out of my fun? Let 'em try to stop me! Anyways, they ain't no such thing


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 as a "draw" in boxing, no matter what amybody says. "One guy always has a shade on the other. I didn't want no draws. I wanted to either knock 'em dead or get knocked and be done with it!

Knockout Kelly butts in and tells Nate I'm right and to leave me win my fight. He points to a scar under his own eye and says that once when his eye was closed in a battle Nate made a little cut under it which let out the clogged blood, and he was able to force the lid open with his glove and keep stepping. I turn around to Nate.

"Get out your penknife, Nate, and let's go!" I says.

I hear wild cheers right under my stool. It's the dress-suited guys in the ringside boxes which has been taking all this in. Nate moans, but he opens his penknife and makes a slit under my right eye where it's swollen. Then him and Kayo squeezes it. It don't hurt—much. The referee waves Lee's seconds out of the ring and the bell clangs. I got up slowly, holding my right eye open with my gloves till I get a fair view of Lee. I'm still humming: "A left to the body and a right to the chin!" Lee's handlers yells for him to go after my burn eye, and he lets a panic-stricken left go which bounces off my hunched shoulder. Then I set myself and drove my left into his ribs. Down comes Lee's guard and sock goes my right on that mole, just about the point of his chin. His knees buckle under him and the great big stiff slides under the lower rope to the floor, as cold as a shark's eye!

My friends in the boxes acts like raving maniacs, and silk hats and canes gets hurled in the air. But my


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 little pals, the ironworkers, rushes the ring, howling murder! As they reach the ringside boxes, they see: who's who—their bosses—and the leaders faulter in their stride. One old guy gets up and begins bawling 'em out plenty. What he's saying I don't know, except some of it is that if they don't beat it they'll find their jobs at the locomotive factory is a thing of the past. The next clear memory I got of anything I'm on the train for Drew City.

About half ways back some men comes through our car and they seem a bit familiar. When they stop at the seat me and Nate's occupying, it dawns on me that these is the babies which was in the ringside boxes at the fight. One of 'em, a dignified, gray-haired gent, bends over and pats my shoulder, saying he's one of the big noises at the locomotive plant and he wants to apologize for the way his hired men acted. Then he shakes my hand and says I am a boy which will go a long ways, because I've got a fighting heart. The rest of the gents nods pleasantly to me and they all pass on.

Well, Spence is at the station when we get to Drew City and he's pumping my hand off when somebody calls his name.

"Hello—my father's here, Gale!" says Spence, kind of excited. "He wasn't due until to-morrow—say, you're going to meet dad right now!"

Meet dad with my face looking like a war map! I pulled away, but dad's in front of me.

"Dad," says Spence, "this is Gale Galen, who I told you about. He's just won a bout at"

"At Irontown!" butts in dad, laughing at the ex-


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 pression which must of been on my face. He's no less than the man which pat me on the shoulder on the train! "Young man," he says to me, "some time I wish you would autograph the—er—my dress shirt. The front of it is spattered with the fighting blood of a he-man, and I'll get a thrill every time I look at it!"


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Nate and Kayo Kelly never could understand is that this studying I wear tearing off at nights when I wasn't doing my stuff in a ring was conditioning me for a bigger battle than any I ever had at a fight club—a battle to boost myself out of the ash heap I was born to and make myself mean something! Say, if I ever get elected President, not that nobody has nominated me or nothing like that, but if I ever do, why, my first presidential act will be to draw up a law making ignorance a crime. D'ye think I'll punish the ignorant guys themselves for it? No, sir! I'll send the rich babies to jail which allows ignorance to be committed in their neighborhoods for want of the money to prevent it. The money which would feed and clothe the kids while they're going to school and getting a chance to use their little heads for something else besides hatracks. Then they won't be no more eight-year-old kids with forty-eight-year-old faces selling papers, working in coal mines, in cotton mills and canneries, when they ought to be in school!

Don't get the idea that while I was giving my brains these workouts I neglected my boxing tuition. Nate always followed me around with sarcastic remarks,


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 advice, bawling outs, and the etc., which on top of all the physical culture I was getting every day used to steam me up. But I got to like it and look forward to my daily chores in the gym with a relish, because I knew it all meant something and it was all speeding me along to the top. The way I looked at it, as long as I was in the ring at all I might as well be a champ. I'd rather be a first-class laborer than a third-class king, no fooling. Say—even when I was a newsboy, I sold a mean paper and don't think I didn't!

Well, having got all that off my manly chest, I will now get down to the business of the meeting, which is my fight with the middleweight champion, in which I knock him so cold his name could of been Battling Zero instead of Frankie Jackson, which it was. Although I knock Frankie stiff, I only get a draw on the account of a technicality. The technicality was that I am likewise knocked stiff myself. Laugh that off!

Within a year after Nate has talked me into laying aside my white coat and apron for a pair of boxing gloves, I have fought my way to the right for a scuffle with the middleweight champion. But it takes two to make a quarrel and the champ don't wish to box me no more than he wishes he had pneumonia. He just simply won't romp with me and that's all they is to it. Instead of that, he plays around with the set-ups, knocking over kids which don't know a left hook from the referee's tonsils and collecting anywheres from ten to twenty-five thousand bucks for each of these aggravated assaults.


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 Nate's worried a lot about the champ refusing to de business with us, because honest I was growing like New York. I'm having a terrible time keeping down to the middleweight limit and Nate's crazy to have me fight the champion while I can still make the weight for him, because he knows I'll win the title as sure as salmon comes under the head of fish. But the champ turns a deaf ear to all our pitiful pleadings to come and get his pasting and be done with it. Even when the newspapers puts him on the pan and Nate says he can have all the money and we'll just take our expenses, why, the safe-playing, money-grabbing middleweight king just laughs at us and then jumps out to some slab like Gazunk, Ia., and flattens some sap which couldn't win a fight if he had the only ticket on one in a raffle.

"If I can't toss you in a ring with this hothouse champeen in a couple of months, you won't be able to make 158 any more than I can make a clock!" moans Nate to me one day. "Here I baby you along, rate your fights till you've flattened everything but the Catskill Mountains and now when you're a cinch for a title this big boloney won't mingle with us!" He walks up and down the room, wringing his hands.

"I'll pick a fight with him on the street, hey?" I says, hoping to cheer him up.

"You do and I'll help him clout you!" hollers Nate. "How many times do I have to tell you never fight nobody for nothin'? Never raise your hands unless they's pennies in it for both of us—don't ever forget 'at part of it. I'm goin' to take you around to every fight club where 'at synthetic champ starts and we'll chal-


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 lenge him from the ring till every time he hears your name he'll get convulsions!"

So we did. But the champ does not get convulsions. Every time he fought around New York I get introduced from the ring and publicly challenge him to fight me. Once I got a idea, and after the announcer has bellered my challenge I whisper in his ear to add: "This is the eighteenth consecutive time 'Six-Second' Smith has challenged Frankie Jackson for a championship bout. He will continue challenging till the champion is shamed into fighting him!" The announcer grins and repeats that after me and half the crowd laughs while the other half cheers. Does that bother the champ? Why, the big stiff just looks up from his corner where he's waiting to go on with some dub, gives me a good-natured grin and says: "You tell 'em, kid; I bet you're the snake's hips, no foolin'!"

I would of smacked him then and there, only Nate grabs me and hustles me out of the ring to the tune of mingled laughs and cheers. When we get down to our seats, Nate turns to me kind of mad-sarcastic.

"Listen," he says. "I've tried everything I know to get this gil to fight us and no can do! Now you claim you ain't always goin' to be a scrapper—you state you got too much brains to be a pug. You're always studyin' and clownin' with 'em books and the like when you ain't workin'. O. K.—less see if it means anything! Less see if your eighty-six carat brain can dope a way to get this champ in a ring with us. If you can't, I'm goin' to throw all them books of yours in the ash can. Now go on, do your stuff!" But


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 my mind is already at work on this problem and I don't even condescend to answer.

Well, if Edison had done the thinking I do that night and half the next day, Heavens knows what he would of invent, but what I invent is a way to get the middleweight champ into a ring with me—object, fisteycuffs! The minute this clever idea hits me I go looking for Judy to get her opinions of my scheme, but she's in the place where she always seems to be those days when I want her and that's elsewhere. Anyways, I go down in the kitchen and there's Knockout Kelly with one of Mrs. Willcox's aprons on, peeling a wicked potato. Kayo is one of the toughest welters which ever clipped a chump on the chin, but around the house he's as mild as any June you ever seen. He's stopped One-Round Michaels in New York two nights previous, but before Michaels went to dreamland he closed Kayo's right eye for auld lang sang. So Kayo is having no little trouble undressing potatoes with only one eye taking any interest in the matter. Nate is mixing a batter under the direction of Mrs. Willcox, and when he sees me he waves the mixer at me.

"Get out of our kitchen," he says. "Get out of our kitchen, or else grab a towel and get busy on them supper dishes! What d'ye think y'are, a guest here?"

I meekly grabbed a towel and commence giving Mrs. Willcox's china set a good rub down and while I'm doing this I tell Nate the scheme I have doped out to force the middleweight champ to give me a crack at his title. Nate is keeping on mixing this batter while


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 I'm telling him, and by the time I get through he's so excited that he's mixed the batter all over the table, all over his clothes, and all over the floor, and what Mrs. Willcox says to him was plenty. I will tell you my scheme like I told Nate and I only hope you ain't mixing no batter while you're reading this.

Well, my scheme was just this—I aim to show up as a handler in the corner of every boy the champ fights from then on! How's that for a piece of figuring? The way I look at it, after this guy sees me across the ring watching him and seconding the fellow he's fighting about a dozen times, why, I will begin to get on his nerves. He'll get to thinking about me being there and he'll come to look for me and the first thing you know he'll be willing to do anything to get rid of me. He'll be so crazy mad at me that he'll crave me in a ring so's he can ruin me. Then I'll get a bout with him and that's all I want!

Nate says this scheme is the lion's mane and I have missed my calling. I should of been a Pullman conductor, says Nate, which thinks a Pullman conductor has got a better job than President G. Harding.

Without waiting to hear what you think of the scheme, I will tell you that it worked to perfection. I showed up as a second in the other boy's corner just seven times when the champ had enough. At first he seemed to get quite a giggle out of it and he used to work his man close to the ropes where I'm sitting with the water bucket and sponge and he'd call down all kinds of nasty cracks at me. Like, for the example, he'd say: "Here's what you'll get, Stupid!" and with


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 that he'd bounce his unlucky adversus almost at my feet. I never made a comeback. I'd just sit there staring up at him until after a while he got in the habit of looking over his shoulder at me to see if I'm there. He just couldn't help himself. When he got pasted on the chin a few times on the account of that bad habit of looking for me, why, he give in.

One fight he had, with my handling the boy he's boxing, I'll never forget. Here's a kid taking a terrible pasting from a fellow I know I can trim the same wayknow this is America, or even more so than that. A little aggressiveness would of turned the tide of battle for my man, but the fact that he's fighting a champion licks him. Every time he comes to his corner, I'd tell this boy—Young Hunter, his name was—I'd tell him: "This guy is a mark for a right uppercut, at least try one!" And this sap would shake his head and pant: "Try nothin', I couldn't hit this baby with a medicine ball! He must be good—he's the champ, ain't he? I only hope I can stay the limit, 'at's all!"

That's the stuff that losers is made of, in boxing and everything else, too. Why, if I ever tried in my life, I'd try against the champ—the champ of anything! Suppose you do lose? Why, all you lose is the fight itself, ain't it? You win with yourself, because you know you tried your darndest and something inside of you says: "Atta boy!" It's got to!

Well, we finally sign with the middleweight champ, with no more dickering over the articles than they was at the Peace Conference. About all Frankie Jackson didn't insist on me doing was that I should check


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 my right arm at the box office the night of the fight. I have got to make 158 ringside, while he can come in at catchweights. The muss is to be twelve rounds at Jersey City where no referee's decision is allowed, so the only way I can win the title is to knock Frankie stiff. By a odd coincidence, this happens to be my intentions so I don't moan over that part of it. The champ is to get $25,000, win, lose or draw, while my wages is to be $3,500, and how Nate ever pried that out of them hard-boiled promoters is a mystery to me to this day!

I train for this scuffle at Drew City, where I trained for all my brawls and nearly everybody in the town drops in every day to see us work out. From three to five in the afternoon, when Nate lets 'em in for fifteen cents a head, the place was just packed.

But there's one guy which didn't show up at the training camp no more and that's Rags Dempster. This dizzy dumbell was too busy hanging around Judy or calling her up on the phone. I couldn't dope out how he really stood with her—one minute she'd curl her lip at him, the next minute he seems to be sitting pretty with her. I try hard to keep out of his way, for this bird affected me like a red shirt affects a bull. I don't hunt trouble, because when I get steamed up I can't laugh matters off, something has got to fall—the other fellow, or in the contrary!

Amongst the assorted customers which came into the gym to watch us do our stuff was Lem Garfield. At that time Lem was still what Spence Brock called a "miss and thrope." I pass that one. All I know is


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 that Lem had a grouch against the whole human race and he didn't care who won it! By studying law at night he had advanced from the Elite Haberdashery to doing this and that in the law office of O'Leary & Kaplan and he predicted a great future for himself. One thing was certain and that was that Lem couldn't miss being a large help to O'Leary & Kaplan on the account of Judge Tuckerman thinking the world and all of him. The judge gave Lem priveleges in his courtroom which would startle Europe and used to burn the other lawyers up.

Lem was so proud of being even a half-fledged lawyer that he asks me to go over to Judge Tuckerman's court one day with him and listen while he handles a couple of cases. Well as this particular court of law has got a vaudeyville show looking like a dignified funeral, I went with the greatest of pleasure. Out of a clear sky on the ways over to the court, Lem commences to wildy pan what he calls "the interests" and "soulless corporations." I don't know what it's all about, till in a couple of minutes it come out that when the Elite Haberdashery give Lem the gate he tried to plaster himself on the payroll of a soulless corporation, but after one attempt he claimed a foul and quit.

"You give up too easy, Lem," I says. "Lots of fellows has begun with big corporations as office boys and the like and worked themselves up to rich millionaires by simply"

But that's all the encouragement the learned counsel wants and stopping dead in the middle of the street,


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 Lem squares off and addresses me like I'm the Supreme Court.

"Years ago mebbe a ambitious young feller could start with a big corporation and work his way up," he begins, in a kind of loud voice, "But, gentlemen of the—eh—but, Gale, he kinnot do it now! If he's got any gumption at all, his ambition's killed when he applies for work. Have you ever saw the application blank a feller applyin' for the portfolio of, say, office clerk, has got to fill out for some of them big corporations? Well if you're the kind of a feller which wants to answer in detail questions so private that they'd make you smack down your best friend if he asked 'em, if you're that kind of a feller, I say to you this afternoon, why go ahead! If bein' asked to fill in rough sketches of your mother, your father, the status quo of your habits, conduct, religion and politics, any sicknesses you're addicted to, what debts you owe and why—if you're the kind of a feller which will supply all that personal information in return for a fifteen-dollar a week job, why do so. But not Lem Garfield—I think too much of my independence!"

He almost bellers the last part of it, slapping himself heartily on the chest, and as it is a hobby of mine never to attract no undue attention on the street, why I tried to quiet him down. Before I can say two and a half words though, Lem's got his second wind.

"It ain't the Big Boss which is responsible for that kind of a application blank," he goes on. "A application blank which loses them big, preedatory corporations plenty of good material every day in the shape of


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 bright, but proud young fellers like me! As the matter and fact, I bet the average president of a big firm would throw them blanks out of his office if he ever seen one. No sir, the feller which gets that application blank up is the same pinhead which has another blank printed which visitors to the office is supposed to fill out. A blank which has sent thousands of dollars away from many a firm—sent away, ragin' mad, manys the man with a big proposition. I got one of them blanks with me—look here!"

With that he pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a silk hat. Here's what it says on the paper:

"Now tell me," howls Lem, "now tell me, if you come in a man's office with a big deal to swing his way or a personal matter to talk over, would you fill out that insultin' fule paper for the office boy to peruse?"

I don't get no chance to answer because we're arriving in the courtroom, but I must say this—a few weeks after that I went into Lem's office to talk over a investment with him and before I can see him I got to fill out a blank practically exactly like the one he showed me that day. I guess a man's ideas on lots of things changes with his position in life, hey?

Well, Judge Tuckerman is just coming into court when we get there and the first thing he does is ex-


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 change snappy nods with old Ajariah Stubbs which always had a box, you might say, at the judge's hearings. Judge Tuckerman and Ajariah was once the champion quoit pitching team of Sussex County, but rheumatism turned 'em into checker players. The first case before the judge that day is a sport from New York charged with speeding and reckless driving on the State Road through Drew City. Judge Tuckerman asks him what he's got to say about it and make it snappy and the minute the prisoner opens his mouth to speak, why, the judge pronounces him guilty. The victim hollers for a trial by jury, but the judge waves him away. He says you never can tell what a chicken-hearted jury will do, but he knows darn well what he's going to do and he fines this fellow a hundred dollars even. This wakes the prisoner up and he demands to know how Judge Tuckerman figures a fine as heavy as that for a first offense.

"Twenty dollars for speedin'," says the judge, glaring at his prey over his cheaters, "thutty for reckless drivin', forty for argyin' with the court and ten which I saved ye by not lettin' ye have a trial by jury, in which case ye would of had to hire a lawyer!" He bangs the desk with his gavel, "Ah—ptu!" he says, "bring on the next scoundrel!"

The next case panics me and causes Judge Tuckerman to bar me from the courtroom for laughing out loud. This was Ollie Yerks, which wants to sue the Palace Eating House for assault and battery and a week's salary as cook. Ollie claims he got fired without no notice and for no reason at all. Judge Tuckerman


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 calls on Ollie's ex-boss, Red Fisher, to testify.

"Well, Jedge, your honor, sir," says Red. "It's this way, I'm what you call a nervous man—all aquiver, is what I mean, Jedge. Well, Ollie here gits himself a pair of shoes which squeaks somethin' scandalous when he walks around my kitchen. Every time he takes a step them squeakin' shoes goes through me like a knife—me bein' that nervous, like I told you, Jedge. So I says, 'Ollie' I says, 'Ollie, you got to git you some other shoes. Them squeakin' shoes is drivin' me crazy!' Jedge, he jest laffs. Well, next day he's still got on them same shoes and there he is walkin' around my kitchen, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak! Jedge, I git to tremblin' and quiverin' somethin' terrible. So I goes out and I says, 'Ollie, either you or them shoes has got to go. I can't stand that squeakin' and that's all they is to it!' This time, Jedge, your honor, he gives me a ugly look. Well, Jedge, yistiddy, he comes in wearin' a pair of canvas sneakers. He walks back to the kitchen without makin' a sound. I'm jest goin' to thank him, when what does he do but sit down and take off them sneakers and put back on them squeaky shoes again! Jedge, like I told you, I'm nervous. I listen to that squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak for about five minutes and I'm jumpin' and shakin' like a maniac. So I run back to the kitchen and smacked Ollie down and throwed him out of my place! That's all, Jedge, your honor."

"You want your job back, Ollie?" says Judge Tuckerman.

"Yes sir, I do!" says Ollie.


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Sir Dietrich fetched himself his coat of mail, and Master Hildebrand helped him arm. The mighty man made wail so sore, that the whole house resounded with his voice. But then be gained again a real hero’s mood. The good knight was now armed and grim of mind; a stout shield he hung upon his arm. Thus he and Master Hildebrand went boldly hence.

Then spake Hagen of Troneg: “Yonder I see Sir Dietrich coming hither; he would fain encounter us, after the great sorrow, that hath here befallen him. To-day we shall see, to whom one must give the palm. However strong of body and grim of mood the lord of Berne thinketh him to be, right well dare I match him,” so spake Hagen, “an’ he will avenge on us that which hath been done him.”

Dietrich and Hildebrand heard this speech, for Hagen came to where he found the champion stand before the house, leaning against the wall. Dietrich set his good shield upon the ground, and spake in grievous dole: “Gunther, mighty king, why have ye so acted against me, banished man? What have I done to you? I stand alone, bereft of all my comfort. Ye thought it not enow of bitter need, when ye did kill Knight Rüdeger, our friend. Now ye have robbed me of all my men. Forsooth I never had wrought you heroes sorrow such as


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 "All right. You go back and hereafter you come to work bare-footed!" says the judge. He bangs with his gavel, "Ah, ptu—next case!"

That's more than I can take! I get a bit hysterical and the judge has me put out. So I don't get to see Lem lawyering after all.

Well, about a week before I fight the middleweight champ, Spence Brock asks me up to his house one night. He says his father wants to see me and if he had said the King of Brazil wanted to see me, I couldn't of been more surprised! John T. Brock is president of the Irontown Locomotive Works and you know what a locomotive costs. Why, even if he only sells one locomotive a week, Spence's dad must have a bank roll which would make a millionaire grind his teeth with envy. They live part of the time in a sheik's palace on the lake in Drew City and they got servants and autos and motor boats to the extent of galore.

Anyways, I can't imagine what Mr. Brock can want to see me for. On the ways up to the house with Spence, who's wishing out loud that I was going to Newport with him, I can't stand the strain no longer so I ask him what he thinks is the reason for his father sending for me. Spence laughs.

"I don't think, I know!" he says. "If father has a weakness, it's boxing. He never misses a big fight, no matter where it's held. Well, then, think of the treat for him to talk to one of the principals in a world's championship battle, almost on the eve of the bout. Why, he'll have the time of his life to-night.


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 Honestly, Gale, he'll be more pleased than if you were the biggest man in Wall Street, bless his old heart!"

Well, we finally get to the house and the butler lets us in, taking my cap and the classy belted raincoat. I was featuring then, like I'm the Duke of Diphtheria or the equivalent. I got on my best blue serge suit with a crease in it you could slice ham with, patent-leather pumps, black silk socks, a white silk shirt, and a expensive two-dollar blue silk tie. I got a wow of a diamond scarf pin in it, and altogether I check up pretty snappy, what I mean. Yet in this palace where you sink to your ankles walking across the rugs, with curving chairs and oil paintings and flashing mirrors greeting you at every turn, why, I feel in the whispering stage, like once when I visit the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pa.

Mr. Brock is sitting out on the glass-covered pazzaza at a little table and he certainly does look grand—just like one of them wealthy bankers does in the movies. He's a great, big, good-looking, powerfully built man, a man which could no doubt been a good heavyweight when he was younger. They's just a bit of gray at his temples and sitting there in his Tuxedo he sure checks up perfect, for a fact! Well, I'm a little bit scared to be standing there before all these dollars and don't think I ain't, but Mr. Brock gets up and shakes my hand and actually thanks me for coming over, can you imagine that? Then we all sit down and after we get the state of the weather and this kind of thing all settled, why, I soon put him at his ease with me.

Mr. Brock tells me I look fit to lick my weight in


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 wildcats and he likewise says that him and a party of friends will have a ringside box at my fight with Frankie Jackson. He tells me he's saw the middleweight champion start a few times and he thinks I'll be too young and strong for him. I says I hope so. Then Mr. Brock wants to-know have I ever saw the champ fight and I told him how I had hounded him into a match with me by appearing as a second in the corners of the guys he fought. This seems to give Mr. Brock quite a kick. He slaps the table and laughs his head off and his voice is as deep as the Pacific.

"By thunder!" he says. "That sort of thinking is worthy of a better cause, my boy! What do you do when you're not fighting or training—how do you spend your time?"

"Studying," I says. Spence moves his chair closer and keeps looking from his father to me. Spence thinks I'm the elephant's instep and I can see how anxious he is for me to make a hit with his dad.

"Studying?" says Mr. Brock, sitting up. He's got a habit of putting a cigar in and out of his mouth, but he never seems to light it. "Studying what?"

"Everything, sir," I says. "People, books, things that happen to me. I—I—well, I'm only going to be a prize fighter for temporarily. After that, I—" I kind of trailed off, thinking what in the Alabama does Mr. Brock care about my plans? But he seems to.

"Yes—after that, what?" he asks me. I see from his face that he ain't kidding, so I went on.

"After that, I mean after I have made enough money at this game so's I can knock off for a while and look


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 around, why, I'm going to pick out something better and make good at it!" I says. "My first idea was to box myself into a college education, but I guess I'll be too old to start there by the time I have the bank roll. I'll have to pick up knowledge from here and there."

"Well, son," says Mr. Brock, kind of thoughtful, and he flicks the end of his cigar like he's knocking off the ash, though it ain't even lit. "Well, son, I never went to college either. I—er—picked up knowledge from here and there, as you put it, myself. I'm going to send my boy to Princeton, of course, but I'm not sure in my own mind which of you is going to the better school! Adversity has given the world most of its greatest men, just as affluence has killed ambition in many who might have been great. In fact, I rather believe that had I been the son of wealthy parents, my boy would now be the son of poor ones! Well, this conversation is growing rather heavy, isn't it?"

He breaks off suddenly with a smile, throws away his cigar and picking up another one he bites the end off and sticks it in his mouth, but still he don't light it. Before I went home I bet he done that a dozen times without smoking once. Even these well-to-do millionaires has their little odd tricks, hey? Anyhow, Mr. Brock then swings the talk around to boxing. Gee, about the only big fight he's missed was the Battle of Bunker Hill! He remembers exactly how many rounds all the big championship battles went and even what punch won 'em.

His favorite scrapper was Bob Fitzsimmons, and he tells us a dozen tales about Fitz's fights, seeming to


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 enjoy 'em as much as we do and me and Spence just sits there open-mouthed like kids hearing bedtime stories. But every now and then, why, Mr. Brock would switch the conversation to me and my chances of getting somewheres, so that without hardly knowing it I have told him my complete life's history from the time I left the nursery to the time I entered his house.

He acts awful interested and he asks me lots of questions. I told him I thought I had a bent for salesmanship and he tells me to go to it, because salesmanship's as big a game as any in the world. He advises me to take a correspondent's course on business from some good mail-order school and likewise to try my hand at selling things—anything good—whenever I get the chance.

Just before I'm going home Mr. Brock says that he's awful glad to of had this talk with me, but gladder still that Spence had showed the good sense to pick me as a friend. From now on, he says, he'll have his eye on me, and he wants to talk to me again. If I ever want anything, let him know.

I walk back to Mrs. Willcox's boarding house on air, and that's a fact. Imagine me spending the evening with a full-fledged millionaire! And this Mr. Brock is a prince too, even, if he has got a million. He couldn't of been nicer to me if I had of been up there to buy one of his locomotives—in fact, he done everything but give me one for a present! Spence is tickled silly at the way the visit worked out. He was crazy to have me make good with his father, and to


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 have his father make good with me, and apparently that's what we done.

Well, I picked out a correspondent's school and wrote for their course in salesmanship, and Judy helped me study it at nights. It was awful interesting too. It gave sample sales talks to hurl at the victim you are seeking to sell something to, and I tried out a lot of 'em on Judy, for what I was trying to sell her was myself! I also practice these sales arguments in the privacies of my room when I'm alone, and one day Nate walks in and hears me almost in a frenzy trying to sell myself a order. When Nate finds out I been arguing with myself out aloud, he runs over to old Doc Talley, which fills me full of bromides and says if I don't stop smoking I'll kill myself. I never smoked in my life, but I wouldn't tell the doc that and make him feel bad.

Besides helping me with my study of the mysteries of salesmanship, Judy kept acting as my teacher in other courses, and while it's hard to keep your mind on anything but Judy while she's around, why, I made some headway at that. The way we did was like this: every night Judy marks a certain subject for me to read in my encyclopedia, and then the next day she asks me all about it, and I repeat what I remember. In that way all this knowledge got plastered in my mind, and it stuck there. For instance, ask me about Henry the 8th, wireless, the city of Washington, who invented the telegraph and why, or what's radium, etc., etc.—ask me any of that and I'll give you the low down in a flash! How bout that?


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 In the encyclopedia I read about a guy which must of been one of my descendants. In round numbers, his name was Claudius Galen and he bounded around during the year 200 D. C. While they's few which can now recall him personally, they's a whole column in the book about him. It seems he was a Greek doctor and he clicked off a lot of little booklets about medicine, and they was just good enough to get his name in the encyclopedia. Well, don't be surprised if my name don't get in there right under his in a couple of years. "Galen, Gale—Newsboy, errand boy, printer's devil, bobbin boy, soda jerk, boxer, business king!" Just for the fun of it, look in your encyclopedia about two years from now.

Well, the night before I am due to dally and toy with the middleweight champ, Barbara Worthington, one of the rich and swell-looking flappers from the prep school, stakes herself to a dance at her marvelous home. As the richest people in Drew City, the Spencer-Brocks, has kind of took me under their wings—at least, Spence and his father has—why, I ain't barred from these social whirls no more like I used to be when I was jerking soda for Ajariah Stubbs. I get a regular invitation in the mail, though, of course, it's addressed to "Gale Galen," and not "Six-Second Smith." As a matter and fact, I don't believe Barbara Worthington even knew I'm a fighter, or just what I am doing since I left Stubbs's soda fountain. Well, she knows now!

Rags Dempster blows around in his car in the afternoon and wants to know will Judy go to Barbara's dance with him. Judy says no can do, as she's going


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 with me. This gets Rags red-headed, and I know he's going to pull some foul play on me for revengeance before the night's over, but I should worry when the best-looking girl in Drew City or any other city turns down a rich man's son and air for me! Nate acts like a raving maniac when he hears I'm going to a dance the night before I fight for the world's middleweight title, and him and Kayo Kelly hides my best clothes so's I can't go out. But I fool 'em by getting a ready-made tuxedo and all that goes with it at the New York Store, and staying away from Mrs. Willcox's boarding house all afternoon with it on so's they can't lock me in my room. I met Judy at Stubbs's drug store at eight like we framed and everything was jake.

I wish you could of saw Judy the way she looked that night—just looking at her, a thing I did practically constantly, give me more kick than you get from knocking the other boy for a row of silos. She's wearing a lowish cut evening gown made out of blue, and if she don't look like something from Heaven then Lake Michigan don't look the least bit wet. Oh, what a knockout she is—why, she'd baffle the guy which baffled description! She couldn't of been no nicer to me than she was without causing talk, but still and all I have a terrible time at Barbara Worthington's racket. The reason is because I don't dance a stroke!

The minute we get to that party about ninety guys, with Rags in the lead, rushes at Judy, grabs her program, and begins writing their names all over it for dances. The other girls looks daggers at her, and I look bombs at the boys! Judy manages to save me


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 four dances, which we got to sit out on the account of my fatal unability to shake a wicked hoof. The results is that about every time I start a conversation with her, and I'm doing myself some good, some clown butts in with: "Pardon me, this is my dance, I believe?" and I got to sit there like a sap and see the girl I am insane about dancing around in the arms of one of these dumbells. When she dances with Rags, why, I can't even watch it! Believe me, a guy at a party which can't dance has as much fun as a codfish would have in the middle of a desert!

But when me and Judy does get a chance to go out on the lawn and talk, I work fast. Judy wishes me the best of luck in my scrap with Frankie Jackson, and she thinks it's great that Mr. Brock has took such a interest in me. But between you and me, I think it's even greater that she has!

Well, Rags drops out on the lawn every now and then, as he hates to let Judy get out of his sight. Every time he runs into me during the courses of the evening he keeps making cracks which would cause a rabbit to smack a bulldog right in the face. Insulting me in that silky oily manner of his, the words themselves not meaning so much, but the way he says 'em meaning plenty! About a hour of watching Judy being carried off to dance by these fellows and listening to Rags's sarcastical cracks has made me one continual blaze. Rags knows he can ride me heavy this night without no risk to himself, because, naturally enough, I wouldn't think of smacking him for a row of Hindu parsnip bowls in Barbara Worthington's home.


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 However, when Rags sees he ain't getting no action by picking on me, he plays his ace! I am standing out on the porch looking in at the dancers and waiting for Judy to come out, when along comes Barbara's mother and Rags. I drawed back in the darkness so's they won't bump into me, and I hear Rags telling Barbara's mother that he thinks she ought to know that one of her daughter's guests got in under false pretenses. He says the boy they call Gale Galen is really a prize fighter named Six-Second Smith, and he will point me out to her.

I got one look at Mrs. Worthington's face when she hears that "prize fighter" thing, and that look is plenty for me! I am starting for my things, when I think I better wait and tell Judy I'm leaving. But I don't get much chance. Mrs. Worthington and Rags has saw me, and the next thing the butler comes over with my hat and coat, looks at me like I'm something the cat dragged in on a rainy night, and says in a zero voice that he'll show me the exit. Rags walks over to us, grinning like a hyena, which is what he reminds me of very much.

Then the music stops inside and Judy comes out with the fathead she's been dancing with. She sees me and Rags standing there, and the butler holding my hat and coat, and she trips over to us looking questions by the score. Rags makes no attempt to hide the pure delight he feels at me getting the air and getting it publicly too, because lots of the others is whispering together and looking over at us.


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 "What's the matter, Gale?" says Judy, passing Rags up.

"Why—eh nothing, Judy," I says, taking my things from this lump of ice called the butler. "Nothing at all, I—I'm going out and get some air. I'll come back to take you home at whatever time you say—that's if you want me to come back for you."

"Oh, why lie about it!" butts in Rags with a snarl. "Mrs. Worthington has quite naturally refused to have her home turned into a lounging place for prize fighters, and, of course, she resents her daughter having had to associate with one, even for"

He stops short when Judy swings around on him and gives him a glare. Then she turns back to me and smiles her sweetest. "Wait until I get my wraps, Gale," she says, "and I'll go with you!"

They's two faces you should of saw—mine and Rags!

Well, it broke perfect for me, and I could almost of thanked Rags for getting me the gate. Not being fluent at dancing, I didn't like the party anyways, and would of busted away during the first five minutes if Judy hadn't of been there. As it is, I got her all to myself on the account of Rags knifing me. She probably never would of left I'd asked her; now she gets her cloak and takes my arm, paying absolutely no attention to the frantic Barbara Worthington, the cuckoo Rags, and the pleading guys which had dancing engagements with her. When we get outside we find the night is perfection itself, soft and warm and a new moon shining its head off. Borrowing from the nerve


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 I was saving for my clash with the middleweight champ the next night, I ask Judy will she take a walk to the lake with me, as it's still fairly early. Judy waits so long to answer that I'm just on the brinks of begging her pardon for asking, when she suddenly says "Yes!" and then I'm almost afraid to breathe for fear I'll bust my luck. She stops me from getting too sentimental when I commence thanking her for leaving the party with me. She says she could hardly do anything else when her escort was asked to leave. We are sitting on the bank of the lake, hid from everything but each other.

"Then you didn't do it for me, Judy?" I says, terrible disappointed. "You mean you would of left with anyone under the same conditions?"

Judy commences plucking at the grass and keeps looking away from me.

"I wouldn't have been there with anyone, Gale," she says slowly, "or—here!"

Well, I ain't exactly stupid, and the rest of the conservation is nobody's business, now, is it?

We got home about eleven, and Nate's sitting on the front porch waiting for me with a four-alarm fire in each eye. He says nothing at all till Judy goes upstairs, and then he gives me a terrible tongue lashing for staying up late the night before the biggest fight of my life. When he gets all through I says I agree with every word he's said, and was he ever in love? With a wild yell Nate throws up his hands and, grabbing a pillow from the porch hammock, he chases me upstairs to bed.


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 At a quarter of ten the next night I am clambering through the ropes at the Superba A. C. in Jersey City, with Nate, Kayo Kelly, and Shiney Jepps, my handlers, trailing after me. For the first time since I been a leather pusher I get a frenzied outburst of applause before I show my wares. The reason for that ain't hard to guess. I am going to fight a champion, and the average fight fan loves to see a champion unchamped. After I rub my shoes in the rosin and sit down on the stool in the corner Nate has picked out, I look around at the ten thousand-odd excited customers which has come to see me and Frankie Jackson prove that self-defense is not only a plea but a art. The champ has resorted to the old trick of making me sit out there in the ring and wait for him, the objects being to get me nervous; but that's a waste of time on Frankie's part, because I have become nerve-proof. I'm telling the truth when I tell you that this battle don't bother me no more than any other. As far as that part of it goes, no matter if I fight Dempsey, I'll never again get the kick out of a box fight that I did out of my first one! I guess it's the same way about a man's first anything—hey?

No—it's the crowd which gives me the kick now. It always does, and I look around and study 'em with as much interest as they're studying every move I make. For a few minutes I got the undivided attention of bricklayers, bankers, lawyers, pickpockets, doctors, shipping clerks, yeggs, actors, sporting men, and other leather pushers who may box me later and come to see what I got. All around the ring, right


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 under the ropes in a solid bank, is the hard-boiled sport writers and their telegraph operators. Behind 'em the ringside boxes with plenty of guys in evening dress. I see Mr. Brock, and his friends, and he nods to me. I don't know whether or not he wants me to recognize him when he's with his swell friends, but I take a chance and wave a hand at him. I get a broad smile and a couple of nods back. Shiney Jepps is massaging my stomach. Kayo Kelly, which has just knocked Georgie Neill stiff in the semi-final, is working on the back of my neck and kidding me. Nate's bending down over the ropes, talking to the reporters. I rinse my mouth from the water bottle and wonder whether I'll leave the ring on a shutter or middleweight champion of the world. That's the only two things can happen. I'll never leave any ring able to walk if I'm licked—that's a promise I made to myself!

The droning hum of the mob suddenly turns into wild yells and the stamping of thousands of feet. Frankie Jackson, the champ, hops over the ropes and walks to my corner. His hair's all nicely brushed back, he's freshly shaved, and as he bends over to look at the tape on my hands, the muscles in his tanned arms ripples like little snakes under pieces of brown satin. I can't help thinkin' what a swell-built fellow he is!

"You big stiff!" Nate snarls at him. "You weigh one sixty-five if you weigh a ounce. You got nearly ten pounds on us!"

Frankie grins pleasantly at Nate and shakes my hand warmly.

"Good luck, Kid!" he says. "I hope you can hit!"


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 "Same to you, Frankie," I says, returning the handshake; "I hope you can take it!"

Honest, you may find it too much to believe, but they ain't no hard feelings at all. Iain't got nothing against Frankie Jackson and he ain't got a thing against me. Yet in a minute we'll be tryin' our darndest to half kill each other, because that happens to be our trade.

A dozen guys which don't mean nothing and some which does is introduced to the impatient crowd, and they all challenge the winner. Then one after the other they come over to Frankie and then to me, shake our hands, and wish us luck. Nate, having picked my gloves from the new set throwed into the ring, begins lacing 'em on my hands. Over the tick—tick—ticky—tick—tick—tick—of the telegraphs under my stool, Nate's pouring a continual stream of instructions in to me: "Make him come to you and look out for his left to the heart! Don't lead with 'at right of yours—he don't like it down below, so work on him heavy in the clinches!" All that and plenty more.

Then he whips off my bathrobe—the blue silk one Judy give me—and jumps down out of the ring. With my gloves on the top rope, I turn around and face the mob which is going nuts with excitement now. The lights go out all over the house, except the blinding ones right over the ring. Then the bell and the panic is on!

Still smiling pleasantly, Frankie Jackson stabs his long left into my face and I come back with a left and right to the body that draws a howl from the customers. Frankie backs away, the smile gone and a thoughtful


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 look on his face. I crowd him to the ropes, and after missing two well-meant rights, I manage to sock home a left hook to the heart which makes him gasp and dive into a clinch. "How d'ye like him, Frankie?" bellers a elephant's voice over the continual roar.

Frankie don't like me at all, and he proves it by slamming away with both hands to my mid-section till the referee breaks us. One of Frankie's seconds yells for the champ to quit slugging with me and box me instead. Frankie nods and begins dancing around me, shooting that left into my face like a piston rod. I get sick of this and rush him, but he ain't there, and I nearly sprawl on my face when I miss a right swing. The attendance laughs and this steams me up. I took six left jabs from Frankie without a return to get home one right hook. The punch hit Frankie on the side of the head and turned him completely around, making the guys which was just laughing at me go insane screaming for a knockout.

But this baby knows too much for me! He clinches till his head clears, and then the smile comes back and so does the dance, and for the rest of the round he kept away, picking my punches out of the air and cutting me to pieces with that vicious left jab. It seems I just couldn't keep my face off it! At every opportunity I ripped rights and lefts to the body, but as this guy was always going away when the wallops landed they did little more than sting him. I rushed him again just before the bell, and took a straight right on the jaw that didn't do me a bit of good.

A left I couldn't hold back hit Frankie on the nose a


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 second after the gong—it was a pure accident, though some of the mob hissed. I held out my glove to Frankie and panted: "I didn't hear the bell, Frankie, excuse me!" Frankie shakes my glove. "That's all right," he grins. "I didn't hear it myself." A good kid, hey?

The next six rounds was about duplicates of the first. The champ had settled down to a campaign of simply sticking his left in my face and trying to wear me down with body punishment in the clinches. He never let me set to crash him with my right, which had give him plenty of respect for me after a few applications. Frankie could hit, himself, and don't think he couldn't, but his trick was boxing. He had the prettiest left I ever see in the ring, and on his feet he was chain lightning! In them early rounds he went around me like a hoop around a barrel, keeping out of danger himself and piling up points till he was first and I was nowheres. Unless I could land a lucky punch, it looked like Frankie would beat me from here to Hawaii!

In the middle of the seventh round Frankie must of made up his mind that he had wore me down to the point where I was ready to take a dive, because he suddenly begins swapping swings with me. It took less than a minute to show him his mistake. Frankie feinted with his left, and when I fell for it he drove a wicked right to my stomach. I missed a right and left to the jaw, but landed one right square on his mouth, and he went back on his heels like he run into a fence.

I'm on top of him in a instant, pumping both hands to the body till he's forced to cover his wind, and the


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 second his arms slid down I crashed a right flush or his jaw. The champ fell sideways, rolling over on his back and then struggling to one knee, while the maniacs outside the ropes leaps on their chairs yowling like wolves. The referee pushes me away and begins to count, but Frankie is up at "seven," full of fight and rarin' to go. Same here! We stood toe to toe in mid-ring and slugged till the crowd shook the roof. Neither of us heard the bell, and our handlers has got to jump into the ring and tear us apart!

Round Eight was very slow, as the pace was beginning to tell on us both. We spent this frame mostly in clinching and getting-our wind, and turned four deaf ears to the customers' indignant bellers for us to fight.

The ninth round was the busiest! Frankie come out at the bell with a cold determined look on his face, and he met my wild rush with a volley of straight lefts that brought the blood in a stream. I steadied myself and drove a hard left to Frankie's right eye. Another left to the same place closed that thing for the rest of the fight. But I paid heavy for them two wallops! Coming out of a clinch, the champ throwed me off balance with a left hook to the head and then swung his right to my jaw with everything he ever had behind it.

I see the punch coming and try to duck, but I'm a bit too late. Frankie's glove lands fair and square on the side of my chin and the floor comes up and hits me plunk in the back. It was a terrible punch—terrible! The hardest wallop I ever been hit in my life! The


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 whole side of my face is numb, and when I open my mouth to breathe I come near screaming with the pain. Getting up off that mat was quite a trick, but I beat the count by a eyelash. I'm swaying back and forth on my feet in a neutral corner, when the bell saves me.

Nate jumps into the ring before the sound of the gong has died out and helps me to my corner. He shoves half a lemon into my lips, and I knocked it on the floor with my glove. I can't get nothing into my mouth—I can hardly get it open! The crowd and the ring and Frankie and everything else is mixed up and going around and around and around. Nate is examining my jaw, and wow how it hurts! I dimly see Nate bend down and whisper, and another guy is pushed up through the ropes. This bird fingers my sore jaw, and then him and Nate talks. I can't hear what they're saying, and I'm wondering is the fight over or what's the idea? Nate leans over to me.

"We're through, kid," he says. "You got a fractured jaw!"

"What d'ye mean I'm through?" I manage to get through my lips. "I got this guy licked!"

I get off the stool and I won't sit down. Quitting is one habit I never picked up. Never!

Suppose I do quit and get away with it, as Nate's raving in my ear, why, that would only encourage me to quit again. Nothing stirring! Nate tries to push me down, and we struggle around while the mob's wondering what it's all' about. The reporters comes crowding into our corner, and then the bell rings for


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 the tenth round. I remember breaking away from Nate, and that's all I do remember till I'm sitting in my dressing room when the fight's over. But here's what "Tad," the famous sport writer, says about that brawl from then on. I clipped it out of the paper:

Gents, this was one for the book! When "Six-Second" Smith flopped on his stool at the end of the ninth frame, it looked like it was time for the customers to go home and argue about the fight. But this two-fisted fighting fool from Drew City had other plans for the evening. With his jaw fractured in two places, his body a raw red from Jackson's terrific pounding in the clinches, Smith raved and struggled with his frantic pilot, Nate Shapiro, who wanted to throw in the old towel and save his boy from further mutiliationmutilation [sic] or the knockout that seemed as certain as sunset. With only half a minute before the bell, Shapiro, seeing no chance to keep Smith in his corner, drew on his canny ringcraft in an attempt to save a hopeless situation. He knew that if the champion discovered what he had done to Smith's jaw, he'd simply crack him there again and it would be curtains. So he told Smith to drop from the next body punch, take a count of nine, and then get up bent over as if badly hurt. The foxy Shapiro hoped this would make the champ think he's busted one of Smith's ribs and cause him to devote all his attention to Smith's body, leaving the burn jaw alone.

An old trick, men, but it worked! Jackson slammed a left to Smith's wind early in the tenth and Smith went down as if hit with an axe. He was up at nine,


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 staggering over to the ropes with both gloves pressed against his stomach and an agonized expression on his face. The champion rushed in to finish his man and was met with a terrific overhand right to the head that buckled his knees and put the house in an uproar. Smith then dove into a clinch, where he hung on like a summer cold till the referee pried 'em apart. For the rest of the round, Smith fought a strictly defensive battle, keeping his ruined jaw well covered and occasionally shaking the puzzled champion with a right.

The eleventh round was just one clinch after another and the crowd whistled and hooted, not knowing that one of these boys was fighting with a broken jaw and the other one fighting with a slowly breaking heart, as he slammed this battered gamester in front of him with punch after punch and saw his victim still erect and trying! Down in the press coop, we're getting the big kick. We know what the crowd don't—that a single punch on that broken jaw will win the fight. The champ don't know that, either.

Then comes the twelfth and last round and one of the most thrilling finishes to a championship fight in the annals of the ring. Both boys came out with a rush at the bell—the champion determined to finish the thing, Smith, his jaw the size of a house, determined to die fighting. Both miss rights to the jaw and Jackson then shows he has learned Smith's secret. His eye is fixed on that swollen jaw and he pins Smith on the ropes, swinging desperately with both hands to the face. Drunk with punishment, Smith weaves back and forth in front of his executioner, stabbing out feebly


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 with his left, his right cocked and set ready for the opening he's hoping against hope will come. The arm-weary champ rips a left to the wind and then hooks his right to the busted jaw. The sport writers wince with that blow! But "Six-Second" Smith, this fighting maniac who lives on punishment, rebounds off the ropes and tries two well meant uppercuts, both of which miss. The champ, now sure of himself, measures the reeling Smith with a light left and then sinks his right into the heaving stomach before him. The mob is triple cuckoo as another right to the jaw hangs Smith on the ropes. Then comes the fireworks!

Nate Shapiro, seeing his man helpless, reaches for the sponge and tosses it over the ropes. He's excited and a burn pitcher. The sponge goes clean across the ring and out on the other side! But while it's still in mid-air, Smith fairly pushes himself off the ropes and faces the champion. Jackson sets himself for the finisher, not seeing the sponge. Neither does the referee, though ten thousand voices are calling his attention to it! With a superhuman effort, Smith hooks the champ fair on the jaw with a terrific right. Jackson falls flat on his face, his head bouncing as it hit the canvas. He's as cold as a pawn-broker's eye and no mistake! Smith totters on his feet for an instant, looking at the insane mob with glazing eyes. Then he topples in a heap over the champ's prostrate body. At that same minute, the bell rings, finding both boys on the floor at the end of the most sensational fight the writer has ever seen. If you missed it, it's your own fault!


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 That's all they is to that, except the newspapers called it a draw. After he's been brung to life, Frankie Jackson comes into my dressing room while a doctor is setting my jaw. When Frankie finds out he broke it in the ninth round, and that I fooled him into losing the chance to knock me with a punch at any time after that, he's burnt up! But he leans over to shake my hand.

"You're a rough kid," he says, "but you can't take it!"

I moved the doc's hands away from my busted jaw. "And you're a fast boy, Frankie," I says, "but you can't hit!"


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is power!" says Francis Bacon in the fiscal year of 1624, and Frankie knew what it was all about, don't think he didn't! That snappy remark of his applies to all of us from president to plumber. Maybe you'll kind of curl your lip and say that's fourth-grade copy-book stuff. Well, that's just what it is—but when you get right down to it, ain't it funny how them old copy-book sayings seems to cover everything which comes up in later years? What is these up-to-date nifties, anyways, but the old stuff jazzed up? What's new about 'em. "Strike while the iron is hot!" says Jack Heywood in 1565. "Do your stuff!" says the modern slang writer and gets credit for a wise crack.

You take knowledge in the game I've just quit—box fighting. Like in anything else, the students is the champions. What does a scrapper have to know besides a straight left and a right hook? Plenty! A rush of brains to the head now and then is as necessary to a boxer as it is to a banker. For instance, I learned to instantly shift my attack from jaw to body when the other boy didn't seem to like it down below, when to dive into a clinch and when not to, how to


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 protect myself from a body puncher once we got to close quarters, how to eel out of a tight corner when I'm pinned on the ropes, to stay on one knee till the referee says "nine" if I'm floored—instead of jumping right up groggy and running into a knockout punch—and how to hit straight out from my shoulder or waist instead of swinging wildly like a gate.

Say, when I think what a chump I was when Nate took me from behind Ajariah Stubbs's soda fountain and changed my name from Gale Galen to "Six-Second Smith." I can't understand how I ever stopped anybody! All I could do then was hit and take it—not quite enough, no matter what the sharps tell you. Half the first division guys you think is clumsy from your ringside seat is doing fancy work in close where you can't see it which would make your hair curl and is making the other boy's hair curl.

Besides, all this, I lived clean and healthy. Plenty sleep, good food, no smoking, and I didn't know whether you spread booze on bread or rub it in your hair. Lots of people seems to think that all boxers is a lot of little or big thugs which spends the time they ain't in the ring beating up innocent bystanders just to be nasty and drinking like famished fish. That's apple sauce. Maybe the pork and beaners does all of that and more, but the good ones don't and that's a fact. Even in winning fights, the best of 'em takes not a little punishment in the course of a year and you can't do that unless you're in perfect condition—not to-night, or yesterday, or next week, but all the time!

Well, I got a three months' lay-off from the ring


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 through the kind attention of Mr. Frankie Jackson. However, the argument I put up against the king of the middleweights caused a serious epidemic of bashfulness among the other contenders in that class as far as a scuffle with me was concerned. When Nate pleads with Frankie to give us another crack at his crown, why, the champ just laughs and says if we want to fight to get a job on the Dublin police force. In twenty-four battles I had win twenty by knockouts and, like Dempsey and many another good boy which has too much stuff for the rest of the field, it seems I have fought myself out of a job.

So, giving up all hopes of getting work in the middleweigh division, I tell Nate to go out shopping and get me a nice, fresh, light heavyweight somewheres and I'll be pleased to slap him silly for a reasonable amount of pennies. I was then twenty years old, stood five foot ten and three-quarters in my nude feet and still had trouble keeping down to 158 ringside—about 164 being my proper poundage—and it seems, like London I'm still growing. Well, Bob Fitzsimmons only weighed a few pounds more when he was bowling over some of the best heavyweights of his time and I got as many freckles as Fitz ever had!

Don't fall a victim to the idea that I spent the three months my ruined jaw was healing sitting in my room knitting doilies or nothing like that. In the contrary, what I done with them ninety days was to take a course in a New York business school. I suppose that's a laugh, hey? A prize fighter studying the mysteries of shorthand, advertisement writing, and salesmanship!


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 Anyways, I take up this business course and also enroll for the evening lectures at Columbia College, because I'm still incurably addicted to ambition—the thing which drove me from one meaningless job to another—a wild and undownable craving to be somebody, to get somewhere! I ain't got no blue blood in me; I know that on the account it always come out red when I got cuffed on the nose—a mere detail in my business. But I had too much fighting blood in me to be a John Smith in Life's phone book for long!

Judy went to this business school with me, and, of course, that didn't make it hard to take at all. She graduated from Drew City Prep a few weeks after my quarrel with Frankie Jackson, and as her mother has absolutely no connection with the Vanderbilt family or the equivalent, why, Judy got ready to bust into the business world herself so's twelve o'clock would mean lunch at the boarding house and not just noon.

Knockout Kelly, which by that time was keeping steady company with pretty Mary Ballinger, was always riding me for studying at nights instead of stepping out. Kayo claimed life's too short for that kind of business and that education is a great handicap to success. Be ignorant and be a winner, says Kayo.

"I don't know if algebra is pink or green," he tells me one day. "I can't spell necessity and words like that. For all I know, North Dakota is the capital of Wyoming. But—I'm clickin' off from three to five thousand smackers a fight, never more than forty


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 minutes' work, usually twenty. They's millions of college guys workin' two years for the same money. Laugh that off!"

"But, Kayo," I says, "ten years from now you'll be through in the ring, and not having no other trick, why, that means you'll be through everywheres! You never save a nickel, so what will you do? You'll be hanging around the cheap fight clubs, picking up a dollar here and there as a handler or a human punching bag for some fellow training for a fight. But ten years from now the college guys which is working cheap at present as newly made lawyers, doctors, and this and that will be making more jack than you ever saw, Kayo, and they'll make it right-up to the time they die!"

"Blah!" sneers Kayo. "Be yourself! I ain't bothered about ten years from now or even one year from now. I never worry about yesterday or to-morrow. Yesterday's gone and to-morrow I may be gone. To-day's all that bothers me!"

With that he walks off whistling "Sing a Song as You Walk Along!"

Kayo didn't have a care in the world—or a chance—while he thought like he did then!

Well, just when I'm sitting pretty with Judy and everything is jake between me and the world, I get a terrible shock. I meet her on the stairs going to my room, and if she'd of looked any prettier she'd of fell in love with herself! The net effect on me I will leave in care of your imagination.

"How's your jaw, Gale?" she inquires tastefully.