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 from a man like him. But it likewise made me a few more enemies, as envy is a staple product of a small town. But in particular, it broils Rags Dempster and his father. They already hated me, and after—Mr. Brock got done telling the world what a knockout he thinks I am, why, their feelings for me before was infatuation alongside of the way they loathe me now.

The first comeback I get from the effects of Mr. Brock's speech on them babies is when the Board of Trade puts on the ice for me and my partners. Although we are owners of a theatre in the town, we are not called into any of the conferences the board holds with the other business men for the praiseworthy purposes of making the natives blow their dough in Drew City instead of taking it into New York. They frame up all kind of schemes, bargain days, "Help Local Merchants!" weeks, and this and that, inviting all the other storekeepers to turn in ideas, but they don't give us a tumble. When I go around to solicit ads for our screen, the only guy I can line up is old Ajariah Stubbs. The rest of these bozos just laugh me off.

I don't have to consult no fortune teller to find out what all this means. Sore at the interest Mr. Brock is taking in me, Rags and his father is simply bearing down on me through the Board of Trade, hoping I'll get discouraged and leave town. But they didn't know me as well as they thought they did! Of course, this stuff annoys me, but the ring ain't the only place where I can take punishment. In fact, I don't get good till the going gets tough! So I go right ahead planning publicity stunts and business getters for our theatre,


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 giving the customers as much as I can for their jack and still make money. It ain't long before I had built up a regular trade which packed the place every night. The mob was all pleased and me and Nate and Kayo was winning dough on our investment.

Then one day Mr. Brock wants to know why I don't appear at the Board of Trade meetings with the other business men. I am no squawker, so I simply says I have never been invited and let it go at that. He gives me a shrewd look.

"Never been invited, eh?" he says, frowning. "So that's the way the wind blows. Well, son, you will be invited!"

"I don't think so, sir," I says. "I can't make them like me if they don't want to."

"No?" he says sharply. "Well, I can! There will be a meeting of the board at ten to-morrow morning. Be there!"

As life to me those days was just one big surprise after another, it took a whole lot to give me a kick, but what happened at that Board of Trade meeting the next day furnished me with a thrill I'll be a long time forgetting. The board appears astonished at seeing me in the hall, but before Mr. Brock got through with 'em they was double dumbfounded. He's president of the board, but seldom shows up at the meetings, as he's too busy with his other interests. When he does show up the fur flies, and this day was no exception. Before any of the business of the meeting could get under way, Mr. Brock calls 'em to order. Then he takes the floor, with me standing beside him.

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54 ways made him a friend of every one. These circumstances early made him a man of no small mark in the distinguished body of which he was a member, and those about him soon came to understand the spell which had caused the hardy mountaineers to press him upon them by the warrant of three elections. Thus happily he entered upon his political career, and his constituents continued their support, until, in 1785, he left their district and removed to Albemarle County. During these years he was often prominent in the House of Delegates. His name appears upon many important committees, and he took a favoring part in the legislation of those years, directed towards the development of that part of the State which afterwards became the State of Kentucky. In the intervals of legislative labors he devoted himself to the study of law, and being admitted to the bar in 1785, he resigned his seat at the conclusion of the session of that year and began his practice in the courts of Charlottesville.

In the same year he married Miss Mary Hopkins Cabell, a woman of most brilliant and original mind, and of honorable descent. The Cabells were an old West of England family, living about Frome in Somersetshire. In the old church of St. Nicholas in that town, a memorial window of the Cabell family dating from early Tudor times is yet to be seen, and the elder branch of the family occupying to this day its ancient seats in the neighboring counties, still owns and claims its American kindred.


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 "Gentlemen," he says, "let me introduce Mr. Gale Galen, proprietor of the Judith. Theatre, on Main Street, and one of the most promising young business men of Drew City. He would be a credit to any city and should be encouraged to stay here and assisted to prosper. I want to see him at these meetings, because his youth, enthusiasm, and ambition will probably make this a real chamber of commerce, instead of a gathering place for knockers and calamity howlers as it is now. I, therefore, move that Mr. Galen be appointed a member of this board!"

That goaled 'em!

Rags Dempster's father looks like he's on the brinks of death from appoplexy, and my enemies rallies around him, bawling angry protests. Mr. Brock says nothing at all, leaving it to the bootlicking jazzbos which worships the ground he walks on to take his part and mine. At the end of a boisterous half hour I have been elected to the Drew City Board of Trade by a vote of 20 to 4.

Old Man Dempster immediately resigns and takes the air.

Well, now that I was out of the ring I didn't have to train no more and I found time hanging heavy on my hands. I never was born to stall around, that's a cinch! Even if I had a million I'd find something to do and don't think I wouldn't, but as things stood then I was far from a millionaire. I lost a frightful bunch of jack promoting that fight with Gunner Slade, and the fire we had in our theatre also put a heavy dent in the old bankroll. I'm commencing to get worried


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 and restless. The papers is still riding Nate for not matching me with somebody, and of course, Nate's still riding me.

Not only are my hands itching for the feel of the padded gloves, but I actually need the money. So I make up my mind I'll take a long chance and tackle Judy on the subject of box fighting again, not that I got much hope that she'll remove the ban, but a marvelous offer from a big New York promoter for a fight drives me to doing something. So one day in the office I put it up to Judy, cold.

"Eh—say, Judy, would you mind if I went back to the ring for just one more scuffle?" I stammers, losing forty pounds of nerve with every word as she stares at me with wide open eyes and a gathering frown between 'em.

"I thought we were all through with that subject, Gale," she says in kind of pained surprise. "You are well started on a business career, a member of the Board of Trade, your theatre is making money, and"

"Just a minute, Judy," I butt in. "The theatre is making money all right, but when the profits is divided between me and Nate and Kayo Kelly, why, none of us gets enough to go wild about. As far as being started on a business career is concerned, maybe I am, but I don't think I got the right kind of a start. In other words, I feel that to wind up merely as part owner of a small-town picture theatre, after all my trials and tribulations, is much ado about nothing, as Willie Shakespeare says!"


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 Judy don't say a word. She just sits there looking out the window at Drew City and tapping her desk with a lead pencil. So I took heart and trot out some more facts and figures.

"I wouldn't of mentioned the adjective box fighting to you, Judy, under no circumstances," I says, "only Nate's got a offer for me to fight Jack Martin, this new sensation which has been flattening one and all in the light-heavyweight class. There's seventy-five thousand dollars in it for me and with that amount of jack added to the little dough I already got I could go into some business with a more exciting future to it than running a picture theatre in Drew City. Seventy-five grand would be important money to Rockefeller, and I certainly can't dismiss it with a curl of my lip!"

"Nevertheless, Gale," says Judy, swinging around and facing me, "if you return to the ring, our—our friendship comes to an end. There is no use arguing about it because I will never change on that point. The picture theatre is only a beginning, and you are young. With Mr. Brock's influence and your own prestige here you have a splendid and honorable career facing you. If you go back to the prize ring, you will lose all of that—everything you have been striving for"

"Including you, Judy?" I butt in.

"Including me!" she says—and then, her face suddenly flaming red, she flounces out of the office.

Well, I'm in a fine state of mind and don't think I ain't. I don't want to lose my chances with Judy no more than I want to lose my neck, but at one and the same time I can't get no kick out of my position in


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 life then, no fooling. However, I let the subject drop as far as Judy is concerned and continue studying every book I can lay my hands on and attending lectures with her at Columbia's College, New York.

In the meanwhile Rags is put in charge of the carpet factory by his father, which is forced to go to Europe for his health, according to the Drew City "Sentinel." However, a few days later it comes out in the New York papers that he just dropped $300,000 in Wall Street, so I guess he went across the bounding main to get over his dizziness, and I don't blame him. Anyways, old Mr. Dempster must of been still suffering from shell shock when he made Rags manager of his rug plant, because Rags is no more fit to handle men than I'm fit to handle Dempsey. He ain't been on the job a week before he brings about a strike through his surliness, inexperience, and high-handed methods of dealing with trained workers which had been years on his father's pay roll. So for the first time in its history the Dempster & Co. mill shuts down. Then Rags pulls the boss boner of a lifetime devoted to making boneheaded plays. When a delegation of the men comes to pay him the honors of a visit, Rags refuses to treat with 'em, calls 'em ungrateful hounds, and slams the door in their faces. Not satisfied with a stunt like that, this 87-carat dumbell brings down a lot of gunmen and the like from New York to take the places of the strikers at about twice the wages the old hands was getting.

Then the fun began!

At first, the strikers just parade and hold mass meet-


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 ings. Then one morning Rags drives down to his office and discovers every window in the factory has been broke during the night. After that a couple of mysterious fires in the plant is just discovered before they get going good. This would of been the tip-off to anybody but a egg like Rags that the time had arrived to get a rush of brains to the head and talk matters over with the strikers, before they quit kidding with him and do something serious. But Rags is one of these thick headed babies which has got to die of pneumonia before they learn that neglecting a cold is dangerous. He keeps on aggravating the men till he's got 'em all ugly enough to cook him and one night they try to do that!

I am buzzing along the State road near the carpet factory in my car with Judy when we hear a yelling and shouting like I've often heard at a ringside when a fellow is getting knocked stiff. The next minute we swing around a bend and I got to jam on the emergency brake to keep from running into a howling, milling mob which completely blocks the road. A lot of them is running around tearing open pillows and gathering up the feathers, and on one side is a barrel of boiling pitch. Two fellows is prancing around with a long fence rail between 'em, hollering for the others to speed things up. None of 'em gives me and Judy a tumble, but Judy gets a bit scared and tells me to turn around and go back.

"What's all the excitement?" I call to one fellow which comes up with his arms full of feathers.

"We got this young Dempster skunk," he snarls,


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 "and we're gonna teach him he can't take the bread and butter out of our mouths and get away with it. We're gonna tar and feather the yellah dog!"

"And ride him on a rail out of town!" adds another ex-carpet weaver joyfully.

Judy gasps and I must say for a split second I felt highly tickled. Rags has double-crossed, framed, and fouled me so often that I wouldn't be human if I didn't get a kick out of seeing him get the worst of it, a reward he richly deserves. I step on the gas and start to steer my bus back through the mob and then all of a sudden I stop dead. I don't know what's the matter with me, but I'm simply crazy about fair play! If just one guy had wanted to tar and feather Rags I would of declared the scheme a good thought and wished him the best of luck, but there's over two hundred of these strikers, and two hundred to one is no fair, not even against a Rags Dempster, now is it? So I dash out of the car and shove my ways through the crowd. I know nearly all of 'em and all of 'em knows me and even in the excitement they make room for the world's light-heavyweight champion.

Rags is in the center of the mob and he sure looks like he's been through the mill, he does for a fact. Half his clothes has been tore off by willing hands, his chalk white face is all bruised and scratched and two or three huskies is pushing him around between 'em like he's a medicine ball.

"Lynch him! String him up! Get a rope!" they commence to howl on the outskirts of the mob.

Rags looks wildly about, recognizes me all of a sud-


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 den and grabs me. "Save me, Galen, save me—they're going to kill me!" he babbles.

The fellows around him falls back and glares at me. Some of 'em jostles against me, and I backed away carefully, pushing Rags behind me. I didn't make the mistake of hitting nobody. That would of spoiled everything—including me.

"Well, what are you buttin' in for?" growls a big guy, shoving out his chin invitingly.

"I am butting in to prevent you babies from committing murder," I says. "I don't like this Dempster no more than you do, but if he dies as the results of your nursery sports here to-night the grand jury will indict the lot of you for manslaughter. What's the use of getting yourselves in a jam like that on account of a fellow like this? Look at him. He's half dead now—a total loss if there ever was one!"

There's plenty growling, but the ringleaders around me looks thoughtful. The mention of "manslaughter" and "grand jury" had cooled 'em off a bit and then at this critical minute Rags slumps down to the ground in a dead faint. The crowd begins to melt away around us and somebody tells the others which comes crowding up to see what stopped the festivities that Rags has dropped dead. That was enough! In twenty minutes there was nobody on hand but me and Rags and Judy and we drove the slightly shopworn young man home.

Well, with nothing else to do I spent most of my spare time hanging around Ajariah Stubbs's drug store with Spence Brock. Spence had graduated from Printeton and was now a full-fledged Bachelor of


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 Arts, but he wasn't quite ready yet to hang out his sign and begin business at that trade. I was still doping out schemes for old Ajariah to help keep his stock moving and fussing around the soda fountain where I used to do my stuff, composing new drinks and writing trade-pulling signs to paste on the mirror back of the counter. But this stuff was all applesauce to me. It was just so much child's play. I should of been doing something big and this puttering around was driving me cuckoo. Then there's another thing which was getting on my nerves and wearing me down. That's the difference in the way the town treated me since I become a fightless champion. The kids didn't follow me on the streets no more, instead they'd cross to the other side and make cracks to each other which set 'em all laughing and iooking at me.

I go in Kale Yackley's cigar store one day and over in a corner some of the hard guys from Nichmeyer's Garage is playing stud poker. When I come in they pay as much attention to me as they do to their hole card and that's a face. I hear somebody whisper "Sure, that's him. H's light-heavyweight champ, but the big stiff won't fight nobody! They's a dozen boloneys can take him right now and he knows it. I wouldn't be afraid to take a cuff at him myself!" A couple of months before them guys would of acted tickled all day if I spoke to 'em. Such is life!

Then this Jack Martin stops Gunner Slade in one busy round where it took me four, so Martin claims the title, as I won't accept his challenge. Even my best friends, outside of Judy, commences to hint that


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 I should fight Martin and stop this talk about me being faint-hearted. They keep after me night and day till I'm red-headed and find sleep comes under the head of the impossibles as far as I'm concerned. I worried off ten pounds in less than two weeks, on the level! Finally, I just can't stand things no longer and one morning after my usual sleepless night I sent Nate to whooping with joy by telling him to accept the offer of $75,000 for a scuffle with Jack Martin. I don't want to promote the bout myself, as I figure it will take all my time and energies to get in shape for this man killer.

When I try to tell Judy how I have been drove into this fight she waves me away, white to the lips. I never seen her so mad. She won't listen to nothing at all, but throws up her job as stenographer in our office and won't even speak to me at her mother's boarding house.

A few nights later Rags comes around, stalling that he wants to see Mrs. Willcox about something or other, and when I come by the parlor around nine o'clock, why Judy is in there talking to him with her mother. Well, that's the last straw which fractured the camel's back, and the next day I packed up and move to the Commercial House, the unhappiest fellow in America by a wide margin. As far as I can see, I have lost Judy forever and a day, and I get so careless in my training for Jack Martin that Nate predicts this boze will flatten me in a round if I don't snap into it. Nate and Knockout Kelly remains at Mrs. Willcox's boarding house, and I get reports on Judy from them. I


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 find out she's got a job in New York, but what this job is neither Nate or Kayo seems to know.

Then one day, weeks after I have left Mrs. Willcox's, I am putting Nate through the third degree when he says he's heard Judy speak of "rehearsals" and "make-up." This information makes me a first-class lunatic! I know what it means.

Sleep and me couldn't get together at all that night, and the next day I follow Judy to New York without her knowing it. My worst fears is realized when I find out that she is one of the chorus girls in a Broadway musical comedy. Just think of it, Judy a chorus girl! I got a ticket away back in the balcony, where she wouldn't be liable to see me, and I sit through that show like a fellow in a dream—a nightmare! I ain't got the faintest idea what the play is all about, and I couldn't repeat two words from that show if my life depends on it. All I can see is Judy, and I imagine everybody around me knows how I feel and notices that I dig my nails inches into the palms of my hands as I watch the girl I am crazy about, out there on that stage for all these fatheads to look at. There's no use of me trying to explain my sensations to you. If you really wish to know how I felt, go and get in love!

The minute the curtain goes down on the last act of this frolic I beat it around to the stage door, determined to have it out with Judy for once and for all. I'm prepared to make any concession if she'll quit this show. With these thoughts in my head I tear around to the back of the theatre and all but stumble over Rags Dempster. Of course he's waiting there to see Judy,


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 and he makes a couple of cracks to me with the regards to her being in the show which put me in a murderous frame of mind, but I lay off him because I know a meelee outside the theatre with this hound would ruin any chance I might have of making up with Judy.

I give the doorkeeper my card to take in to her, and Rags sends his in too, and then we stand there waiting, glaring at each other like a couple of strange bulldogs. Finally the doorkeeper comes out and hands me back my card. Judy has wrote on it: "I will be out in twenty minutes. Wait!"

Just looking at her handwriting again sends my heart banging against my ribs, and I can't help grinning at Rags when I read her message. The doorkeeper turns to him and says: "They was no answer for you, young feller, so on your way. It's against the rules to allow you Johns to hang around the stage door. Take the air!"

I took Judy home from the theatre that night, and I only wish she had lived in San Francisco instead of Drew City, which is a mere thirty-eight miles from New York, and when we get there I ain't touched on a tenth of the subjects we got to talk about. The main thing, of course, is the question of whether or not she will give up the stage. She's got just one answer for that and nothing will change it. If I will call off my coming fight with Jack Martin and keep my word to stay out of the ring, she'll leave the stage. If I fight Jack Martin or Jack anybody, she will go on the road with this show, which is due to leave New York in a month for forty weeks around the U. S.

Well, when I am with Judy, I would promise her


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 anything. Nothing she asks sounds unreasonable to me. So, without thinking or caring about the consequences, in fact, thinking only that if I fight Martin I lose Judy, I give her my word I will cancel the bout, although it's already been heavily advertised and I got a ten-thousand-dollar appearance forfeit up. A fellow in love is a hot sketch, ain't he?

The next morning I move back to Mrs. Willcox's from the Commercial House, a thing which gives Knockout Kelly and Nate a lot of laughs. Nate says watching me and Judy is more fun than watching a circus, but when I tell him I ain't got the slightest intentions of boxing Jack Martin, why, all the fun disappears as far as Nate is concerned. At first he just simply won't believe me, but when I convince him I am not kidding he goes triple cuckoo, raving around the house like a maniac. Two or three times we nearly come to blows and would of did so, only I don't want to cuff Nate by no means, though some of his comments about me running out of the Martin match would of made a rabbit cuff a bulldog.

When the sport writers recovered from their amazement at my second resignation from the ring they went after me with their heavy artillery in earnest. What they called me before was affectionate terms of endearment alongside of the way they referred to me now. "Cheese champion," "false alarm," and "yellow" is just a few of the labels they tacked after my name in their columns, and many of 'em recognized Jack Martin's claim to the light-heavyweight championship since I refused to defend the title.


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 In Drew City I am treated like I got smallpox, even people which used to be my warmest admirers giving me the air. Judge Tuckerman, Lem Garfield, old Ajariah Stubbs, Spence, and a lot of others don't hesitate to tell me they think I am making a serious mistake in not meeting Martin, but the hardest blow of all is when Mr. Brock sees me at a Board of Trade meeting one day and wants to know what's all this nonsense about me canceling my fight with Jack Martin. When I tell him it ain't nonsense he acts like he's astounded and says he's disappointed in me. Then he walks away before I can explain matters to him, and when I meet him on the street a couple of days afterward he gives me the ice.

I heard from Spence later that his father had bet $25,000 on me to whip Martin, and as it was a "play or pay" bet he stands to lose the jack if I don't fight.

Well, the next couple of weeks in Drew City was about the most miserable I ever spent in my life. Although I have banged around considerable since I been a kid, and took a lot of punishment, both mental and physical, I am not used to being treated like a dog and I never will get used to it! Judy was simply wonderful to me, and of course that helped a lot, but it did hurt to have all my old friends practically pass me up. Then again, to lose my standing in Drew City through no fault of mine after all the time I had spent trying to mean something there, was not easy to take either. However, I said nothing to Judy, though a word from her would of sent me into the ring against Jack Martin and change all this. I


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 figured she thought she was doing the best thing, in keeping me from boxing, and I'd rather have her friendship than all the others put together.

Then one day, just when things look blackest for me, the sun comes busting through the clouds, as it always will if a fellow will have the nerve and patience to face out the rain. I was sitting out on the porch after dinner, alone as usual, when Judy comes out and lays her hand on my shoulder.

"Gale," she says quietly, "I have been thinking things over and I realize the position I have placed you in by making you cancel your fight with Jack Martin. I can't stand them calling you a quitter and a coward, and I don't think it is good for a spirit such as yours is to suffer that sort of thing in silence. If you want to fight Martin, go ahead. And I hope you'll win!"

Well, for a minute I can't believe my ears, and then I let out a yell of joy. I beat it over to the theatre and tell Nate the good news and we both cavorted around in the lobby till the incoming and outgoing customers views us with alarm. While Nate goes down to the railroad station and keeps the telegraph operator awake sending wires to the newspapers, Jack Martin's pilot and the fight promoter, me and our moving-picture operator fixed up a slide and throwed it on the screen in our theatre: "Six-Second Smith has just agreed to fight Jack Martin for the World's light-heavyweight title!" The applause like to raise the roof, and it did raise my spirits to a height they had not been for many's the day.


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 The next day I am back in training again, and the big barn which Nate had fitted up as a first-class gym was packed to the doors every afternoon. Mr. Brock drops around in a few days to watch me work out, and he's as friendly toward me as he ever was now that I'm going through with the fight. Besides Knockout Kelly, Tommy O'Ryan, and Two-Punch Jackson, which helped condition me as usual, I got a couple of fast lightweights down from New York to box with for speed.

I figured it was high time I paid more attention to the scientific end of the game, feeling that I'd been taking too much punishment and too many unnecessary chances in my fights through my willingness to trade punches. I wanted to avoid getting cut up in the future. The rough and tough stuff was all right when I was a preliminary boloney, but now that I was a champion I wanted to fight like a champion and not like a longshoreman on a dock.

Nate, however, yelled murder about my method of training for Martin. I ought to devote all my time to developing my punch, says Nate, and leave the boxing run for the end book.

"You're a prize fighter and not no chorus girl, and it don't make no difference whether you get marked up or not, as long as you win!" Nate tells me. "I don't like to see you learnin' so much about gettin' away from punches—you can't knock anybody dead by back pedalin' all over the ring. You got a poisonous wallop, and I don't want you to sacrifice it to speed. I've saw dozens of guys which was natural hitters like you lose


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 championships when they tried to become boxers, You can sock and you can take it—any further knowledge to a scrapper like you is a handicap!"

Never the less I kept on training in my own way right up to the day of the fight, and I went into the ring with Martin determined to give him a boxing lesson and amaze the crowd with my science. The cold reception I got from the mob, mostly because they thought I had tried to avoid meeting Martin, only made me more determined to show them some sparring the like of which they had never witnessed before.

Martin come out carefully at the bell, expecting my usual rush, but I surprised him and the customers by tripping around like a dancing master and letting him do the forcing. We exchanged a half dozen light taps, with Martin taking no chances, evidently fearing my pacifist tactics was a trick. He worked a wicked straight left that I couldn't seem to solve, and before we have gone a minute I can see I am up against a master boxer which is making me look like a novice. The crowd hoots and howls for me to quit being yellow and fight, but I continue to dance around Martin, occasionally shooting in short rights, most of which bounces harmlessly off his bent arms or shoulders. This fellow was a boxing fool and no mistake, and he's getting more confident every second as the expected avalanche of wallops fails to mow him down.

The first round ended in Martin's favor by a wide margin, though neither of us had did any real damage. The attendance is bitterly complaining and howling "Fake!" During the rest Nate tells me if I don't quit


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 clowning and tie into this baby he will walk out of the arena and leave me flat.

Martin rushed in with a stinging left to the jaw at the beginning of the second frame, but I blocked a tight to the same place and made him change feet with a torrid left hook to the heart. After a short clinch we begin light sparring again, and again the crowd howls for action. Martin then missed an overhand right for the jaw, and, suddenly changing his boxing tactics, begins swinging them from all angles, evidently figuring to catch me by surprise by his sudden change of pace and probably knock me kicking. The crowd came to its feet with his flurry, and I was a busy young man for the next few seconds trying to keep on my feet. I still continue to box, and a right swing to the jaw buckled my knees under me. I tried to dive into a clinch till my head cleared, but Martin had me figured and swished over a terrific left swing that broke my nose at the bridge and covered me with gore just as the bell rang.

The house was in a uproar as I slid into my stool, but they ain't in half the uproar I'm in, and that's a fact. In spite of all my precautions and the time I wasted studying a defense, this big banana has broke my nose and marked me for life!

Before the echo of the bell has died out for Round Three, I am in Martin's corner swinging both hands to the head. I have forgot they is such a thing as boxing in the book. I want to pulverize this baby and show the howling mob whether or not I'm yellow.

Just to prove that I can take it, and am not adverse


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 to doing the same, I let Martin throw four punches at my head and jaw without a return. Then I set myself and shot a left to the body and a right to the jaw. Martin crashed against the ropes and rebounded into another right I had started, which toppled him clean through the ropes out of the ring. Wow, you should of heard the crowd!

Well, they was plenty of jack bet on Martin, and he's shoved back into the ring by dozens of willing hands. The referee has reached "eight" when Martin struggles to a upright position with his back against the ropes. He's out on his feet, and I don't want to hit him, so I ask the referee to stop it. This kind-hearted official snarls for me to go on fighting, adding that the fact of Martin still being on his feet has probably broke my heart. While I'm standing there arguing with him, with my hands at my side, Martin stumbles up from in back of me and shoots a right at my head, knocking me flat. Then—the bell.

Well, that foul blow of Martin's removed my last scrupple about making him like it. I rushed across the ring at the gong for the fourth frame and staggered him with a left to the head. I then ducked a wild right haymaker and dug both gloves into his body, fighting him off with short inside rights when he tried desperately to clinch. On the break Martin caught me flush on the jaw with his right, but I had just about punched the steam out of this baby, and the blow didn't even shake me up. I closed his left eye with a couple of well-timed rights, and then proceeded to beat him from pillar to post. Only by continual clinching did


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320 eth of the treasure now save God and me, and it shall ever be hid from thee, thou fiend.”

Quoth she: “Ye have requited me full ill, so I will keep the sword of Siegfried, the which my sweetheart bare, when last. I saw him, in whom dole of heart hath happed to me through you.”

From the sheath she drew if, nor could he hinder her a whit. She planned to rob the knight of life. With her hands she raised it and struck off his head. This King Etzel saw, and sore enow it rued him, “Alack!” cried the lording, “how lieth now dead at a woman’s hands the very best of knights, that ever came to battle or bare a shield! However much I was his foe, yet it doth grieve me sorely.”

Then spake old Hildebrand: “Forsooth it shall not boot her aught, that she durst slay him. Whatso hap to me, and however much it may bring me to a dangerous pass, yet will I avenge bold Troneg’s death.”

Hildebrand sprang in wrath towards Kriemhild. For fear of him she suffered pain; but what might it avail her, that she shrieked so frightfully? He dealt the queen a grievous sword-blow, the which did cut the high-born dame in twain. Now all lay low in death whom fate had doomed. Dietrich and Etzel then began to weep; sorely they mourned both kin and liegemen, Their mickle honors lay there low in death; the courtiers all had grief and drearihead. The king’s high feast had ended now in woe, as joy doth ever end in sorrow at the last. I cannot tell you, that which happed thereafter, save that knights and ladies and noble squires were seen to weep for the death of loving kinsmen. The tale hath here an end. This is the Nibelungs’ fall.


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 Mr. Martin save himself from going out in that frame.

Seeing their man had no chance, his seconds set up a cry of foul when I dropped him to his knees with a right to the stomach just before the gong. That punch was as clean as a baby's heart, as most of the crowd knew. The referee is about to allow Martin's claim of foul when Mr. Brock, who is sitting in a box with the chairman of the State Boxing Commission, butts in, and after a couple of minutes' wrangling the boxing official orders the fight to go on, to the great joy of the crowd and the great sorrow of Jack Martin. When this fight first started, the mob was with Martin almost to a man, but in the last round, when he butted, ripped, heeled, and fouled me in every way known to the game, they are on their chairs bellering for me to knock him out.

The end came one minute and twenty seconds after the bell for the fifth round. I come out to finish this bird, but run into a wild right which like to upset me. We clinched. I shot a hard right through a opening and Martin reeled back like a drunken man. "He's going!" howls the mob. A left hook under the heart dropped him to one knee. He was too groggy to take a count and got up at "four." I took my time and measured him with a light left. His head come up, and I threw a right flush to his jaw, sending him down and out.

Thus endeth Jack Martin.


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Rh Charlottesville was near the home of Jefferson, and here, immediately upon the return of that eminent statesman from the court of St. Denis, began the friendship between these two men which was to have such a controlling influence on Mr. Breckinridge's life. Mr. Jefferson writing of his first visit, to Joseph Cabell Breckinridge, twenty-five years after its occurrence, says: "Our acquaintance arose soon after my return from Europe. He was so kind as to favor me with a visit, and during its short continuance I had opportunity sufficient to discover the large scope of his mind the stores of information laid up in it, and the moral direction given to both." Here too he formed intimate friendships with Monroe, John Marshall, the Nicholases, and others who were fast rising at the bar and in politics. The influence of these early ties may be traced throughout his too brief career. In his profession he quickly revealed talents of a high order. Arduous and assiduous in his labors, with a well-trained and logical mind, and a vigorous and manly eloquence, less florid, indeed, than the style then so popular in Virginia, but too earnest and forceful not to command respect,—he rapidly rose to distinction, even challenging, on an important occasion, comparison with Patrick Henry, then in the zenith of his fame. However great he was as an orator and an advocate, and however much he may have achieved in this department of his profession, it was rather in its higher walks that he most desired to succeed, and for a mastery of legal


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upon a time there was a fellow which wrote slews of poetry and bounded around rejoicing in the tasty name of Jean La Fontaine. Among the many rare gems which rolled off the end of his busy pen was the following wise crack.

Jean said it. The more us human beings is told to keep something quiet, the more we want to tell the world about it. You know yourself that the best way to put a secret in general circulation is to whisper it to somebody with the request, "Don't breathe a word of this to a soul!" The next day everybody but Little Red Riding Hood knows all about it and there's no use of you getting sore, because if it was a secret, why did you tell anybody in the first place?

Well, I am about to tell a secret which has been nestling in my manly bosom for quite a while. Me and Hurricane Ryan both swore we would never under no circumstances mention a word of this without the other's consent, but Hurricane has released me from


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 my oath. Hurricane Ryan ain't heavyweight champion no more so he don't care, yet that night in Mr. Brock's garage—but I guess I better tell it all and be done with it!

After I stopped Jack Martin, I again found I had practically fought myself out of a job. The only boys left in the light-heavyweight division that I ain't already slapped for a goal is boloneys that don't know a straight left from the timekeeper. A bout between me and the entire lot of these babies wouldn't draw sixty-two cents to the box office if they was allowed to come in with bats in their hands, so the promoters lay off me. This tickles Judy, which is still crazy to see me get out of the game and settle down as a solid business man, but it burns me up, because what's the use of being a champion if you can't work at it? Instead of being worth a possible half million to me, my title don't mean nothing, on the account I get no chance to perform.

Like Alexander the Great, my favorite character out of the big, thick Ancient History I got, I crave more worlds to conquer. So thinking matters over, I make up my mind that if I can't get no light-heavies in there with me I'll fight a heavy weight and be done with it. But I got no desire to try wading through a lot of these two-hundred-pound clowns, any one of which might lean their weight on me in a clinch and make me round-shouldered. I want the heavyweight champion, or nobody!

So I startle my playmates, the sport writers and even Nate, by quietly slipping over to the New York news-


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 paper offices and challenging Hurricane Ryan, world's heavyweight champion, to a fracas with his crown at stake. As I hold the title in the light-heavyweight division, I figure a battle between two champions should draw like a poultice.

My challenge is printed in the morning papers and the evening editions comes out with Hurricane Ryan's answer through his pilot, Curley Oliver, who just laughs me off. He claims Hurricane Ryan is ready and willing to defend his title against a legitimate contender at all times, but he's got no desire to spank babies. The big stiff. Oliver calls attention to the fact that Hurricane Ryan is almost thirty pounds heavier and four inches taller than me and has a equally big advantage in every important measurement of a fighter. In fact, says this dizzy nutmeg, the difference in size between me and Hurricane Ryan is about like the one between Dempsey and Carpentier and he don't think the public wants to see a duplicate of that "fight." Of course, that was all applesauce. What made the heavyweight champion unpartial to climbing through the ropes with me was my record—30 knockouts in 34 fights!

But the sport writers seems to side with Hurricane Ryan and with the exception of a few which like me personally, why, they refuse to take my challenge with a straight face. Even Nate and Kelly tells me to lay off Ryan.

"He's a little too big and burly for us, kid," says Nate. "And, another thing, Ryan is nobody's fool. I see him take Jim Lang a couple of months ago and


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 you know how fast this Lang is and how he can sock. Well, in the third round, Ryan hit Lang on the jaw so hard he throwed Lang's knee out of joint!"

"And Lang outweighed Ryan a good fifteen pounds!" chimes in Knockout Kelly. "If I was you, Gale, P'd forget about Hurricane Ryan, because in a scuffle with that baby the best you can look for is the worst of it, no foolin'! A champ is a chump to go out of his class into a heavier one for a fight. You know the old sayin', 'A good big man can always beat a good little man!' Outside of the time you and Frankie Jackson hit the mat together, you never been knocked cold in your life—why go out of your way to get kayoed?"

"Listen, you couple of crape hangers," I says. "I'm going to keep riding Hurricane Ryan till he agrees to battle me and if you think I'm kidding you're crazy! To hear you dumbells talk you'd think I was a pushover. You don't see none of 'em get up and laugh when I sock 'em, do you? Well, Ryan won't get up either. I seen him step a couple of times and I think he's a mark for a right hook—my right hook! After I smack him a couple of times him being bigger than me won't mean anything, because he'll be bent over to my size if not lower, and don't think he won't. Anyways, even if he knocks me kicking I'll still be light-heavyweight champ, because Ryan can't make the weight in that class. If I stop him I'll be world's heavyweight champion—I'll hold two titles, think of that!"

"Well," says Nate, "I think you're cuckoo myself, but I will say this much—when a Gale and a Hurricane


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 meet there should be some battle whilst it lasts!"

There was all of that.

While I am waiting for this big blah Ryan to give me a tumble, I spend considerable hours stalling around Ajariah Stubbs's drug store, as usual. To keep my brain limbered up for—the time when I am going to startle the business world, I'm still dressing his windows and trying to arrange his stock in a attractive way for him. When I was back of his fountain I was always thinking up new drinks and giving them fancy names to attract the trade. The bozo he's got working for him now is just a dumbell which is simply interested in the fact that at six o'clock he gets off. He'll be a soda jerk all his life.

Anyways, one day I am back in the syrup room, pottering around with the different flavors and trying my hand at making a batch of chocolate syrup, a thing at which I was very fluent once upon a time, when a idea forces its way to the top of my head. I make up my mind I will invent a new drink—some unalcoholic thirst-quencher which will sweep the nation like jazz did. I figure that right then when even its worst enemies was beginning to take Prohibition seriously, there would be millions in a drink of some kind which would present the drinker with a mild kick without making him want to climb flagpoles and sing quartette by himself. A drink which would be relished by everybody in the family from baby to grandpop. Make it tasty, Volsteady, give it a catchy name, put it in a nobby bottle and sell it for, say, ten cents the copy and then just sit back and watch the dimes roll in!


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 The more I think about this, the more frantic I get to put it across and during the next few days I ruined most of old Ajariah's stock of syrups. Still, I ain't charging him nothing for my sales stimulating stunts, so it's even Stephen. I mixed chocolate, orange and coffee, strawberry with paregoric and rootbeer, throwed lemon, sweet spirits of niter and peach together, tried out a medley of pineapple, aromatic spirits of ammonia, pepsin bismuth and yeast—well, figure out some more combinations for yourself. I tried everything!

Judy, Knockout Kelly and Spence Brock, follow my experiments with the greatest of interest. They think I can do anything and that it's only a question of hours before I'll assemble a mixure of flavors into a fascinating drink which will make me as rich and famous as custard. But there's one jazzbo in Drew City which sneers at my efforts to lift myself out of the ruck and get somewheres. That's Rags Dempster. Rags pours sarcastical laughs on my attempts to invent a national drink and freely predicts a brilliant failure for me. Still I kept mixing and pouring and pouring and mixing. However, after either 85 or 250 combinations of syrups fails to do anything more startling than make me and my friends deadly sick, I give up my experiments for the time being. For one thing, I have got te wait till me and my volunteer tasters recovers. But I wasn't through with this idea yet by no means. I was going to compose a drink which would make the country wild and make me the same as a millionaire or die in the attempt!


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 About this time, Drew City was treated to the choice scandal of the year and for all I know the natives are talking about it yet. The New York papers comes in as usual one day on the 4:15 local and within a half a hour you couldn't of bought one in town for $54,000. The reason is a picture of Rags Dempster's father on the front page and above it in great, big, black letters it says the following:

Underneath is about nine columns explaining matters and there was plenty to explain about that seven million bucks! According to the newspapers, this mock turtle has dropped not only his own bankroll, and Dempster was worth important money, but he has ruined all the investors and his carpet factory by losing their jack in Wall Street. Seven million dollars—sweet mamma, the mere mention of that much sugar gives me a thrill! One thing I must say for old man Dempster, he was no petty larceny crook, was he?

Judge Tuckerman got hooked for $5,000 in the crash and poor old Ajariah Stubbs had $6,500 of his dough amputated through Mr. J. Rodney Dempster being a burn guesser on the stock market. The carpet mill shuts down for the second time in its history—this time, for good. About a thousand people is throwed out of work and if Rags's father ever does show up in Drew City again he won't have a China-


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 man's chance—they'll string him up from the nearest lamp-post sure as there's a Hindu in Hindustan!

Well, as the results of his male parent's nasty trick, Rags becomes about as popular in Drew City as a fan salesman would be at the North Pole. The fast bunch from the college, which was supposed to be his friends when he was circulating money with both hands, falls away from him like leaves off a tree in Autumn and the rest of the populace duck him the same as if he's a mad dog. Personally, I felt sorry for Rags, I did for a fact, in spite of him fouling me, time and time again. Just look at the jam he was in. His old man was in Europe, trying to hide from all the coppers in the world, he himself was flat broke and unequipped to earn any dough because he'd never had to work at nothing and even his imported car and the palace his family lived in was put up at auction so's the creditors can get a small piece of their money back.

I think Life itself is about the most interesting movie any of us will ever see—a rip roaring comedy drama with the plot changing all the time. We're stars in it today and supers tomorrow. Six years ago I was a burn and Rags was a millionaire's son. Now I got a chance at a million and Rags is the tramp. While I been battling my ways to fame and fortune, this bird has went steadily down. I don't particularly gloat over that, I think Rags got a tough break. Take eny kid, give him a weekly drawing account like a bank president's, let him loaf through college and then suddenly take everything away from him and throw him eut on his own. If the kid makes good after that, it's


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 his fault not yours, but you can take the credit if he goes wrong! When I think of Rags I don't regret having missed college as much as I used to regret it. Having to struggle for ghe mere right to live since I been eight years old has learned me more than I'd ever get inaclass room. I'm used to bad breaks as well as good ones, and when things go all wrong I don't crumple up—I hop to it and make 'em all right. Nothing unexpected can ever happen to me, because I expect anything!

I meet Rags on the street one day some time after the news about his father reached Drew City. As a rule I used to pass by him without as much as a nod, because I liked him the same way I like to get run over, but now that he's down and out I didn't want to kick him, I wanted to help him up to his feet. Live and let live is my motto and it's as good a motto as any. So I stopped him and held out my hand.

"Rags," I says, "I certainly was sorry to hear about your father. I bet it's all a mistake and when he gets back from Europe he'll probably explain everything and there'll be nothing to it. In the meanwhile, let's forget our private war. If a few hundred—or more—will help you out till you hit your stride again, I'll be tickled to loan you whatever you think you need."

The look of surprise which come over his face when I stopped him gives way to a sneer. He looks me up and down like I'm something the cat dragged in on a rainy night and my outstretched hand could of been in NicaraugaNicaragua [sic] as far as he's concerned.

"Mind your own affairs, will you?" he snarls, "What


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56 and the exercise of a vigorous logical faculty his reputation grew steadily throughout his life. One of the earliest, as it was the highest possible, testimonials to his success was given by John Marshall, who when he was called to the bench of his native State turned over to Mr. Breckinridge his unfinished business.

Mr. Breckinridge had been practising law a little more than five years when Mr. Jefferson, at that time Secretary of State under Washington, embraced an opportunity to show his confidence in him in a public manner. Kentucky was in an uncertain temper, and the vacant office of attorney needed a capable man to fill it. The President was casting about for such a man, and finally appointed Mr. Breckinridge. Jefferson wrote to him enclosing the commission and urged him to accept it. He said that the President wished it and had heard him spoken of by others than himself in high terms. Such pressure was too flattering to be easily resisted, but this man was of too noble a nature to yield unwisely to honors even when thrust upon him, and he declined the office, while in later years he accepted the somewhat similar post of Attorney-General of Kentucky when called to it under less outward pressure but with greater promise of usefulness.

Soon after this he again turned his attention to politics and was chosen to represent the district composed of the counties of Albemarle, Amherst, Fluvanna, Goochland, Louisa, Spottsylvania, Orange, and Culpeper, in the third Congress which


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 my father does is no concern of yours. I need no assistance from an illiterate pugilist—I'll have more money within a year than you'll ever see! I already have something you'll never have—brains and breeding. Step aside and allow me to pass!"

I stepped aside—in fact, I stepped right out of his life. What else would you want me to do after that?

Well, my next imitation is to attend the auction of the Dempster mansion "and contents," as it says on the handbills which Constabule Watson tacks all over town. There's a big mob there, but most of 'em come to kid instead of bid. Rags's big English car finally goes under the hammer for a song. I forget the name of the song. Mrs. Willcox gets a swell set of wicker porch furniture for fifty bucks. Judy picked up a lot of potted plants for almost nothing and Knockout Kelly got a marble lawn bench for thirty-five fish that you couldn't duplicate in New York under a couple of hundred and which he needs like he needs two more ears. I stood apart and just watched the entertainment till Nate starts to ride me. He says this is the chance of a lifetime to get something for nothing and I am a sap for not sitting in. At this point the auctioneer and the sheriff has a conference. The auctioneer then raps for silence and when he gets something like it he gives the crowd a fearful bawling out. Among other compliments, he says they are the cheapest bunch of tightwads he ever met in his life and he's been in the game twenty years. As the result of their five and ten cent bidding on articles of "priceless value," he goes on, he has decided to stop auctioning off the furnishings one


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 by one. Instead, he will sell the house and its contents complete to the highest bidder, starting the thing at $50,000. One-third of the purchase price must be laid down at once, but the lucky buyer will be allowed ninety days on the balance.

"Well, come on, snap into it!" bawls the auctioneer. "Who bids fifty thousand?"

"I will!" I holler, without hardly realizing what I'm saying.

A hundred necks crane and twist to look at me and Nate views me with alarm.

"Fifty-one thousand!" comes a weak voice from the crowd.

"Fifty-five thousand!" I yell. I suppose I am crazy to do this, as the bridge jumper says, but why bother with thousand dollar bids and stay there all day?

My rival wilts.

"Anybody else?" shrieks the auctioneer. "Going at fifty-five thousand—an outrage, if they ever was one! Going at fifty-five thousand. Oh, what a crime! Do I hear fifty-six thousand? No? May Heaven forgive you,—I can't! Sold at fifty-five thousand dollars!"

And I am the owner of Rags Dempster's house.

What is the idea of a fellow like me sinking $55,000, in real estate you may say. The idea is that I have just about made up my mind that I am going to spend the rest of my days and nights, too, in Drew City and when I get wed and settled down, why, naturally enough I will want a house to live in. I couldn't duplicate the Dempster castle for three times what I paid for it and


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 should something happen to my marriage plans I figure I can always sell it at a profit. Then again, there is something fascinating to me about owning the home of a guy which once sneeringly offered me a twelve-dollar a week job in his father's carpet factory and which has been stabbing me in the back for six years. So all in all, I'm highly delighted with my purchase, and, strangely enough, Judy seems highly delighted, too.

I bring Nate and Knockout Kelly over to my handsome new home as my guests, but we make arrangements to take all our meals at Mrs. Willcox's. There ain't no cook in the world can even grease a pan with her and a fighter's food is as important to him as his hands. I give Nate and Kayo a beautiful suit of rooms on the top floor with their own private bath and the etc and if you think they didn't like it, you're foolish. Kayo says my house would make Buckingham Palace look like a livery stable. He's especially hopped up about the piano down in the music room. My talented manager fingers a cruel ivory and Kayo throats a wicked song, so we was sure of ample entertainment on the cold rainy nights. Nate claims the piano is an upright, but Kayo says Nate's dizzy, because if the piano is upright what was it doing in the house of J. Rodney Dempster?

Both Judy and her mother come over and helped me rearrange this and that about the house at my urgent request. We made quite the few alterations, because strange as it may seem my ideas—on a lot of things—is a little bit different than old man Dempster's.


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 Judy got all excited over helping me fix up the house and as she's got elegant taste, why, in a couple of days it ain't just a house it's a beautiful home. It lacked just one thing to make it perfect—Judy! I followed her round from room to room, holding pictures and draperies for her to hang, moving chairs and tables where she tells me to put 'em and all that kind of thing, but believe me I ain't thinking about no interior decorating—I'm thinking about her. I think what a wonderful thing it would be if we were married and she was in my house to stay. She's up on a ladder fixing the velvet curtains between the dining room and the parlor and I just can't take my eyes off her. Why, if Judy Willcox was to stand beside Niagara Falls, nobody would give Niagara a tumble! I get a terrible kick just looking at this girl and that's a positive fact. Well, the more I look the more I wish and the more I wish the more I make up my mind I will ask her to wed me and be done with it! So I collect up all my courage, get up, cough a few times and begin.

"Judy," I says, in a kind of weak voice. "I would like to ask you a favor."

She turns around and smiles down at me, still holding the curtains.

"Anything, Gale," she says. "What is it?"

Standing there gazing into her clear blue eyes I decided to change the favor I intended to ask her, because I was always afraid that if I acted like I was dying of love she would give me the air. She often said herself that what she loathed was these mushy, lovelorn girls or boys. So like usual, I get double pneumonia of the


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 feet. I had plenty nerve in the ring, but in front of this vision I was as faint-hearted as a rabbit. So I jerked myself back to normalcy immediately.

"Eh—will you help me hang those ringside pictures of me in the parlor?" I says, for want of something to ask now that I have let the marriage proposition go by the board.

"Why, Gale!" says Judy, dropping the curtains in amazement. "Surely you wouldn't dream of putting those fearful fighting pictures in that room! And it's not a parlor, Gale, it's the drawing room."

"There's one room will be useless to me, then," I says. "For I can't draw a straight line. However, I don't see nothing wrong in hanging those fight pictures there, Judy. Some of them is scenes from my greatest battles. I'm kind of proud of 'em and I want my visitors to see 'em."

"Put them in your den, then," says Judy. "You just hold these curtains for me, Gale, and I'll do the decorating." She starts to hang the curtains again, but suddenly she turns to me and says with a odd smile, "Perhaps I'm taking too much for granted—after all, it is your home."

"I sure wish it was yours, too, Judy!" I busts out.

You should of saw how red her face gets before she turns away. She says nothing and I suppose I missed the chance of a lifetime by not asking her then and there can she see her way clear to marry me. But when I think if she ever says "No!" I will become a maniac, so why take the chance just yet of hearing that word which will poison me? So while I hung fire,


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 Judy gives the curtain a final pat and gets down from the ladder. She says she's got to hurry home and help her mother get dinner.

"Will you come back for a while after dinner and help me fix up that drawing room, Judy?" I says, in desperation.

"Of course, for a little while," she says, "if you want me to."

"If I want you to?" I says, advancing the bit closer. "Judy, I don't want you never to be away from me! I"

"Gale—I—really, I must run, I'm late now!" she butts in.

But why does she look away from me and blush again? I don't know. I know she beat it and after she left, why, that swell drawing room with all the statues and classy furniture and rugs a yard thick, was just a empty empty room to me!

The best part of my new residence to me was the library and that's where I put in most of my time. It had every kind of book in the world in it and I just read the print off 'em, no fooling. Books is one thing I can't get enough of and I go on regular reading jags, you might say, taking my fill of fiction, history, essays, poetry, biography, science, etc etc and even etc. Of course, there's a whole lot of these books which is miles over my head, being filled with thoughts and words which is beyond me. So I hired what is known as a tooter. This was a nice old man by the name of Prof. Simms which used to be one of Judy's teachers at Drew City Prep, but in spite of all his knowledge he


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 had failed to learn how to keep from getting elderly and these cold-hearted birds at the prep school give him the air when he gets over the age limit. The poor old professor is a bit dazed by this treatment, as he ain't got a nickel and nowheres to turn for help, so I solved his problem and mine, too, by putting him on my payroll as my own private professor and having him come to my house to live.

About a month after I have settled down in my handsome mansion, I lost one of my guests through matrimony. That was no less than Knockout Kelly, which in spite of Nate's frantic objections hauls off and weds Mary Ballinger. Nate tried everything but poisoning the principals in a effort to stop these wedding bells from ringing out, because he knew it meant Kayo's permanent retirement as a box fighter. But Nate might as well of tried to stop the Atlantic Ocean from being wet. Mary and Kayo was wildly in love with each other and nothing else was of no importance to either of 'em. They are living in a swell little cottage which Kayo bought in Drew City and they got presents enough to more than furnish it. I was best man at the wedding and Judy was bridesmaid, and right then and there I made up my mind that the next marriage me and Judy graced with our presence we would be the parties of the first and second parts and not just innocent bystanders!

Well, as the time goes on my continual challenging of Hurricane Ryan for a battle over any distance he cares to name gets me the attention of nearly all the sport writers and they begin to ride him heavy. The


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 heavyweight champion is whiling away his idle hours in vaudeville at heavy wages and he don't seem anxious to defend his title against me or nobody else. However, when the old applause at the end of his turn begins to fall off as the result of his stalling tactics, why, he begins to realize he has got to make some warlike move if he wants to keep his popularity. So he suddenly agrees to fight me, out of a clear sky. This gets me, Nate and the promoters all excited, till we hear the amount Ryan demands for his guarantee. Then we are fit to be tied. All Hurricane Ryan wants for risking his crown in a tussle with me is a scant $200,000 and he might as well of asked for $200,000,000 and be done with it! The promoters' interest in the bout flickers out like a candle, even the biggest gamblers amongst them turning it down cold. They figure that with the fifty or sixty thousand they would have to give me, the purse would break the man who put the fight on, as the vast difference in size between me and Ryan would kill all chance of drawing the record crowd which would be necessary to make it pay. In desperation I agreed to take a percentage of the gate receipts, but Ryan wouldn't and matters come to a standstill once again. Then when I have give up all hope of ever meeting Hurricane Ryan in a ring or even at a dance, I get my chance. It was Spence Brock's father which come to the rescue like he often has before.

A few days after the newspapers has printed the ridiculous terms on which Hurricane Ryan will accept my challenge, Spence picks me up downtown in his car and asks me to run out to his house, as his father


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Rh assembled in the Autumn of 1793. For a moment it seemed as if he was once more to take his place by the side of the comrades of his early political life, and become a member of that little coterie of eminent Republicans and statesmen, who so ably represented this part of Virginia in the highest posts of State and nation. But the promise was cut short by the demands of his private affairs. In the interval between his election and the assembling of Congress his plans underwent a complete metamorphosis, and he resigned the seat he had never occupied and set out for Kentucky.

He went at once to Lexington, the county-seat of Fayette County, the capital of the State, and the largest and most important town west of Pittsburg. Two of his brothers and his only sister had already removed to the neighborhood of Lexington, and his half-brother Robert Breckinridge, who was at this time a member of the House of Representatives, spent a large part of the year there in attendance on the meetings of that body. There too was George Nicholas, his friend of many years' standing, now the leader of the Kentucky bar and high in political influence. Besides these there were many others both friends and relatives in and about the flourishing little town. Although he proposed to devote himself mainly to the practice of his profession, he purchased a large tract of land containing about twenty-five hundred acres, lying to the north of the town, about six miles distant. The place received the name of "Cabell's Dale," in honor of his wife, and a law office was built


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 wants to talk to me before he sails for a trip around the world on his yacht. On the ways out, Spence remarks that his father has made this excursion a half dozen times and he's looking forward to this one with about as much excitement as a aviator would look forward to a ride on a Ferris Wheel. He has got to get away from his business cares and the etc every now and again at the request of his doctor, but this voyage is just a habit with him and that's all. Spence says he bets his father would give a gigantic slice of his bankroll for a new thrill. Well—he did!

When we get to his house, Mr. Brock wants to know when me and Hurricane Ryan is going to cease this newspaper battling and get down to business in a ring, as that's one scuffle he wants to view before he takes his boat ride. I told him I would take pleasure in furnishing him with the date of the setto if I only knew it myself, but from the way the heavyweight champion has been stalling me along, I personally think the fight will take place the same day roller skating on the ocean becomes the national sport. I says about the only way I'll ever get Hurricane Ryan into a ring with me will be if the battle-ground is the top of Mt. Everest, where there will be nobody around to see me knock him dead.

Mr. Brock smiles and then looks thoughtful for a minute.

"You think Ryan would be willing to fight you if there were no spectators present?" he asks me after a minute, giving me a short, odd look.

"Oh, he might take a chance, sir," I admits. "But a bout without spectators would be a bout without gate


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 receipts and a fellow who fights for nothing is not no fighter, sir—he's a maniac!"

This time Mr. Brock laughs outright, but there's a strange gleam in his eye and he still seems to be thinking seriously over the thing.

"But what if someone—some individual would finance such a fight, provided he could be the only spectator? Surely, Ryan wouldn't object to a single witness, would he?" he asks me.

"No, I don't think he'd squawk about a bare one fan seeing him knocked out, sir," I says, still in a kidding way, "but who in the name of Jersey City would spend more than a quarter of a million to see two fellows say it with boxing gloves?"

"I would!" he says, sitting forward in his chair and watching me close.

"You—you're joking, sir!" I gasp.

"You're wrong!" he says, very brisk. "I am not in the habit of joking about the expenditure of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars! For years I have been casting about for a substitute to take the place of this infernal ocean trip, which ceased to thrill me after the first one. I agree with my physicians that I need a tonic at about this time of the year, but we do not agree as to the proper ingredients of the tonic. By putting on this fight—an event I wouldn't miss seeing for worlds—I would save the time I'd waste on a round-the-world-trip, give you your chance to win the highest honors in your profession, and provide myself with a super-thrill! Imagine being the only witness to a battle between two champions—two of the greatest


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 boxers in the ring today fighting to a decisive result for my sole pleasure! Why, boy, Nero himself would have rushed joyously from his gladiators and chariot races to witness a spectacle like that!"

And I wish you could of saw how excited he is.

"But, what—how will you manage to—" I begin.

"Young man," he interrupts, "busy yourself with getting into proper condition for the fight of your career and leave the details to me! I will personally pay Hurricane Ryan the two hundred thousand he demands, but you must speculate with me. You say you are certain you can defeat the heavyweight champion under any conditions. I read a statement by you the other day to the effect that you would almost be willing to fight him for nothing. Very well, if you win I will pay you fifty thousand dollars—if you lose, you will get nothing but the thrashing for your pains! Come now, what do you say?"

"What are the other conditions, sir?" I says, kind of in a trance.

"There are but two conditions," says Mr. Brock. "One, that there will be no spectators at this bout but myself—the other, that the fight is not to be limited to any stipulated number of rounds, It must be to a finish!"

Just a glance at his grim face is all I need to show me he's in dead earnest. I got up and shook his hand. I was in dead earnest, too.

"Mr. Brock, I accept your offer with pleasure," I says. "And I will take even more pleasure in knocking Hurricane Ryan for a Peruvian demi-tasse, for your further enjoyment!"


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 I tell Nate about things that night and we nearly come to fistycuffs ourselves, on the account of his inability to believe me. When I finally convince him I'm on the up and up, why, he laughs himself sick. He claims that Mr. Brock's layout is the buffalo's beard and a fool and his money is soon divorced. So I says if Mr. Brock is such a fool, where did he get all them millions of his. That slows Nate to a walk.

I immediately start to condition myself for Ryan and as this is to be a finish fight, believe me I get some good heavies to ready me. This melee may go one round or one hundred and I don't want to risk not being able to take it. Mr. Brock's agents present the heavyweight champ and his pilot with their proposition and at first they can't see it with a telescope. They know who Mr. Brock is and that he's good for the guarantee, all right, but it's just become a habit with them to refuse to fight me and that's all there is to it. Fnally, Ryan's manager agrees to Mr. Brock's terms—provided he can add one of his own. He insists that the result of the bout be kept a absolute secret, no matter which one of us wins!

For awhile, neither me, Nate, or Mr. Brock can figure out what the big idea is. Then we all agree that the crafty manager of the world's heavyweight champion has sold himself the thought that maybe I may turn out to be a tougher egg than they figure. I may give Ryan a lot of trouble—I may even take him. They are leaving nothing to accident. If I do win I can't claim the title, if everybody connected with the brawl is sworn to secrecy!


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 Well, I'm convinced I'm Ryan's master at marbles, pinochle or box fighting. I'm also convinced he'll never fight me publicly, so I agree to his weird demand. The whole thing appeals to my imagination and fighting blood. If I lose, I'm sure of a terrible pasting without being paid a nickel for taking it. But if I win, I'll get fifty thousand fish and the priceless satisfaction of having whipped the heavyweight champion of the world in a fight to a finish!

While me and Hurricane Ryan is training for our little debate with all kinds of precautions being took to keep everything under cover, Rags Dempster begins to show signs of having staged a remarkable comeback, as far as money matters is concerned. He breaks out with a sporty new car, leases a swell old Colonial mansion in the richest part of Drew City, and generally begins strutting his stuff till the whole burg begins to whisper and wonder. This goes on for about a month, during which the wild parties at his house makes Rags the talk of the town—and it ain't the kind of talk I would prefer for myself, no fooling. Rags is the local mystery, which is solved when the coppers swoop down on his house one night in the midst of the usual festivities and collar him for, what do you think? Sssh—bootlegging!

Spence Brock meets me the day Rags's case comes up and he tells me he's heard they are going to sock it to Rags plenty. Not only to make a example of him as a bootlegger, but because two-thirds of the town hates Rags from his derby to his overshoes. His father's failure and the closing down of the carpet


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 mill is still open wounds and now that they got the son by the tail they are going to see at least justice done, if not more. Me and Spence is in Judge Tuckerman's court when the matter of Rags is reached. He has hired Lem Garfield, and Lem steps forward to plead for him. Lem got nowheres, for the first time since he's lawyered for a prisoner in the judge's court. When the judge hears the mere mention of the name "Dempster," why, he immediately remembers how he got stung by the carpet mill failure and he blew up like a powder mill. I doubt if he even heard the charge. He just gives Rags one terrible look over his cheaters and holds him for the grand jury.

So that was that.

Nothing much more happened till the night of the big fight, but plenty happened then! Mr. Brock had a regulation ring put up in the middle of his great big garage on the grounds of his estate and then he had the whole building fenced off by a ten-foot high boarding so's to keep out any peeping Toms. Had Drew City any idea of what was going to take place in Mr. Brock's garage that evening, you couldn't of kept the mob away with machine guns! There was a big cluster of high-powered electric lights over the ring itself, but only a few little dim ones around the rest of the place and with the whispered mutterings and hardly the sound of a footfall, instead of the usual roar of a fight-crazed mob, it sure was uncanny. It was more like going to be executed than going to box, and I almost felt like looking around the shadowy inside of the big garage for a scaffold. Hurricane


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 Ryan, getting into his ring togs at the far end of the building, seems to be more interested in giving Mr. Brock the once over than he is in me. Well, no wonder. A guy which is willing to spend two hundred and fifty thousand bucks to see a fight all by himself is something to look at!

Besides Mr. Brock, which makes up the entire audience, there is just me and Hurricane Ryan, our handlers—three for each of us—a referee, and a timekeeper. Eleven people in all at a battle for the heavyweight championship of the world and ten of the low-voiced eleven is connected with the mill as principals or officials. There's one for the book, now ain't it?

The total absence of the howling, kidding crowd and the general noisy excitement I had always heard before is the first thing which gets on my nerves. There's something about that deathly quiet—at Mr. Brock's strict orders—which just ain't right, that's all! The first time I ever fought in a ring the noise of the mob sent me a million miles up in the air and made broad jumpers out of all my nerves—now, because there ain't any noise at all I feel almost the same way! I can see the atmosphere's getting on Hurricane Ryan's nerves, too, from the way he licks his lips and keeps his eyes mostly on the floor as he sits in his corner. Now and then he shoots a quick glance over at me, probably to see how I'm taking things and I bet in another minute we might almost of got up and sympathized with each other over this awful quiet!

Well, there ain't much time wasted in fiddling


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 around, as there is no challengers to introduce from the ring and no flashlights to be took. Just before we shook hands I got a good look at Hurricane Ryan's waist line and the bulge of fat over his belt give me a lot of needed comfort. Hurricane looks like his idea of readying himself for this battle was to get himself a shave and a haircut. He figured me just another set-up, only that and nothing more.

Mr. Brock settles back in his ringside seat—the only seat there—with a fat cigar between his lips and a smile of perfect satisfaction on his face. He's set to see a battle that may break all records in the number of rounds fought and produce a new world's champion. It went just six rounds and as for producing a new world's champion, well

From the first punch to the last, this fight was one which should go down in history with the Battle of the Marne, Gettysburg, Bunker Hill and Waterloo. Both me and Hurricane Ryan has one idea—to win with a single blow if possible. Therefore, every punch was meant for a haymaker. So sensational was the milling that it drove Mr. Brock to within two inches of insanity and it was often necessary between rounds for the handlers to attend to him as well as me and Ryan—holding the old ammonia under his nose and waving towels over him till he come back to life. At other times, he'd sit there licking his lips like one of them old time Roman emperors—tickled silly that he's seeing one of the goriest fights since Cain stopped Abel and that his jack has enabled him to put the shambles on for his enjoyment alone! Unfortunately, I didn't


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58 and his practice carried on both there and in Lexington.

His practice and reputation grew rapidly, and he soon found himself among the foremost members of the bar and a leader in politics. He had been in Kentucky only a few months when he was made president of the Democratic Society of Lexington, which in that day was esteemed a very high honor; and in the legislature which convened late in 1794 he received the Anti-Federalist or Republican vote for the United States Senate. This election combing as it did in the height of the reaction towards Federalism brought about by the indiscretions of the agents of the French Directory, was practically uncontested, and the vote given to Mr. Breckinridge was merely complimentary; but it was certainly a high testimony to the esteem in which he was already held in his adopted State, and as the sequel showed, it was an earnest of future support and triumph. The Federalists dropped Edwards, who had been so sharply catechized by the Democratic Society at Lexington, and elected Humphrey Marshall.

Mr. Breckinridge no doubt owed the honors so early accorded him very largely to the influence of his brother, General Robert Breckinridge. Although only half-brothers, the greatest confidence and affection always existed between them The elder brother, together with his own brother, Alexander Breckinridge, had served with courage and distinction in the Virginia line during the Revolution as a company officer; taken prisoner, they lay for many months in a prison ship in Charleston


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 have time to pay more attention to him. I was busy—with Hurricane Ryan.

At the opening bell, Ryan rushed me to the ropes and begin roughing it, using his terrible weight advantage to bull me around the ring while shooting in short lefts and rights at close quarters. Well, it's a cinch that my place is away from this kind of treatment and I get away by popping him with two stiff right uppercuts which his face told me shook him up. Then I turn my attentions to that roll of fat at his waistline, upon instructions from Nate, which he was warned not to repeat by the conscientious referee. I swung a left to the wind and followed that with a hard right to the same place without a return. A left chop to the ear started the Burgundy flowing freely and Ryan backs away looking worried. So far, I am making a show of this big stiff and this gets me a trifle too ambitious. I blocked a light left and tore in with a well meant right hook to the heart. The punch fell short and Ryan put Mr. Brock in a fainting condition by flooring me with a nasty left to the jaw. However, the blow was only a glancing one and after taking a count of seven I was up again, full of fight. Ryan missed a left uppercut and paid for his poor timing when I reached his sore ear with a overhand right. He grabbed me around the waist and we are clinched in mid-ring at the bell. Ryan's round, by the margin of that lucky knockdown.

Round two was a trifle slower, for the reasons that both me and Ryan had about made up our minds that a one-punch knockout would have to wait till we had


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 felt each other out more. Besides, we're both tired from the terrific pace in the first round. The heavyweight champ used a right swing almost entirely, while I relied on what Nate told me during the rest—a straight left and a right hook, mostly to the body, then back pedal and try to tire out Ryan by making him chase me. Ryan slipped and fell just before the gong, but was up in a instant. I didn't cop him, which I could when he was off balance, because that ain't the way I fight. Hurricane acknowledged this by grinning and touching gloves with me and that's what we was doing at the bell. This frame was even all around.

Ryan surprised me with a change of pace in the third round and only missed winning the fight then and there by a miracle. I was the miracle. He rushed me around the ring swinging both hands viciously and a terrific right to the head sent me spinning along the ropes, goofy and entering Queer Street. I got one glance at Nate's pale face and Mr. Brock jumping up and down and then I hit the canvas on my haunches from a short left hook to the button. I managed to stumble up in time to beat the count, only to run into a torrid left to the mouth that painted me a deep red and dropped me to my knees. Once more I arose before the fatal ten and this time I floundered into a life-saving clinch by pure dumb luck. I don't know what it's all about and I hung on till the referee dragged me away bodily. But that clinch had made a new man of me. Hurricane Ryan was tired and puffing like a porpoise from his own exertions during that flurry, while I had got my second wind and my


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Rh Siegstab is Dietrich’s nephew. He also appears in the Thidreksaga, but in a different rôle.

Wolfwin is mentioned in the Klage, 1541, as Dietrich’s nephew.

Wolfbrand and Helmnot appear only here.

Ritschart. With the exception of Helfrich (see note 1 to page 302), these names do not occur elsewhere, though one of the sons of Haimon was called Wichart.

Waskstone, see note 1 to page 277.

fall. The word nôt, translated here full, means really ‘disaster,’ but as this word is not in keeping with the style, fall has been chosen as preferable to ‘need,’ used by some translators, The MS. C has here liet instead of nôt of A and B.

The Nibelungenlied is continued by the so-called Klage, a poem written in short rhyming couplets. As the name indicates, it describes the lamentations of the survivors over the dead. The praises of each warrior are sung and a messenger dispatched to acquaint Gotelind, Uta, and Brunhild with the sad end of their kinsmen. It closes with Dietrich’s departure from Etzel’s court and his return home. Although in one sense a continuation of our poem, the Klage is an independent work of no great merit, being exessively tedious with its constant repetitions. A reprint and a full account of it will be found in Piper’s edition of our poem, vol. 1.


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 brain was clearing of the cobwebs put there by them two knockdowns. I stepped in close and dug both gloves into that pudgy, heaving stomach of his and you could hear him grunt in Betelgeuse. Then I swung a long overhand right to his face that covered both of us with Hurricane's gore. He tried a feeble straight left which I had no treuble ducking. He pawed at me blindly and I shot a straight right to his eye, cutting it to the bone. A wicked smash to the neck sent Ryan staggering around like a drunken man and made Mr. Brock act like one. The groggy heavyweight champ tried to dive into a clinch, but I had other plans for him. I set myself, took careful aim and threw my right at his chin. Down he goes like a poled ox for the first time in the fight, with a crash that sent up dust from the canvas. He barely got to his feet at nine and with a knockout win staring me in the face I throwed gloves at him till he must of thought it was raining leather!

Then came the accident which almost cost me the fight for the second time in that boisterous third round. Hurricane Ryan is against the ropes in his own corner, weaving back and forth like a hula dancer. I tossed a right at his jaw with everything I got behind it. As the punch starts, his head sways to one side and my glove swishes past and cracked against a ring post. I thought I had broke my hand in two, I did for a fact. The gong rings just then and when I run to my corner, Nate finds I have busted my right thumb, making my best hand practically useless!

Well, although I managed to keep Ryan from find-


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 ing out the shape my right is in, I took one proper pasting in the fourth and fifth rounds. With only one hand I could hit hard with, and that one which I had never before depended on as heavy artillery, I'm pretty badly handicapped. Only Ryan's poor condition and the cuffing I had handed him in the third frame saved me. He seems to get stronger towards the end of the fourth, but I kept him cautious by making a bluff of swinging my right every time he gets too ambitious. He didn't like that right of mine and he took no pains to hide it. I also bluffed him now and then with a shift—standing first with my left and then with my right hand extended. A left uppercut that hit me in the Adam's apple in the middle of the fifth like to choke me to death and near the bell I went down for a count of eight from two terrible smashes to the body. I tincanned around the ring from then on to the bell, which was a welcome chime to me. So far, Ryan had the first, fourth and fifth rounds by a good margin, with the second even and only the third in my favor. Yet I'm still the freshest of the two, having youth and perfect condition on my side.

Nate and I made up our minds that I was to stake everything on a flurry at the beginning of the sixth frame, leading with my right and standing the pain, in order to get a opening for a left to the jaw. The plan was to work heavy on Hurricane's scant hoard of wind and it worked to perfection. Right off the bat, Ryan smacked me with a right to the head. He looked surprised when I didn't fall and even more surprised when I sunk my left to the wrist in his body. I then


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 feinted with my right and again shot my left to his mid-section and Hurricane dropped to one knee. Ryan had a great deal of trouble this time getting to his feet and it was plain to even his handlers that he was through when he did struggle upright. Mr. Brock is jumping around like a madman, punching away at a imaginery fighter and too hoarse to yell. I looked Ryan over calmly, walked up to him and brought down his guard with a left to his heart. He sagged back on his heels, dropping his gloves slowly and I hooked the same left to the jaw. Ryan fell on his face, twitched and laid still. He was out four minutes and I have knocked the world's heavyweight champion cold!

Well, the minute the referee finished counting Ryan out, what does Mr. Brock do but haul off and faint dead away from excitement! Nate and Kayo Kelly leaps out of the ring and they had their work cut out for them bringing him around. No more than he opens his eyes when there's a commotion in the attic over the garage, and, here comes the laugh—Spence, Judge Tuckerman and Lem Garfield tumble headlong down into the ring! They been up there all the time and seen it all. Honest, I thought Mr. Brock would die of apoplexy. It slowly dawns on him that his scheme to be the only witness to his personally conducted fight has flopped and for the next few minutes he ain't fit to be at large! He raves and he rants and he stamps around, red in the face and shaking his firsts at his unwelcome guests. Judge Tuckerman and Lem Garfield looks longingly at the door, while Spence tries to quiet his father down with explanations of how he


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 smuggled them in because they was crazy to see me win. Spence had heard me and his father planning the thing and he just couldn't keep his mouth shut. At last, Mr. Brock happens to look around to where they are still working over Hurricane Ryan and he slowly cools off while a broad smile makes its appearance on his face. He slaps me on the back and grabs at my bloody gloves.

"By Gad, boy, you did it!" he hollers. "You whipped the world's heavyweight champion in as great a battle as I've seen in twenty-five years! I knew you'd win. I don't pick losers!"

That's about all, except when we get outside the garage, sneaking our way like burglars through the night to our cars, who do we bump into but Sam Howe, editor of the Drew City "Sentinel." Sam's got a flashlight, snooping around and when he sees us he throws it full in our faces with a cackle of joy.

"By Cæsar!" says Sam. "I knew there was suthin' big goin' on here! I knew that there fence wasn't built around the garage for nuthin'. Been a big fight, hey? Well, let's have the details for the 'Sentinel'!"

Right away Hurricane Ryan gets nervous and pulls me back of a tree.

"Remember our contract!" he whispers hoarsely in my ear. "We swore nobody would tell nobody who win the fight. You can't put this scrap in the papers!"

I remembered that part of it, all right, to my sorrow. But—a oath's a oath. I stepped up to Sam and motioned Hurricane to keep out of the range of his flashlight.


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 "Don't get all steamed up over nothing, Sam," I says, forcing a grin. "I just been working out for my next fight, that's all."

Sam squints at Hurricane.

"Workin' out with the heavyweight champeen?" snorts Sam. "Think I'm a fule? It's been a humdinger of a fight, I kin see by your faces. Lookit his nose!"

Then I get a real idea—I do, now and then.

"Don't make me laugh!" I snort. "That ain't the heavyweight champ no more than I'm Columbus. Look again and see for yourself!"

Hurricane Ryan's features is puffed and swelled till I bet he'd of had to be introduced to his own mother. I figure poor Sam has never seen nothing but a newspaper picture of him anyways. Like I hoped, Sam looks doubtful. He's made too many mistakes in the Drew City "Sentinel" to want to make another on purpose. Nobody likes to be laughed at, but professional comedians.

"You'll all swear that's not the heavyweight champeen of the world?" he says finally, pointing to Hurricane Ryan.

Well, that ain't a hard matter to do. I have just knocked Ryan out, so even if I ain't in a position to tell the world about it, I'm morally heavyweight champion myself, ain't I? Sure!

I nudge the others and we all raise our hands and solemnly swear. Hurricane Ryan looks at me, sees what's in my mind and with a grim smile he raises his right hand too!

A good loser at that, now wasn't he?


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all is said and done there is really only two things which a box-fighter must have—a wallop and a heart. Speed, ring generalship and a mastery of hooks, feints and jabs is all great things to bring into the ring with you, but the ability to hit and the ability to take it is actual necessities in the life of a fighter. We've had many a champion with no other assets than these two, but there's been few title-holders which didn't possess both. Another thing, attempting to be a clever boxer has ruined many a ambitious boy with no talent at all for feinting and jabbing, but which might of slammed his way to a title by roundhouse swings alone. Like Battling Long done, for the example.

After I knock out Hurricane Ryan, Nate signs me to fight this Battling Long fifteen rounds to a decision in the land of Jersey City. I am guaranteed forty thousand gulden, with the privilege of taking forty-five per cent of the gross. Long has got to content himself with a paltry fifteen thousand flat and the only guarantee he gets is one from Nate that will serve him up the pasting of his life. Being light-heavyweight champion of the world, I think the man which can take me will be born the day the Gulf of Mexico turns into


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 grape juice. Thinking that way is what makes ex-champions. John L. Sullivan figured himself the clam's garters, wouldn't train for Corbett and was a mark for the slim, cool-headed Gentleman Jim. In turn, the handsome James gazed upon Bob Fitzimmons with contempt and Ruby Robert smacked him much colder than zero. Fitz thought Jefferies a laugh, but the boiler-manicuring cave man just grunted and removed Fritz from his crown. Jack Johnson giggled himself hysterical at Jess Willard's ponderous swings and clumsy rushes at Havana, till Jessica's driven cuckoo by Johnson's kidding in the clinches, knocked Lil Arthur for a row of Mongolian whipped cream containers. Willard, a champion, figured Dempsey a set-up. In fact, just before he climbed through the ropes for the shambles at Toledo, Jess remarked that he hoped he wouldn't have to beat Dempsey up so badly that the bout would kill boxing. And then—Oy, Yoi! Well, I thought this Battling Long was just another boloney and why go through a gruelling training grind for a boloney? What happened? This:

I have never give up the idea of becoming a liquid Edison by inventing a drink which will goal the world and while I'm getting in condition for Battling Long I can't seem to keep my mind on the manly art of assault and battery. The training grind is more monotonous than monotony itself. Up at six a. m., road work, punch the bag, pull the weights, throw the medicine ball, step a couple of rounds apiece with half a dozen sparring partners, shadow box, army setting up exercises, shower, rubdown, bed between eight-thirty


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Rh harbor, and did not obtain their release until the close of the war. Soon after this they plunged into the Western wilderness as surveyors, and finally settled in Jefferson County, Kentucky, near the site of Louisville. Here they soon became prominent. Alexander Breckinridge was elected to the Kentucky convention of 1787, and then moved away. Robert Breckinridge became an officer in the active and efficient militia, which under the inefficient policy of Virginia, bore the whole burden of protecting the frontier from Indian forays, and rose steadily till he became a general officer. He began his political career in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he represented his county. His next service was in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, where he manfully stood for ratification despite the strong anti-federal sentiments of the district of Kentucky. His colleague from Jefferson County also voted for ratification, as did Humphrey Marshall, of Fayette, the remaining eleven votes being cast against it. His action though unpopular at the time, won him reputation in the future and insured his election to the convention which draughted the first constitution of his State and to the first legislature. Upon the assembling of that legislature he was chosen speaker of the house, which post he held by repeated reelections until he retired from politics at the end of his fourth session. He was thus at the summit of his influence when his brother came to Kentucky, and he left no stone unturned to aid him and further his advancement.