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 of good luck and would be a good boy in New York as I had been whilst I lived in her house.

Well, I'm kind of upset myself. Mrs. Willcox had always been nice to me, but I never thought she liked me like that, and darned if I don't begin gulping and wiping my own eyes. I think maybe if Judy had asked me right at that minute to stay I might of chucked the whole thing! But Judy don't come in till after Mrs. Willcox had gave me a little Bible with my name in it and a homemade strawberry shortcake to take to New York with me, because she knows I'm crazy about it the way she makes it. Then Judy come along.

Girls change their feelings like you change a collar! From the way she acted the day before I think I'm sitting pretty. She couldn't of been nicer, but now it's different. Before I can say a word she tells me very sarcastic it's too bad I don't find Drew City attractive enough to suit my exacting taste, and she hopes I have a nice time in New York. I says I don't expect to have a nice time or a nice anything till I see her again, but that I got to go where I'll get a chance. I took hold of her hand and says to please not be sore at me for leaving, and that some day maybe I'd be able to buy Drew City and give it to her to play with. But Judy says I could of done as well there as anywhere, and that's just a excuse to get away.

To change the subject, I ask her will she give me one of her pictures. She says am I afraid I will forget what she looks like, and I'm nervous anyways and that puts on the finishing touches! I was going to ask her would she kiss me good-bye and I'd of probably got


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 slapped in the face, but now I just tipped my cap and blew.

I'm still thinking about her and what a sap I was to leave that way, when me and knockout Kelly and Nate Shapiro gets into New York at noon. Two hours later Judy and everything else has been knocked out of my head for the time being at least. Nate has me put on the gloves at Lefty Mullen's gym with Knockout Kelly, and I learned about boxing from him!

It come about like this: After we get our suit cases parked in a hotel on Sixth Avenue, we go up to this gym, where lots of fighters around New York trains. Nate wants to see how I strip and if I know anything at all about using my hands. Well, he gets me a pair of red swimming shoes, and laces on the first pair of boxing gloves I ever wore in my life. In ring togs, Knockout Kelly is standing by watching me, with a terrible scowl on his face. All the ways up in the train he ain't said a word to me nor I to him. Knockout Kelly's real name is Mendal Nussbaum, and when stripped for action he's certainly one tough-looking baby, for a fact! Even though I did knock him down a couple of days before, I can't help feeling how much better it would be for me if we was both friends.

Nate finally calls him over.

"See what he's got," he says to him, nodding to me. "No playin' rough—just feel the kid out. If you deliberately crash him, K. O., I'll see 'at you git the same!"

Kelly just grunts, sizing me up with his beady little red eyes. Nate pulls out his watch. "Less go!" he says.

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 I could see and feel how awkward I was the minute Kelly put up his hands. He stuck out his left glove, and it connected with my nose, bringing salty water out of both my eyes. Then his right thudded into my stomach, and I commence to feel terrible sick. Kelly stepped in and clinched with me, roughing me around while he whispers hoarsely in my ear: "That's just for a starter, you big yokel! I'm gonna slap you for a Chinese ash can and send you back to that slab in Jersey on a shutter!"

Up to that time I hadn't been a bit sore. I didn't mind getting hurt. I expected to at first, knowing nothing at all about the fine points of the game. But this kind of stuff's different! I wrenched away from Kelly and swung my left glove at his jaw. He ducked his head and I missed a mile. Then he come up grinning under my arms, landing both his hands to my face—hard. I think I see a opening and I drive my right hand into it. It hit the air, and the next thing I know I am sitting on the floor, which for some reason is going around and around and around!

"Time!" hollers Shapiro and bends over me, dousing me with a wet sponge. "I hope 'at showed you somethin', kid," he says. "Never lead with your right—it leaves you wide open for the other guy's counter. Y'see, Kelly just stepped aside and dropped you with a left hook. Well, 'at's all for now!"

"You better keep that baby in a hothouse!" snarls Kelly, looking terrible disappointed. "He'll never get nowheres. He's got a glass jaw and he's as yellah as all the lemons in the world!"


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 "Shut up!" bawls Shapiro, pushing him away. "I'm"

I'm on my feet by this time and the dizziness has went. My jaw's so sore I can hardly close my mouth, but that "yellah" stuff set me ablaze! All the things which had happened to me in the last two days comes to a head. Getting pinched, doing that fool dive into the lake, having Rags Dempster lord it over me, leaving Drew City, and Judy's cold good-bye. Now this guy calls me "yellah" and likewise knocks me flat. Too much! I ain't figuring on starting my climb to the top this way. My mouth is twitching into a silly grin, like it always does when I'm crazy mad. I can't control that to save my soul, and that nervous flickering of my lips seems to make a lot of people think I'm faint-hearted. I pushed the surprised Shapiro away and stood in front of the leering Kelly.

"Put up your hands!" I snarls, as tough as him.

Then the fun began.

Kelly sent a wicked smash at my face, but I expected this one and kind of clumsily ducked it. It only hit me a glancing blow, but they was force enough in it to knock me aside, and the next punch, catching me off balance, floored me again. I bounced right up, but I'm goofy, for a fact! They's at least three sneering Kellys in front of me, the way it looks to me. He stepped in close again and—well, it just rains boxing gloves on my face and body. I don't know how many times I hit the mat, whatever it was it was enough!

I know the last time I crawled to my feet I happened to glance at my heaving chest and I see it's splattered


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 with blood, I guess from my face, which feels like I been hit with a broken bottle. Out of the corner of my right eye I see part of my nose swelled up like a cabbage. I can't breathe through it at all. My left eye is closed tight. But they's a few marks on Knockout Kelly too. His lips is puffed and a red trickle's coming from one ear. Oh, this box fighting is no child's play. Whatever I made at it, I earned!

Kelly seems to be hitting me almost whenever and wherever he wants, but I feel his blows is getting weaker. I don't hit the floor no more than that terrible left glove of his socks against my chin. I'm only pasting him once to ten of his, and then only by dum luck. Yet when I do land on him, he doubles up and grunts and his breath's coming in gasps.

Then for the first time I caught him fair and square on his concrete jaw, and he went down on his back with a crash. My hand feels num. I hear Shapiro and some other people yelling, but I can't believe they're in the gym, their voices sound so far away.

Kelly stays a long time on one knee, it seems to me, and then's he's on his feet, and I let him hit me three or four times without even trying to clock the punches. What's the use? I don't know enough about the game to block him, anyways. I'm willing to take these wallops to get one more in on his jaw. I see another chance and I let go with both hands, first the left and then the right.

My left caught him on the bridge of his nose and I felt it give, and then, to my great surprise, Kelly's face turns a bright red all over and it even goes down to his


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 white trunks—like he'd stood under a shower composed of grape juice! My right glove socked him over the heart and he fell in toward me, his hands dropping down at his sides. Honest, he's laying on me like a dead man.

Some voices hollers "Finish him, kid!" and now that I think of it afterward, I'm sorry to say I pushed him off and tried to do just what the voices said!

But you want to remember that Kelly had beaten and battered me around that gym till I was no more the Gale Galen of Drew City than I am Prince of Wales. As I shoved Kelly off he managed to land a weak punch just on the line of my belt. I took careful and deliberate aim at his jaw and was just going to let go when Nate Shapiro grabbed me around the waist and pulled me to one side. Knockout Kelly slumped half to the floor in the arms of two other fellows.

"Feel hurt anywheres inside, kid?" says Nate anxiously in my ear. They's a crowd around me. Somebody says: "Who is he?" Shapiro says, very proud: "Six-Second Smith, 'at's who he is!"

"I ain't hurt inside or anywheres else either!" I says, shaking myself. "How long was we fighting—a couple of hours?"

"I guess it seems 'at way!" grins Nate, running his hands all over me, like a doctor looking for breaks. "You stepped four and a half minutes with the toughest egg in his class. Kelly's got a draw with the champ. Sweet Papa, if you only knew somethin'! Well, I'll fix 'at part of it. You got a heart and you


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Rh and Astronomical, for instance, though it must be. added that, the chief rebels came out of the Society itself. And so a certain not very defined dislike was generated in my mind—an anti-aristocratic affair—to the body which seemed to me a little too uplifted. This would, I daresay, have worn off; but a more formidable objection arose. My views of physical science gradually arranged themselves into a form which would have rendered F.R.S., as attached to my name, a false representation symbol. The Royal Society is the great fortress of general physics: and in the philosophy of our day, as to general physics, there is something which makes the banner of the R.S. one under which I cannot march. Everybody who saw the three letters after my name would infer certain things as to my mode of thought which would not be true inference. It would take much space to explain this in full. I may hereafter, perhaps, write a budget of collected results of the à priori philosophy, the nibbling at the small end of omniscience, and the effect it has had on common life, from the family parlour to the jury-box, from the girls'-school to the vestry-meeting. There are in the Society those who would, were there no others, prevent my criticism, be its conclusions true or false, from having any basis; but they are in the minority.

There is no objection to be made to the principles of philosophy in vogue at the Society, when they are stated as principles; but there is an omniscience in daily practice which the principles repudiate. In like manner, the most retaliatory Christians have a perfect form of round words about behaviour to those who injure them: none of them are as candid as a little boy I knew, who, to his mother's admonition, You should love your enemies, answered—Catch me at it!

Years ago, a change took place which would alone have put a sufficient difficulty in the way. The co-operative body got tired of getting funds from and lending name to persons who had little or no science, and wanted F.R.S. to be in every case a Fellow Really Scientific. Accordingly, the number of yearly elections was limited to fifteen recommended by the Council, unless the general body should choose to elect more; which it does not do. The election is now a competitive examination: it is no longer—Are you able and willing to promote natural knowledge; it is—Are you one of the upper fifteen of those who make such claim. In the list of candidates—a list rapidly growing in number—each year shows from thirty to forty of those whom Newton and Boyle would have gladly welcomed as fellow-labourers. And though the rejected


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 can sock—I'll teach you to know your right glove from the, and if we don't cop the title in a year I'll quit managin' pugs and go to work!"

Kelly comes stumbling over at this minute and growls at Shapiro:

"What did you stop it for? They was nobody hurt! I wasn't out. I was stallin'—you didn't have to save me!"

"You, you big boloney?" sneers Shapiro, draping a bathrobe around me like I'm a cracked race horse. They's two fellows rubbing me with oil. "I wasn't even thinkin' of you! I didn't want this boy to break his hands on you—he ain't got no bandages on. D'ye think he's yellah now?"

Knockout Kelly grins kind of sheepish. Then he reaches down and shakes my glove. "It's all fun, ain't it, kid?" he says through his puffed lips. "I think the two of us could lick any sixty cops in the world, how 'bout it? Cheese, but you got a sweet right!"

"And, cheese, but you got a sweet left!" I says, shaking his glove.


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months of my sentence was up and I had three months more to serve when I got time off for good behavior. No, I ain't been in jail, though I might as well of been for all the liberty I got. Out of bed, 6.30 a. m. In bed, 9 p. m. In between, work like a field hand, with a couple of scowling, bull-necked huskies ready to climb my back the second I showed signs of dogging it.

I been training for my first professional box fight.

Where this scuffle was going to take place, how many rounds and how much I was going to get for doing my stuff, was all mysteries to me for a long time. I didn't even know who I was going to battle till a few days before the fight. These little details was in the hands of Nate Shapiro, and it's exactly as easy to get information out of Nate as it is to get sunburned in a coal mine.

While I'm training for my first brawl in a ring, I sit up reading till almost midnight as usual, with the keyhole plugged and a rug stuffed under the door, so's if Nate happens to pass my room he won't see the light. If he'd had any idea that I wasn't pounding my ear, he'd been fit to be tied. Nate ain't much of a reader.


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 A telephone book, a bank book and The Police Gazette, about makes up Nate's library. But it was different here. Lama reading fool! I wade through everything I can get my hands on, from newspapers to encyclopedias, making all stops in between. I gulp 'em all down raw, with a dictionary as a chaser. If it wasn't for that dictionary most of these books could be in code, for all I could read 'em. But with Mr. Webster's famous novel by my side, I'm all set. When I stumble across words which I have never been intimate with, like "obsolete" and "exchequer," for example, why, all I got to do is open up my dictionary and form what I hope will be a lifelong acquaintance with 'em. I met twenty or thirty new words a night in that way alone. Especially "triapsidal," which is anything having three apsis and of course everybody knows what a apsis.

Maybe you think it's funny for a young fellow who was going to be a prize fighter to spend as much time studying bright books as he did studying right hooks. Well, the answer to that one is that I was only going to be in the ring till I'd enough jack to get two things—a schooling and a line on what my trick was, to the viz, what was the game I was born to win at? Fellows has fought for girls, for money, for revengeance, for notoriety, and for fun. I fought for a education!

In the eighteen years I'd been trying to discover what it's all about, I'd tried my hand at nearly everything but selling palm-leaf fans at the North Pole. I couldn't pick my jobs—I had bid teacher too soon. So I took 'em as they come along, hating 'em all, quitting whenever I got a chance to think too long about 'em


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 scent of this monster. By dint of searching, I thought I had met with a willing auxiliary, but as these Ariadnes, however ill used or forsaken they may be, yet shrink from the immolation of their betrayer, I determined to accost the damsel I met with cautiously. It was necessary, before I ventured my bark, to take soundings, and I took care not to manifest any hostility towards Winter, and not to alarm that residue of tenderness, which, despite ill usage, always remains in a sensitive heart. I made my appearance in the character of almoner of the regiment of which he was thought to command, and as such introduced to the ci-devant mistress of the pretended colonel. The costume, the language, the manner I assumed were in perfect unison with the character I was about to play, and I obtained to my wish the confidence of the fair forsaken one, who gave me unwittingly all the information I required. She pointed out to me her favoured rival, who, already ill-treated by Winter, had still the weakness to see him, and could not forbear making fresh sacrifices for him.

I became acquainted with this charming lady, and to obtain favour in her eyes, announced myself as a friend of her lover's family. The relatives of the young giddy pate had empowered me to pay his debts; and if she could contrive an interview with him for me, she might rely on being satisfied with the result of the first. Madame *** was not sorry to have an opportunity of repairing the dilapidations made on her property, and one morning sent me a note, stating that she was going to dine with her lover the next day at the Boulevard du Temple, at La Galiote. At four o'clock I went, disguised as a messenger, and stationed myself at the door of the restaurant's; and after two hours' watch, I saw a colonel of hussars approach. It was Winter, attended by two servants. I went up to him, and offered to take care of the horses, which proffer was accepted. Winter alighted, he could not escape me, but his eyes met mine, and with one jump he flung himself on his horse, spurred him, and disappeared.


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 and getting canned whenever the boss got a chance to think too long about me. But I made up my mind to stick in the fight game till I got enough jack together to educate myself and eat while I was doing it. Even if I couldn't get no college degree, if opportunity ever knocked at my door I at least wanted to be able to carry on a conversation with it!

I learned a good deal from Shapiro and Knockout Kelly, as far as that part of it goes. None of their teachings would help me pass the entrance examinations for Harvard, but they did me a world of good in the school I was entering then. Fighters may be born, but boxers is made!

For three monotonusmonotonous [sic] months my daily routine, with Nate holding a watch on me, started off with a three to five mile trot on the road every morning, wearing three heavy wool sweaters so's I'd perspire off weight. I had a terrible time keeping inside the welter weight limit, 145 lbs. I hadn't stopped growing yet and this daily exercise was filling out my chest and muscles till Nate put me on a diet like I'm a chorus girl. After the cross-country run comes a cold shower, than I flop out on a table and a husky dinge rubber sprinkles me fluently with a mixture of oil of wintergreen and eucaliptus and commences to slowly knead me like dough, working up speed gradually till at the windup he's patting and slapping me till the noise sounds like a couple of crazy motorcycles chasing a runaway horse on a cement pavement. When he got through I'd feel like I had acted as the pavement! Then comes punching a sack filled with sand, which Nate said weighs 250


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 pounds, but which I'm satisfied weighed that many tons, especially after I'd slugged it for about twenty minutes. Then me and Kayo Kelly and Two-Punch Jackson throwed the medicine ball around till Nate blew the whistle on that. Next I yanked some weighted pulleys back and forth, then shadow boxing, where you act like you was a cuckoo and trade rights and lefts with the air, then skipping rope, and, after a rest, a few rounds of light sparring with Knockout Kelly and sometimes Two-Punch Jackson, which was fifty pounds heavier than me, but called my right hook to the jaw "the cat's cuffs!"

Nate said the worst fault I had then was the habit of leading with my right hand instead of with my left. He spent weeks trying to break me of it, hours drumming into my ears, "Lead with a straight left—then hook your right!" over and over again.

"You got a heart and you can sock!" says Nate, stopping my workout one day, "but you telegraph the other guy everything you're going to do. The worst preliminary boloney which ever rubbed a shoe in rosin would drop you for the count when you lead wit' 'at right of yours! Your left hand's about as much use to you as a pair of dancing pumps would be to a shad. Well, I'll fix 'at to-morrow!"

The next day, Nate begins tieingtying [sic] my right hand behind my back and making me spar with the left only. I took plenty punishment from some highly-tickled handlers for awhile, but at the end of a few days I had uncovered a left jab which afterwards was poison to many's the good boy.


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Rh Balmung ring, the which bold Hagen had taken from Siegfried, when he slew the knight. Then the old man warded him; in sooth he was brave enow. Dietrich’s champion struck with a broad sword, that cut full sore, at the hero of Troneg, but could not wound King Gunther’s liegeman. Hagen, however, smote him through his well-wrought hauberk. When old Hildebrand felt the wound, he feared more scathe at Hagen’s hand; his shield he slung across his back and thus Sir Dietrich’s man escaped from Hagen, though sorely wounded.

Now of all the knights none was alive save the twain, Gunther and Hagen alone. Dripping with blood old Hildebrand went to where he found Dietrich, and told him the baleful tale. He saw him sitting sadly, but much more of dole the prince now gained. He spied Hildebrand in his blood-red hauberk, and asked him tidings, as his fears did prompt him.

“Now tell me, Master Hildebrand, how be ye so wet with your lifeblood? Pray who hath done you this? I ween, ye have fought with the strangers in the hall. I forbade it you so sorely, that ye should justly have avoided it.”

Then said he to his lord: “’T was Hagen that did it. He dealt me this wound in the hall, when I would fain have turned me from the knight. I scarce escaped the devil with my life.”

Then spake the Lord of Berne: “Rightly hath it happed you, for that ye have broken the peace, which I had sworn them, sith ye did hear me vow friendship to the knights. Were it not mine everlasting shame, ye should lose your life.”


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 Well, I came back to Drew City and I brung Kayo Kelly and Nate Shapiro with me. We all camped at Mrs. Willcox's boarding house and everybody was happy. The three of us being there meant more jack for that dear old lady every week and Nate and Kayo don't like living in the nearest thing they've had to a home since they been kids any more than they like their right eyes. Try to tell Mrs. Willcox that prize fighters is no good! We couldn't do enough for her and she couldn't do enough for us. She wasn't in the position to afford no hired help, and Judy, which was then going to Drew City Prep, is kept pretty busy with her lessons and the etc. Well, me and Kayo and Nate is the official maids and hired men. We all took turns in washing the dishes, peeling potatoes, chopping wood, tending the lawn, house cleaning, and like that. We wouldn't let her do nothing. I wish you could of saw Knockout Kelly, one of the toughest boys which ever laced on a glove, out in Mrs. Willcox's kitchen with a gingham apron tied around him, washing dishes and liking it! Or the hard-boiled Nate Shapiro shaking a wisked dust cloth in the parlor, after I have went through it with a broom and tea-leaves. Kayo Kelly said he bet he'd make a swell housewife for somebody after he got through with the ring.

Of course, the main reason I come back to Drew City was because of Judy. I was so crazy over Judy Willcox that half the time I didn't know if I was afoot or horseback!

I ain't two days back in New York after I went away with Nate, when I get a letter from her and her


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 picture, too. After reading the letter about a dozen times and looking at her picture for a half hour even, I felt like rushing right back to her and Drew City and leaving prize fighting flat on its back! But common sense and Nate Shapiro prevented me. On Judy's picture she wrote: "To Gale Galen, from Judy Willcox, his friend and well wisher." So I had my picture took by a swell Third Avenue photographer, in my ring togs, and I wrote on it: "To Judy Willcox, from Six-Second Smith, her friend and well wisher and admirer and promising contender for the world's welterweight championship."

After that, letters between us flew back and forth like seagulls. But while all Judy's notes is full of best wishes and hopes that I'll be a great man some day and remember Lincoln started life as a lowly rail-splitter and wound up as President and the etc why they is very little mention of "My Darling Gale" or "Your Loving Sweetheart, Judy" in any of 'em. In fact, they is no mention of that at all. If I had a boy friend named Judy, why the letters could of been from him as far as hugs and kisses is concerned. Once she sent me a list of books to get so's to "stimulate my imagination." I got 'em all and read most of 'em, with the kind assistance of my dictionary. I even give one of 'em, Huckleberry Finn, to Knockout Kelly to read, but after a while he give it back to me and says: "Not so good!" I asked him why and he says they ain't no pictures in it.

In all Judy's letters she kept kind of hinting that while she thinks I'm a nice fellow and all that business,


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 why, I am not exactly making myself solid with her by staying away from Drew City. This made me the bit uneasy and then I got some letters from Spence Brock which puts on the finishing touches, you might say. Spence writes that the first time I go to the post in New York, his gang from Drew City Prep will have ringside seats to see me do my stuff and likewise that he's positive I will knock my adversus for a Japanese mock turtle. That's fine and I get quite a kick out of knowing that when I step into the ring for my first professional fight, no matter if all the rest of the crowd gives me the razzberry, why they'll be at least two guys pulling for me—Spence Brock and myself. But what's much more interesting to me in Spence's letter is the news that Rags Dempster seems to be sitting pretty with Judy and her mother. He almost lives at the house, says Spence, and right then and there I get all fed up on New York! It wasn't hard to get Nate and Kayo to see things my way. Kayo was about winding up his training for his bout with Jackie Frayne and when him and Nate was in Drew City before they rented a barn for training quarters, charged ten cents admission and packed 'em in to see Kayo work out.

"With you, a native son, you might say, and Kayo, working out down in 'at slab together," says Nate to me, "I'll crack the yokels for three jitneys a head and take in nickels like a conductor. Less go!"

And that's what we done.

Judy seems to be tickled silly that I'm back at her house and Mrs. Willcox made the same type of fuss


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 over me like as if I was her only son, back from the wars and the etc. I'm kind of leary as to what she and Judy will say with the regards to Kayo Kelly and Nate Shapiro as candidates for boarders, as you know what some people thinks of prize fighters, but they both seem willing to take a chance and afterwards they're glad they did. Mrs. Willcox said we cheered the old house up and made her feel young again and it reminded her of years ago when she had a big family and they was all home. This generally made her begin to weep, because all that family had drifted away from her except Judy, which was the baby, and they're either dead or scattered all over the country. All she ever hears from 'em is New Year's and Easter cards and maybe a lace handkerchief by mail at Xmas. Well, whenever this comes up, I pat her on the shoulder and Nate and Kayo Kelly rushes to the old piano in the parlor. In some way, Nate has mastered the mysteries of piano playing and Knockout Kelly throats a wicked semi-glycerine tenor. So the three of us does some close harmony on "Silver Threads Amongst the Gold," "My Old Kentucky Home," and like that, generally winding up with something good and jazzy. Our combination was a sure-fire gloom chaser and that's a fact!

About the second day I'm back at Mrs. Willcox's again, I find out another reason why she and Judy is glad to have us there. I'm talking to Mrs. Willcox before supper one night and it slips out in the conversation that Mrs. Willcox owes somebody a hundred-bucks and our board bills is helping her save so much


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Rh Vinithar attacked the South-Russian Slavs, the Antae, and after one reverse overcame first them and then the Huns, who had come to their help, in two battles, but fell in the third. It is certainly strange that a tribe of the Slavs, who were despised as warriors not only by the Germans but also by the Byzantines, could defeat even in one battle a German leader before whom the Huns themselves recoiled. Still, it is a fact that the Antae were successful warriors, and later in the sixth century possessed the whole region from the Dniester to the Don, which was formerly held by the Goths. It is astonishing that the Byzantine sources of the sixth century distinguish the Antae from all the remaining Slavs, but at the same time emphasise the fact that they spoke the same language. And the name is not Slavonic. The military superiority of the Antae is, as Kunik has shewn, to be traced back to a non-Slavonic conquering folk, the Antae, who overcame certain Slav stocks and ruled them long and powerfully as a superior warlike class. This folk then became Slavised, and, as was the case with many such despotisms both German and nomadic, it too fell apart into small States, which however still negotiated common concerns in general meetings, and proceeded as one body in external affairs. We hear the same of the Bastarnae. In the tenth and eleventh centuries we find in the former abodes of the Antae of the Pontus steppe the Slavonic Tiwertzi and Ulichi whose names are equally non-Slavonic. How could they have maintained themselves against the nomads here where they were daily exposed to the inroads of all the Asiatic hordes, if they were pure Slavs without a Germanic or Altaian warrior-stratum?

Still less could the Slavs resist the pressure of foreign conquerors after the Scandinavian Vikings had renewed their attacks. Leaving their families behind them, these appeared at first in small bands of one to two hundred men as well-organised followers (vaeringjar) of a sea-king, and always returned home after selling their plunder. At important points on their route they established trading stations, and in the course of time these became fortified settlements surrounded by a subjected Finnish, Baltic, or Slavonic population. Hence a regulated government was developed, no longer exclusively resting on plunder. From the word vaeringjar came the name of a people Varangians,. The Varangians gradually extended their sway over the whole of Russia — over Kiev about the year 855 — covered it with originally independent towns (garðar), and finally formed these little States into a single empire of the Rōs (Russians). In brief, trading Scandinavian


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 a week to pay it back. She says the jack was sent to her in a plain envelope without no writing to show who it's from, by somebody which knew she was short a century on a note due at The First National Bank. When Mrs. Willcox says she's pretty sure who sent it, I made a excuse and ducked, as I am the baby which sent her that money. So now I think I won't say a word to her till she has saved up the hundred, and then I'll give her a wonderful surprise. I'll write her a unsigned letter saying that the promising young prize fighter which loaned her the sugar says to keep it—and she'll never know where it come from!

A few nights later I happen to pass by the parlor on my ways upstairs to my room and Rags Dempster is in there talking to Mrs. Willcox. As I'm walking by the room he seen me and sneers. Then he tells Mrs. Willcox in a loud voice so's I'll hear it that he thinks she has made a mistake to take in us prize fighters with a young girl in the house. We ain't a good influence for Judy, this fathead says. Why, the big stiff, I would of cut off my arm for Judy, and Nate and Kayo treated her like she was President Harding! I'm glad to say, though, that Mrs. Willcox stuck up for us, so that helped a little. But when I get to the top of the stairs there's Judy just coming down and I get another jolt—a tough one!

Calling Judy the prettiest girl in the wide, wide world is dismissing a million dollars with the remark that it's nice money. Judy begins being beautiful where Venus left off!

I ain't really had a chance to see her alone for more


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 than a few minutes up to this time and as I had some thing very important to ask her, I stopped her. A few hours before I had arranged with Spence Brock to borrow his racing car for a couple of hours to take Judy for a ride. Spence would loan me both his ears and one hand if I asked him. So all I got to get now is Judy.

"Can I speak to you for a minute, Judy?" I says.

"Why, of course, Gale," she smiles, making my heart jump till it would of frightened a doctor. "As many minutes as you want."

"You don't seem to want to see much of me any more," I says, thinking of Rags waiting in the parlor. "I guess I've about wore out, hey?"

She goes to work and pinches my arm, but nevertheless why does her face get red?

"Don't be silly!" she says. "I like you immensely, Gale, and you know it—or you should. I'm awfully glad you're back and I hope, that is, I'm glad you've made up your mind to stay. I—we missed you terribly."

She looks away from me, playing with the lace on her sleeve. A wild idea come to me to tell her how cuckoo I am over her and get either kissed or canned, but in any event be done with it! Then I think of that dizzy sap downstairs!

"I bet you missed me," I says. "With Rags Dempster hanging around like"

Judy leaves go a little exclamation which sounds like she expected me to say something entirely different and she's highly disappointed. She cut me off short.


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 "When are you going to have your first boxing match?" she asks me.

"Next Saturday night in Brooklyn," I says. "Nate Shapiro just told me today and you're the first one I'm telling. I'm going to fight a fellow called 'Red' Johns, in a six-round preliminary to the Kayo—Jackie Frayne battle."

"Oh, Gale, you will be careful, won't you?" says Judy, suddenly grabbing my arm. "What a horrible name—'Red' Johns!"

"Wait till he hears mine," I says. "Six-Second Smith!"

Judy smiles with me.

"Well, at any rate, please try not to get hurt and—and—if you call me up as soon as the bout is over and tell me how you came out, I'll wait up Saturday night for the call!"

"As a special favor to you, Judy," I says, "I will certainly try not to get hurt, and that ain't changing my original plans much, at that! And I'll sure phone you Saturday night after the massacre; win, lose, or draw—if I'm able. But if you really like me, Judy, why do you let Rags Dempster"

No use! Judy derails me again.

"What did you do with that list of books I sent you to New York, and told you to read?" she butts in, pickin' up a book from the table. "Lost it, I'll bet."

"Well, you'd lose!" I says, and I pull her list out of my coat pocket. "Judy, if a five-year-old kid would begin piling on top of each other the books I've read


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 since I left here, he'd be three hundred years old and in Betelguese when he laid the last one down!"

Judy laughs till it's a wonder Rags didn't hear her downstairs, and I hope he did.

"The ones I liked best," I goes on, checking over the list, "was 'The Three Musketeers,' 'Martin Eden,' 'Poe's Tales,' 'Sherlock Holmes,' and 'Huckleberry Finn,' Like 'em? I love 'em! I look on them books as my pals and I'll read 'em again and again. I'd as soon part with them as I would with my knees, especially that 'Huckleberry Finn'!"

"I thought you'd like that one," says Judy. "Now you must read 'Tom Sawyer,' another one of Mark Twain's, and"

"I'm going to read every story Mr. Mark Twain writes, as fast as they come out!" I interrupt. "Believe me, he tells a dude of a yarn. I've been boasting him to all my friends, because a man which can write like that deserves some encouragement!"

At this point Judy goes right off into a fit of laughing, which they do hear downstairs, and her mother calls her.

"Gale," she says, with her hand on my arm. "Eh—don't—don't say that about Mark Twain to anyone else—that—Oh, about encouraging him. Mark Twain is immortal!"

"There was nothing out of the way in the book I read," I says.

"Not immoral, immortal!" says Judy, getting up, still giggling. "And now I must go, Gale, or mother will be angry. Keep on reading good books. They ee a


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 will help you immensely now, and, later, when you've begun to make big money at your present profession, you can get yourself a tutor—some one to teach you and lay out a regular course of reading for you—history, fiction, essays, and all that sort of thing. I'll help you study, myself, whenever I have time, especially during vacation this summer. Oh, I do want you to be a success, Gale!" she adds, suddenly serious. "And I know you will! It's written all over your face. As you've said, there's too much fighting blood in you for you to give in to the handicap of your lack of education—you'll never remain a prize fighter, Gale, never in this world. Some day I bet you'll be the biggest man I know; and oh—how proud I'll be of you. Why, I'm proud of you now, for trying."

At that minute I wouldn't of changed places with Mr. J. D. Rockefeller. The next second I would of changed places with one of his oil cans. Such is girls!

I ask Judy will she take a ride with me, telling her Spence had loaned me his car. For a instant her face lights all up, and then she bites her lips and says she's terrible sorry, but she can't go. She's already got a date with Rags Dempster! While I'm kind of reeling back against the banister and wondering if all my life this Rags is going to come between me and what I want, I hear Judy explaining that some of the students of Drew City Prep is putting on a play at the school auditorium, and, as all the gang is supposed to go, she had accepted a invitation from Rags. More because she really must be nice to him than because she wants


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 to go!" is how she puts it, and then she squeezes my hand and blows.

Well, I sit down on the dark stairway, and it ain't no darker than my chances looks with Judy Willcox! Still and all, why should she bother with me? I ain't got a nickel and I don't mean nothing. Rags Dempster is the only son of a millionaire. What a chump Judy'd be to even hesitate over a choice there, hey? But I can't get through my head what she means by saying she "really must be nice to him!" Then a thought hits me which made me—absolutely sick, no fooling. Suppose—suppose Judy and Rags is engaged!

I don't remember getting my hat or even going out, but the next thing I know I am walking along the street like I'm in a trance. I feel like the whole world has come to a end and I'm the only one left. I'm very much surprised when I look in the mirror of the weighing machine outside Ajariah Stubbs's drug store and see that I ain't as grey-headed as old Ajariah himself!

Stopping in Kale Yackley's cigar store, I got a New York paper and turned to the sporting page to see if they's anything there about my coming battle with Red Johns. A column headed "Frayne and Kelly Await Gong," catches my eye. It's all about how Kayo Kelly has wound up his training at Drew City and Jackie Frayne has knocked off work up in the Bronx, and both "leading contenders for the welterweight title" is on edge for the big fight. The semi-windup will be Battling Young vs. Kid Neil, middleweights. The rest of the card, says the paper, will be composed of


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 four six-round preliminaries. That's all it says. Not so much as a mention of my name.

And then I get it. I'm going to be in one of them six-round preliminaries; and whoinell is interested in the name of a preliminary boy? It seemed to me that's what I'd been all my life—just a preliminary boy! Well, I determine that I'm going to enter one of Life's Main Events some day, and whether I get knocked cold or not is of much less interest to me than whether I get the bout!

Thinking like this, I spread the paper out on Kale's show case, and it's full of this radio business which the country has went double-cuckoo over. Call XZX, clamp the receiver over your ear and get everything from the baseball scores to grand opera, right out of the air! The guy which doped that out was the sparrow's chirp, what? How is it I can't figure out something like that? I think I'm beginning to get the Drew City Blues again, so I tossed the paper away and stepped out in the street. Then, of a sudden, I decide to go around to Stubbs's drug store and see how old Ajariah is making out since I left him, by request.

Now here comes a funny thing. When I went into Ajariah's drug store that night, the old man is so disgusted with the way business has fell off that he's about ready to sell the joint for a plugged nickel. A week after that you couldn't of bought that place for fifteen thousand bucks! And it was me which give old Ajariah the big idea which turned his store into a gold mine. Believe me, that set me thinking! If I could do that for Ajariah, why couldn't I dope out something


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 to put myself over? Or even go around to stores which is on their last legs like Ajariah's was and sell 'em a idea which would bring the business? I thought this worth looking into and don't think I didn't give myself a crack at it, either. I didn't work all the time with nothing but my hands, just because I was a box fighter then!

I found Ajariah back in the prescription room, taking inventory to kill time. He looks gloomy and worried and about ten years older than when I last seen him, which must of made him about 156 years of age. Greeting me with a grunt, he peers suspiciously at me over his glasses. At first, talk comes hard. But finally Ajariah seems glad to get his troubles off his chest to somebody, so he sits down on a stool and we have quite a fanning bee. While he's talking I look around the deserted store and see plenty proof of hard luck. The soda fountain which I used to keep polished till the sparkle hurt your eye, is tarnished and sadly neglected. The crushed fruit sirups has all fermented in dirty glass bowls. The long mirror back of the counter where the bunch from Drew City Prep used to flirt with each other—and with me—is fly-specked and clouded. The whole joint is on the bum, for a fact! When Ajariah growls that he ain't taking in enough jack to pay his ice bill, I believe him. He says he can't understand it—but I can.

In the first place, Ajariah Stubbs knows as much about running a soda fountain as I do about running a submarine. He can draw a glass of root beer and that lets him out. When I worked for him I kept the


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 fountain decorated with fresh fruits and bottles of stuff which would catch the eye and I was always thinking up new drinks with fancy names, even naming some of 'em after particularly good customers, which, of course, tickled 'em. I tried to sell the world the idea that it was thirsty and that the stuff I had on tap was the kitten's vest when it come to quenching. But when I left, the mob from the prep school stopped coming in, because Ajariah wouldn't go out of his way to hold their trade. He liked to be what he calls "independent." About the only time you can be independent and be in business too is if you got maybe the only fire extinguisher to sell there is in Hades!

Ajariah's biggest mistake was looking on his soda fountain as being about the same kind of a accommodation for his customers as keeping postage stamps. Before he realized that the fountain was his biggest money maker, he had killed it dead.

Well, in a few minutes, Ajariah is offering me my old job back at fourteen fish a week—two dollars more than I got before. I told him I was now "Six-Second Smith," the welterweight, and my soda-jerking days was over, but I'd see if I couldn't figure something to help him. I should of been off Ajariah for life, as far as that part of it goes, because he was always riding me when I worked for him and he fired me without a second's notice. But Ajariah's a old man and he's up against it, so why should I rub it in?

I'm sitting there thinking just what would build Ajariah's trade up again, when all of a sudden a idea hits me smack between the eyes. Ajariah's droning


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 away about hard times, when I cut him off sharp and made him listen to me for half a hour. That New York paper I seen in Kale Yackley's cigar store gives me the scheme and I passed it along to Ajariah. I told him to have a radio-receiving set, with one of them big horns on it, hooked up in his store. Then every afternoon between, say, three and five, he could give free radio concerts to his customers from the broadcasting stations in Newark. It would be the first and only one in Drew City, and, of course, everybody's read about radio and they'd be crazy to hear it. Anything new will draw a crowd—look at New York, for instance. After he gets his customers inside it's up to Ajariah to make 'em buy, I tell him. For that purpose he wants to hire a first-class, big-town soda jerk, which composes a mean sirup and will mix a cruel drink. A ad in the Newark papers will do the trick. I even wrote on a piece of wrapping paper for Ajariah a couple of signs to have his soda man put up on the mirror back of the fountain: "Try a Radio Sundae!" and "Wireless Phosphate—Something New!"

Well, Ajariah had his radio in four days later and the results made him think I got one ounce more brains than Edison. The Drew City "Sentinel" give the stunt a big write-up and curiosity done the rest. Pretty soon the natives start looking for places in the drug store as early as two o'clock in the afternoon, and—then buy! Besides the soda jerk he got from Newark, Ajariah had to hire Vince Neil to help him out. So that was that!

Not long after this I find out just why Rags Demp-


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 ster is so unusually popular with Mrs. Willcox and what Judy meant by saying she "Really must be nice to him!" If this double-crossing boloney had been within punching distance when I got this information, why, he would of been a total loss inside of two minutes as sure as there's water in Baffin's Bay! Both Mrs. Willcox and Judy thought that Rags Dempster was the unknown guy which sent them the hundred bucks to pay that note at the bank! Can you tie that? Here I go and put myself in hock to Nate Shapiro for more dough than I ever seen in my life so's to help Mrs. Willcox out of a hole, and the only enemy I got in the wide, wide world gets the credit for it! If that ain't a tough break, then neither was Battling Siki a tough break for Carpentier. It seems they have doped out that as Rags was the only one of their friends with money which might of knew they was in trouble, why, he must of been the one which sent the dough. They figure he kept his name off it so's not to make 'em feel they was charity patients and him being that thoughtful makes him extry nice. Why, this Rags wouldn't give a dime to hear the inside story of why Washington stood up in that rowboat crossing the Delaware, let alone give anybody a hundred bucks! So when even Judy says she thinks it was very "gallant" of Rags to send her mother the money that way, why, I'm fit to be tied. I can see Judy's pride's hurt at taking money from anybody and that she'll be tickled silly when they have saved the hundred to pay it back. I'm getting a pushing around and no mistake, but I get a little consolation when Judy says that Rags


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Author:William Heyliger

Novels

 * Bartley, Freshman Pitcher (1911)
 * Batter Up! (1912)
 * Bucking the Line (1912)
 * The Captain of the Nine (1912)
 * Strike Three! (1913)
 * Against Odds (1915)
 * Captain Fair-and-Square (1916)
 * Don Strong of the Wolf Patrol (1916)
 * The Country Pennant (1917)
 * Don Strong, Patrol Leader (1918)
 * Fighting for Fairview (1918)
 * High Benton (1919)
 * Don Strong, American (1920)
 * High Benton—Worker (1921)
 * Dan's To-morrow (1922)
 * The Spirit of the Leader (1923)
 * Quinby and Son (1925)
 * Fighting Blood (1936)
 * Your on the Air (1940)

title: Author:William Heyliger


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 Dempster's the last person in the world she wants is be obligated to. I can easy imagine the advantage that false alarm would want to take of it.

To show you what kind of a bozo this Rags was when both Judy and her mother accuses him of being the mysterious Santy Claus he don't deny it. At first I thought maybe he had sent in a hundred, too, but when Mrs. Willcox shows me the envelope the dough come in I know different!

Well, though I am overboard with rage, I don't show Mrs. Willcox and Judy what a four-flusher Rags is, because that ain't the way I work. The person I want to tell that to is Rags Dempster himself. So I go out looking for him without saying a word to nobody. That is, nobody but Lem Garfield.

Passing the Elite Haberdashery I see Lem locking the front door and he calls to me to wait for him.

"Make it snappy, Lem," I says. "I'm looking for Rags Dempster and should I find him they'll be plenty trouble!"

"Humph!" says Lem. "A man in a hurry lookin' for trouble is a man who's sure goin' to git service! Don't have to look for it, feller kin sit right in his room and trouble'll come to him. Too bad Mr. Opportunity ain't more like Mr. Trouble. They say opportunity knocks once at every man's door; goes away if yew don't answer. Humph! Trouble don't knock—Mr. Trouble bust down the door, and if yew ain't in, he waits!"

Then Lem wants to know why I'm gunning for Rags and because I'm just boiling over with the thing, I told


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22 of one year may be the accepted of the next—or of the next but one, or but two, if self-respect will permit the candidate to hang on—yet the time is clearly coming when many of those who ought to be welcomed will be excluded for life, or else shelved at, last, when past work, with a scientific peerage. Coupled with this attempt to create a kind of order of knighthood is an absurdity so glaring that it should always be kept before the general eye. This distinction, this mark set by science upon successful investigation, is of necessity a class-distinction. Rowan Hamilton, one of the greatest names of our day in mathematical science, never could attach F.R.S. to his name—he could not afford it. There is a condition precedent—Four Red Sovereigns. It is four pounds a year, or—to those who have contributed to the Transactions—forty pounds down. This is as it should be: the Society must be supported, But it is not as it should be that a kind of title of honour should be forged, that a body should take upon itself to confer distinctions for science, when it is in the background—-and kept there when the distinction is trumpeted— that the wearer is a man who can spare four pounds a year. I am well aware that in England a person who is not gifted, either by nature or art, with this amount of money power, is, a the mass, a very second-rate sort of Newton, whatever he may be in the field of investigation. Even men of science, so called, have this feeling. I know that the scientific advisers of the Admiralty, who, years ago, received 100l. a year each for his trouble, were sneered at by a wealthy pretender as 'fellows to whom a hundred a year is an object.' Dr. Thomas Young was one of them. To a bookish man—I mean a man who can manage to collect books— there is no tax. To myself, for example, 40l. worth of books deducted from my shelves, and the life-use of the Society's splendid library instead, would have been a capital exchange. But there may be, and are, men who want books, and cannot pay the Society's price. The Council would be very liberal in allowing their books to be consulted. I have no doubt that if a known investigator were to call and ask to look at certain books, the Assistant-Secretary would forthwith seat him with the books before him, absence of F.R.S. not in any wise withstanding. But this is not like having the right to consult any book on any day, and to take it away, i farther wanted.

So much for the Royal Society as concerns myself. I must add, that there is not a spark of party feeling against those who wilfully remain outside. The better minds of course know better; and the smaller savants look complacently on the idea of an


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 him. Right away, Lem changes from gents furnishings salesman into lawyer, jumping at the chance like he always does to turn loose a flock of legal terms. For about five minutes the air is full of ipso factor, in re, habeas corpse and non vult. That's all applesauce to me, but as my counsel, Lem finally advises me to lay off Rags till Mrs. Willcox has saved the hundred bucks she thinks she owes him, and then if Rags takes the jack from her we can have him pinched for obtaining money under false pretenses.

"Can't we do nothing to him now, for obtaining Judy Willcox's friendship under false pretenses?" I says. "That's what I'm interested in!"

"Eh—not legally," says Lem, pursing his lips together like a judge. "I'm afraid the law wouldn't recognize your, now, broken heart, as a corpus delicti! You'd have to"

"Blah!" I cuts him off. "I'll make a corpus out of this Rags myself—maybe the law will recognize that!"

Well, the law did recognize that, for a fact! Two hours later I am marching over to Judge Tuckerman's court with Constabule Watson, and all the kids in Drew City is trailing after us. I am credited with assault and battery, to the viz., I socked Rags Dempster, and instead of tying into me like a man, why, he squawks for a cop. Me and Lem runs into Rags down near the railroad station. Rags tried to duck me, but I nailed him and politely asked him to tell Mrs. Willcox that she don't have to pinch and squinch every week to get that hundred bucks together for him, because, as


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 the matter and fact, he never sent her a nickel. Rags gets red and wants to know how do I know whether he sent the money or not. I says because I am the guy which really done it! This stops him for a minute, then he busts out laughing and says I'll have a fine time proving that, because the hundred was sent "anonymously"—whatever that is. So I tell him that I don't want to prove nothing with the regards to myself. For my part, Mrs. Willcox will never know where the sugar came from, but I want him to own up that he didn't have nothing to do with it, so's that Mrs. Willcox and Judy won't feel that they're under obligations to him. Well, Lem being there and hearing all this seems to steam Rags up. He lets forth a sneer and says where would a fellow like me ever get a hundred dollars? I says I borrowed it—which was true—but Rags says I'm just a tenth-rate liar and I probably stole the money from Ajariah Stubbs while I was working for him.

I choked back some choice remarks which I wanted to make, and asked Rags to put up his hands. He says he wouldn't lower himself, so I lowered him with a right hook to the jaw, placing it carefully so's not to mark him. He's a good two inches taller and fifteen pounds heavier than me—but soft, awful soft, and his heart's made of dough. When he got up he blowed a police whistle, and that's why I'm leading the parade to Judge Tuckerman's with Constabule Watson.

The first case before the judge that day is Lafe Weston, charged with selling bootleg in his near-beer saloon.


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 "How d'ye plead?" growls Judge Tuckerman, squinting at Lafe over his cheaters.

"Jedge," says Lafe, wetting his lips with his tongue, "they ain't been a drop of hard licker in my place since prohibition. This here's nothin' more or less than a put up job!"

"Guilty, eh? I thot so!" barks the judge, paying no attention to Lafe's indignant stare. "Where's the evidence?"

"Constabule Watson puts a bottle on the judge's desk and the judge takes a good long drink.

"Whoosh!" he says, making a terrible face and gulping down about half the water in the pitcher in front of him "Whoosh!" He bangs on the desk with his gavel and Lafe trembles, "You old scoundrel!" bawls Judge Tuckerman, red in the face and trying to get his breath, "What d'ye mean by selling sich stuff as this—d'ye want to poison me? I fine ye"

Lafe's so scared at the way the judge is gulping and gasping that he must of forgot where he's at. He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a flask.

"This here's real stuff, Jedge!" he says eagerly, "I"

"Ha!" says Judge Tuckerman, grabbing the flask. "More evidence, hey?" He sniffs suspiciously at the flask, takes a long swallow and puts it down, smacking his lips. "Ah!" he says, clearing his throat and looking around the court room. Then his wandering eye falls on the anxious Lafe and he shoves one hand in his pants pocket. "Ah—ptu!" he says, kind of dreamy, "How much is that?"


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 Lafe gives a start and everybody busts out laughing, which brings the judge back to himself. If his face was red before, you should of saw it now! "Order in the court!" he bawls, banging with his gavel. "What d'ye think this is—a theayter? One more cackle out of you idjits and I'll fine the lot of ye for contempt! Lafe Weston, I fine ye fifty dollars and costs and don't tell this court ye ain't got no money, because that's dern good licker and ye must be gettin' fancy prices for it—if ye ain't, your a dern fule!"

Lafe paid up.

Well, I'm next and I ain't feeling any too good after seeing what a beating the judge give Lafe.

Rags gets up and tells the judge he was walking down the street, minding his own business, when I rushed up and knocked him down. Not a word about what we was arguing over, or what he called me. Judge Tuckerman squints hard at Rags and then he scowls at me.

"In trouble agin, heh?" he says. "What ye got to say for yourself this time?"

"He called me a crook and a liar!' I says, still red-headed.

"Are ye?" says Judge Tuckerman. "Answer yes or no!"

I made a quick step toward the desk, but Lem Garfield pulls me back. He tells Judge Tuckerman he's my "attorney" and likewise a witness for me. Rags jumps up and hollers that Lem is a gents furnishing clerk and not no lawyer, and, besides, he can't be my lawyer and a witness too. Rags was out of luck! The


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 judge likes Lem for what he done in the war. He's one of the few which ain't forgot. So Judge Tuckerman bangs on his desk with his gavel for silence. After he gets it he asks Lem how he's feeling and did them new goloshes come in from the wholesale house yet, and then he tells him to present my case. When Lem gets through, the judge discharges me, glares at the trembling Rags, and soaks him the costs of my arrest.

"I ought to commit ye to the State insane asylum!" says the judge to Rags while Rags is frisking himself for the fine. "For anybody which calls a prize fighter a crook and a liar to his face is either crazy or has a suicidal mania!"

So that was all settled.

Well, Spence Brock heard I was pinched and he came rushing down to see what he could do for me. Lem Garfield tells him what made me sock Rags and Spence tells Judy in school the next day. All about who sent her mother that life-saving hundred bucks and everything. When I come in from the training camp for supper that night Judy done everything but kiss me and Mrs. Willcox even done that! Rags comes around about eight o'clock to "explain" matters to Judy and she won't even see him, but she sits out in the swing on the back porch with me and we talk over—tots of things. She wanted me to take the sixty-four bucks her mother had already saved up toward the hundred I loaned her, but I says to keep it, and if she will help me with my education this summer in exchange, I'll feel I'm getting the best of it. So that's what she done.


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 Well, the big day finally arrives when I am to step into a prize ring for the first time in my life. I'll never forget it as long as I live, don't think I will! The night before I went to bed at 8 p. m.—and fell asleep at 4 a.m. I got up for breakfast at 7.30, and in the three and a half hours I slept I fought this "Red" Johns a world's series! In one of the imaginary battles I had with him, he knocked me down fifteen or twenty-one times, hitting me the last time with one of the ring posts. Rags Dempster was referee and Judy Willcox was one of my seconds. Some dream! Knockout Kelly slept like a top as usual and Nate had to drag him out of bed, though he was going to fight the same day. For Kayo's fight with Jackie Frayne he's guaranteed five thousand berries. I'm going to get a hundred and a half for displaying my wares in the first preliminary and they's only seventy-five profit in it for me at that, as I got to slip Nate half.

The day of the fight we went up to New York on the 4.06 p. m. local and with us goes half of Drew City. Spence Brock and nearly all the fellows from the prep school comes along to root for me, with pennants and horns like they was going to a football game, except none of the girls is with 'em. I am trying to laugh and kid and act like taking part in a mere prize fight is nothing at all in my young life, but I'm as nervous as a cat on a picket fence. From the time I got up in the morning till the time I stepped into the ring, I feel like I'm on my way to the electric chair and that's a fact! Every little thing which happens that day seems just like the stuff I've read in the papers about guys


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 which is going to be executed. For instance, at breakfast Nate makes the crack that they's nothing wrong with my appetite, and I think of "The condemned man ate a hearty meal!" Then he makes me get my hair cut close so's it won't flop in my eyes when I'm in there trying, and that reminds me of how prisoners' hair is cut when they're going to be bumped off. Mrs. Willcox mentions me in saying Grace at lunch and I feel she's praying for my soul, which is soon to leave me. If one church bell had tolled while I was on my way to the train, I think I would of fainted!

Neither me or Kayo Kelly is allowed to have any supper, but that's no loss to me, because eating is the last thing I'm thinking of. At seven o'clock we are in the dressing room at the club-house and "Shiney" Jepps, the dinge rubber, and Nate is getting me ready for the—eh—ring. I nearly said gallows! The noise of the mob outside in the arena comes in to me like the boom of the ocean on the beach at night. The grimy dressing-room, lit by a couple of dull yellow wire-screened electric lights smells like a hospital ward. Arnica and aromatic spirits of ammonia, I recognize, but they's another smell I don't. It's like ether. At's collodion," says Nate, when I ask him. "Stops bleedin'!" I didn't ask him no more questions after that. Stops bleeding—woof!

After I've stripped and got into white trunks and ring shoes, Nate wraps a roll of soft bandages around each of my hands. That's to protect the knuckles and give me more of a grip when I'm punching. All the time, him and Kayo keeps up a running fire of kidding


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 and funny stories, but I can see they're just trying ta keep up my spirits, because when Nate laughs, only his lips is care free, the rest of his face is set! And every other word from Kayo Kelly is, "How d'ye feel now?" till Nate shuts him up. I can feel that in spite of their joshing, Nate and Kayo and even "Shiney" Jepps, who's kneading my stomach and the back of my neck, is darn serious. You can bet I know that when I walk out there in the ring before that howling mob I ain't going to get no gym workout, I'm going to be in a FIGHT!

Now from all this, maybe you think I'm a trifle yellow and that I was scared stiff. Well, I wasn't scared. If I was faint-hearted, I'd never of took up box fighting to begin with. But you want to remember that all this grim preparation was brand-new to me and where I'd been boxing with Kayo Kelly and my own handlers before a couple hundred people at the most and nearly all of which knew me, I was now going out in a strange town before eight or nine thousand hard-boiled fight fans, which never heard of me before in their lives. When I start down the close-packed aisle to the ring with Nate and my seconds, I want to tell you I was a bundle of hair-trigger nerves and if somebody had of blowed a auto horn behind me I'd of jumped right clear through the roof!

I hear every word about me on that trip down the aisle, the longest trip I ever took in my life. "Who's 'at guy?" "He looks pale!" "Not so good—this 'Red' Johns is a terrible gorilla, he'll murder 'at kid!" All that and more, stinging me like red-hot needles.


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 Climbing through the ropes, I stumbled and lost my balance and the customers howls. "Fall through 'em, kid, you'll git knocked through 'em in a minute!" and—some other stuff, which I bet none of them babies would of dared said to my face if they was alone. The glaring lights over the ring, after the gloomy dressing room, blinds me, and it's a couple of minutes before I can see where I'm at. Tobacco smoke is drifting over the ropes till breathing is quite the feat. Nate guides me over to the rosin box and I rub my shoes in it, so's I won't slip in ducking a punch or trying to land one. The next stop is in "Red" Johns's corner, where he's already awaiting, covered with a dirty red bathrobe and surrounded by his handlers. He never even looked up when Nate bends over to examine his bandages and holds my hands up so's his seconds can see mine. But I looked at "Red" Johns with great interest! I see a carrot-headed, bull-necked assassin, with hair on his chest so thick I thought at first he was wearing a red sweater. His nose is almost flat on his face. A tough-looking baby if they ever was one, I'll tell the cross-eyed world!

I'm just back in my corner, staring out at a crowd which would make it look like they was only two guys at the Battle of the Marne, when Nate pulls my mouth open and shoves in a rubber teeth protector.

"Don't swalley 'at!" he grunts, beginning to lace on my gloves. "Now remember, this chump's a sucker for a straight left. Don't go rushin' out there to trade swings with him, or he'll flatten you! Jab his head off with 'at left first, then cross your right. You lead


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 with your right to this guy and he'll goal you sure!"

The gong rings a half dozen times and the crowd quiets down. People is still coming in. Some is carrying on conversations with their backs to the ring. What do they care about the prelims! The announcer raises his hand.

"Over here, 'Red' Johns of Brooklyn. In the other corner, 'Six-Second Smith, eh—" heSmith,' eh—" he [sic] grins, "the Drew City Cave man! One hundred and forty-five pounders. Six rounds!"

The mob has begun on me before I'm half-ways to the middle of the ring for the referee's instructions. "Where d'ye get that 'Six-Second' stuff?" "He means he'll last six seconds!" By this time I'm so up in the air I don't know if I'm in Brooklyn or Brazil! "Red" Johns leers at me. I'm trembling and tingling all over and I can't stop it and that makes me crazy mad at myself. This "Red" Johns looks like he feels the only way he can lose is for me to pull a gun from my shoe and shoot him. He's been through this a hundred times—this is my first. Somebody's yelling: "Hey, Gale! Hey, Gale!" I peer through the smoky haze over the ropes and I see Spence Brock, jumping up and waving a pennant. In the box with him is Rags Dempster and some of the other boys from the prep school.

I'm goofy, no fooling, but I manage to wave back my glove. I don't know what it's all about—I'm in a trance. Rags curls his lip and whispers to the fellow next to him and then they both laugh. I go up in the air a couple of thousand feet more. "Knocked cold


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 in my first fight before Rags Dempster!" begins running through my crazy mind. I can picture him telling Judy how it happened. I don't hear half what the referee's saying, but he winds up with: "Fight hard, hit clean, and break when I tell yuh!" A hoarse whisper hits my ear: "I'll spill you in a minute, you big hick." . . . That's Mr. "Red" Johns, and while he's saying that he's shaking my glove with his, very politely. You should of saw his face—like a tiger's! Well, this about ruins me. I go back to my corner and Nate whips off my bathrobe, then slips down under the ropes, leaving me all alone under them terrible lights—all alone except for the hard-faced referee leaning against the ropes, and "Red" Johns with his back to me across the ring. "Red" Johns has got hold of the top rope with his gloves and he's bending up and down, limbering his leg muscles. I just stand there facing the mob and I see nothing but a howling jumble of blurred, cold sneering faces. Nate shoves his head up under the lower rope:

"Remember, make him come to you—don't go after him. And what ever you do, don't lead with 'at right!"

I hear this "Don't lead with your right!" over and over again, but I'm thinking of what depends on me winning my first start, of Judy, of that sneering Rags out there, and then, to show you how cuckoo I am, I puzzle over what part of a minute is six seconds, that being my ring name. Thoughts is shooting through my head like a news-reel movie being run too fast. I get on one thought and another one blurs it out. Can I last six rounds? Can I keep this scowling, hairy


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312 “My Lord Dietrich, now be ye not so wroth; the damage to my friends and me is all too great. Fain would we have carried Rüdeger’s corse away, but King Gunther’s liegemen would not grant it us.”

“Woe is me of these sorrows! If Rüdeger then be dead, ’t will bring me greater dole, than all my woe. Noble Gotelind is the child of my father’s sister; alas for the poor orphans, that be now in Bechelaren.”

Rüdeger’s death now minded him of ruth and dole. Mightily the hero gan weep; in sooth he had good cause, “Alas for this faithful comrade whom I have lost! In truth I shall ever mourn for King Etzel’s liegeman. Can ye tell me, Master Hildebrand, true tidings, who be the knight, that hath slain him there?”

Quoth he: “That stout Gernot did, with might and main, but the hero, too, fell dead at Rüdeger’s hands.”

Again he spake to Hildebrand: “Pray say to my men, that they arm them quickly, for I will hie me hither, and bid them make ready my shining battle weeds. I myself will question the heroes of the Burgundian land.”

Then spake Master Hildebrand: “Who then shall join you? Whatso of living men ye have, ye see stand by you. ’T is I alone; the others, they be dead.”

He started at this tale; forsooth, he had good cause, for never in his life had he gained so great a grief. He spake: “And are my men all dead, then hath God forgotten me, poor Dietrich. Once I was a lordly king, mighty, high, and rich.” Again Sir Dietrich spake: “How could it hap, that all the worshipful heroes died at the hands of the battle-weary, who were themselves hard pressed? Were it not for mine


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 cannibal away from me that long? Then I think this—why try to keep him away at all? Why not rush right in and

The bell clanged out and I jumped a foot! The mob's yelling its head off again. I shot out of my corner like a bullet from a rifle and now my mind's clear of allbut one idea and that's to knock "Red" Johns cold and do it swift! All the careful instructions which Nate hammered into me for three weary, heart-breaking months of training is gone and forgotten. He might as well of told me nothing. I forget that Nate says leading with my right leaves me open to a fatal counter. My first—and last—punch in that fight was a right hook to the jaw. It socked against Red Johns's quickly upraised glove. It drove that glove back against his chin with a loud "Zop!" and Red Johns crashed to the canvas. I put so much stuff on that wallop that the force of my own swing carried me half-ways across the ring and I had to jump to miss stepping on Red Johns's body.

The crowd's standing up on the chairs, screeching like cats and dogs and I hear the whistles and horns the gang from Drew City brung with 'em. The referee shoves me against the ropes and begins counting. At "eight," Red Johns kind of quivered, rolled over on his stomach, then stretched out flat. The referee grabs my wrist and holds my arm up to the crowd.

I have trained three months for a fight which lasted just sixteen seconds.

I was reaching down to help Red Johns's handlers earry him to his corner, when Nate jumps through the


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 ropes and grabbed me away. Nate is terrible excited. He don't know what he's doing. He throws his arms around me and kissed me; can you beat that?

"Sweet Mamma, what a socker you turned out to be!" Nate bellers. "You're the bee's knees, for a fact! But you do what I tell you hereafter, get me? You lead with your right to anybody again and I'll crown you with a bucket!"

He throws me bathrobe around me and we walk over to Red Johns's corner. Red's come to, but they still got ammonia under his nose. He just found out he was stopped with a punch and he's crying like a baby. I go to shake hands with him and he pushes my glove away.

I got plenty applause leaving the ring, but I just remember that now. Right then, I'm still hypnotized, I can't believe I'm awake! I phoned Judy from the box office of the fight club. I just says: "Well, I won!" and hung up—I squared myself with her later. I tell you I'm still goofy and—terrible sleepy! I didn't even wait to see how Knockout Kelly made out with Jackie Frayne. I went right to the hotel where I was to stay overnight with Nate and Kayo and went to bed, clothes and all.

The next morning I bought a copy of every New York paper printed and took 'em up to my room in the hotel. I figure they'll be full of how I win my first battle. Well, on the sporting pages they's about a column on the Kayo Kelly-Jackie Frayne muss. It seems they fought a tame ten-round draw. Down at the bottom, it says this:


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 "Six-Second Smith, a newcomer around these parts, stopped Red Johns with a punch in the opening frame of the first preliminary. They are welterweights. Red waited too long!"

One of the biggest events of my life is just a laugh to the Big Town sport writers! But I can still see Red Johns hitting that mat. He kind of bounced a little, then settled down flat on his back, and under them terrible lights his face is like wet chalk. I sit there on my bed and wonder how long it'll be before I'll be laying flat on by back under the lights, with my face looking like wet chalk?


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you think a fellow which will go to work and pay twenty-five bucks for a box of writing paper for himself is cuckoo, and maybe he is. But, honest, I wish you could of curled a eye over this stationery. It was the eel's ankle, no fooling! Take this paper itself—lobster red—and across the top in purple letters which you could press down with your fingers it said this:

, 19.

Besides this, in the upper right-hand corner there was a picture of me in my evening clothes—ring togs


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 —and if that ain't a nifty letter head, then Dempsey's a traffic cop! I thought that letter head all out myself and Nate said it was the greatest business getter he ever seen since he'd been handling box fighters and that's been since a right hook was a punch. Why, Nate never sent out a letter to a fight club on this paper that it didn't pull some kind of a answer, even if the matchmaker only wished to know where could he get the music for it.

What I particularly idolized about this letter head was my motto, "DIEU ET MON DROIT!" That means "God and my Right!" and it was the slogan of a two-handed fighter named Richard I, which besides having that last name with only one letter in it, once held down the exacting job of King of England. Well, I never was King of England, but still and all I decided that "Dieu et mon droit!" would make a swell battle cry for me and a wonderful motto to live up to. Mrs. Willcox had taught me a lot about the Bible and I said my prayers every night and went to church with her and Judy every Sunday and I ain't ashamed to admit it neither. So that's why I was strong for the first part of that motto. As for the last part, ". . . and my Right!", well, that was made to order for me. I don't know how much of a socker Richard I was with his right, but I know that my right made me a world's champion and you can't laugh that off!

Well, after winning my first fight with a punch I stopped six other good boys in from one to eight rounds each and I was no more ashamed of that record than Napoleon was of his business. But I'm still de-


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 termined that the minute I get the price of a education the prize ring's loss will be the world's gain! I had nothing against box fighting; as far as that part of it goes, I got quite the kick out of it. But how many scrappers is making a living at their trade at forty, for the example. How many which is out of the game is living on Well Fixed Avenue?

While you're puzzling over that brain teaser, I'll get back to Judy, and who wouldn't? Judy was now my chief second in this finish fight I begin with Battling Ignorance, and during her vacation that summer from Drew City Prep, she taught me this and that. We had reading and writing, arithmetic and spelling, history and geography, grammer and hot chocolate when school's over. Ain't we got fun! If I had learned what is the difference between a verb and a pronoun as fast as I learned to fall into love with this sweet little eye-widener, why, I could of went up to Yale and made a monkey out of the entire college!

Well, after four fights as a welterweight, me and Nate makes the sad discovery that I can't make the poundage in that division no more because I'm growing like a baby elephant. The best I can get down to at that time is 158 ringside and it takes a two days' drying out to do that. So I was then a full-fledged middleweight, not that this entitled me to carry a sword and rate a salute or anything like that. My four scuffles as a welter nets me around five hundred bucks after Nate takes out his half and I square for the jack he advanced me to live on before I have my first fight.


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 In them four battles I am trading wallops less than a half hour altogether—the first one only goes sixteen seconds—and my gross receipts is just $1,200. When Nate picks me from behind Ajariah Stubbs's soda fountain, I have to work twelve hours a day for two years to click off twelve hundred smackers! Honest, I felt like the laborer which win fifty dollars the first time he ever bet on a horse race in his life and says in astonishment: "How long has this been going on?"

One of the first things I done when the money begin to roll in like this was to get myself two swell suits of clothes, a complete and classy outfit of gents furnishings and a hundred-buck diamond ring. The rest opens a savings account and I put on no more dog from then until I had a real bankroll. But this first plunge I simply had to take and that's a fact. All my life I had wanted to have two suits of clothes—one for every day and one for when I'm stepping out. Then that diamond—it was a pip, too—well, that was simply another case of must have! It gives a fellow a air of—eh—but you get me, don't you?

On my nineteenth birthday Nate signs me up with a sapolio called Shifty McTague for my first start as a middleweight. Ten rounds at Irontown, Pa., for a guarantee of $600 if I stay the limit. If on the contrary, I get paid at the rate of $50 a round, and no tips. McTague, a big favorite in Irontown, is to get a thousand bucks flat even should I smack him for a mock turtle, which I don't mind telling you is what I intended to do, no matter what his own plans is for re-


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 maining erect. This bout was the main event of a card put on for the hired help by the heavy bosses of the Irontown Locomotive Works, to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of the choo-choo factory. The merry ironworkers had a two-day holiday of track and field sports, winding up with the boxing show, while the bosses done their setting-up exercises at a banquet table.

We signed the articles in Lefty Mullen's gym in New York. Both me and Shifty McTague agree to make 158 at two o'clock the day of the quarrel.

"I don't seem to of heard much about this boy of yours," says the matchmaker to Nate, looking at me kind of suspicious. "Is he tough?"

"Is he tough?" grunts Nate. "This McTague boloney will think he's tough when 'at bell rings, don't think he won't. Why, this kid had on a pair of boxin' gloves the first day he's alive!"

"I hope he's tough," says the matchmaker gloomily. "Because should he not be tough, he'll have on a pair of boxin' gloves the last day he's alive too!"

"Blah!" sneers Nate. "Be yourself! Who did this McTague ever kill?"

"I ain't talkin' about McTague," says the matchmaker. "I'm busy thinkin' about them ironworkers, which will expect the Battle of Gettysburg once them two boys come out of their corners. If your battler can't take it, they'll cook him sure. That goes for McTague too. I don't care how tough your boy thinks he is, them ironworkers is Tough itself! If I was the two kids which is goin' up there to do their stuff, I'd


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 rather git my nose broke by a boxin' glove than git my skull broke by a crowbar. Yes, sir, them kids better be a couple of two-fisted maniacs, that's all I got to say!"

He said too much as it was, hey?

On the way back home I can't think of nothing at all but them ironworkers, and I must say that the idea of battling a locomotive works single-handed don't appeal to me at all. I had already fought before the kind of sportsmen which thinks every fight where both boys ain't cut and slashed to ribbons is a frame-up between a couple of room mates and I know what me and this Shifty McTague will be up against, if we don't half kill each other. Nate says the matchmaker was just trying to give me a pushing around, and to forget all about it, because this scrap will be the same as any other.

But it wasn't!

When we get back to Drew City I go right up to my room. That's something I wish you could of saw, no fooling! I had it fixed up swell, and, as Nate said, there was about everything in it but a race track and a swimming pool. On the floor was one of the rugs they turn out in Drew City, N. J., and ship to the Indians to sell out West, and I had so many pictures on the walls you couldn't see the paper. Besides fighting photos of me in a dozen different menacing poses, there was pictures of Dempsey, Leonard, Lynch, Carpentier, the gentleman socker, and nearly all the other champs and near champs. I cut them all out of The Police Gazette and they's only one other place I rather


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 of had my own picture than in The Police Gazette and that's in Judy's locket!

Mrs. Willcox hollered about my art gallery at first on the account she says pinning them pictures on the wall spoils the paper. So then I take out the pins and went to work and paste all the pictures on the wall. Well, the dear old lady just throws up her hands, but says nothing, because I was the star boarder and star boarders has got to be gave certain liberties.

Well, although this was my nineteenth birthday, I don't feel so good, for a fact. In the first place, there's them ironworkers which expects a race riot when me and Shifty McTague mingles; in the second place, it's one of them dark, foggy, rainy days which would give Mr. Happy himself the blues; and, in the third place, nobody ain't even wished me a merry birthday—not so much as a post card have I got so far!

For the want of something to do I get out a pile of my pictures and a pen and ink and commence writing "Yours Truly, Six-Second Smith" on 'em, so's I'll have a lot ready when I'm champion and the public commences to clamor for my autograph photo. But my mind ain't on the thing and after a while I give it up. The steady rattle of rain on the windows and the steady rattle of thoughts on my brain gets me plenty nervous, so I begin shadow boxing, slamming my right over on the air and making out I'm clouting this Shifty McTague. Every now and then I stop in front of the mirror and fall into my famous fighting crouch which I copied from Dempsey. I look at his face in the picture on the wall and I notice he's got a


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 fierce scowl on him, so I scowl too. Standing there with my head lowered, my left hand out, my noted right pulled back for the sleep producer and a horrible frown on my face, I get kind of fascinated by what a ringer I am for Dempsey right then!

Then I hear a giggle.

I had left the door open for Nate, but Nate ain't no giggler. Dropping my hands, I swing around like a flash and—there's Judy, looking at me and laughing her head off. She's just come in from the storm and her raincoat is dripping water, which even glistens on her breath-taking face. The room is dark and gloomy but Judy standing there in the doorway lights it up like a cathedral.

Every time I look at this girl a epidemic of wishing hit me which would made it look like Aladdin's requests was modest! Well, when I realize that Judy's been standing there for some time and has seen me posing in front of the mirror and taking wallops at the air, why, I feel like a sap. I can tell my face is getting so red it must of looked like somebody hit me with a throwing tomato.

"Many happy returns of the day!" smiles Judy and whisks a bundle from behind her back. Without another word she hands it to me and blows.

I tear the paper off this bundle and my fingers seems to be nothing but thumbs. The idea that Judy has thought of me at all on my birthday has got me so excited that if they's nothing in this package but a cast-iron hair brush I'll be highly satisfied. But it's something all soft and padded and silk, till at first I


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Rh ill-luck, death were still a stranger to them. Sith then mine evil fortune would have it so, pray tell me, are any of the strangers still alive?”

Then spake Master Hildebrand: “God wot, none other save only Hagen and Gunther, the high-born king.”

“Alas, dear Wolfhart, and I have lost thee too, then may it well rue me, that ever I was born. Siegstab and Wolfwin and Wolfbrand, too! Who then shall help me to the Amelung land? Bold Helfrich, hath he, too, been slain, and Gerbart and Wichart? How shall I ever mourn for them in fitting wise? This day doth forever end my joys. Alas, that none may die for very grief!”


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 think she has made a mistake and I'm in the ladies' wear department. Then I stand up and shake it out and the next minute I let forth a whinney of joy. It's a bathrobe for me to wear into the ring, and Judy couldn't of got me nothing better if she had sit up all night to dope it out!

And, oh, what a knockout this bathrobe was! On the breast pocket she has went to work and sewed "G. G." in red silk. The bathrobe itself is blue, and then I remember only the other day Judy asks me what's my favorite color, and I look at her and she's dressed in blue from head to foot, so you know what color I says is my pet. Well, first I close the door tight and then I take hold of that monogram which Judy's little fingers has sewed on and I kiss it—go ahead and laugh your head off, you never seen Judy! Then I try it on over my clothes, and if I ain't the turkey's elbow when I'm inside this bathrobe, then they's only two Frenchmen in Paris the year round!

I'm just going downstairs to find Judy and ply her with thanks, when Knockout Kelly comes into the room. I showed him the present I got from Judy. He admires it plenty and says if he was me he wouldn't pay no attention to the razzing I'll get the first time I walk down the aisle to the ring in a fight club with a baby blue silk bathrobe on. While I'm thinking this one over, Kayo tells me to wait a minute and goes to his room. He comes back with a peach of a white sweater and throws it on my bed. "There's one more birthday present, kid," he grins. "Of course, alongside of that—eh—kimono Miss Willcox give you, why my present


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 don't mean nothin'. But maybe tomorrow I'll give you somethin' else."

He did that thing. The very next morning when me and Kayo is sparring, he give me a split lip.

Well, I find Judy in the parlor wielding a cruel knitting needle, and I go over and sit down beside her. "Judy," I says, "that bathrobe is immense and I don't know how to thank you!"

"Don't try," smiles Judy. "Does it fit you?"

"Like the skin on a grape!" I says. "What would you like for Christmas?"

Judy laughs and drops the knitting; which tickles me, as watching them flying needles gets me nervous as a cat. "What would I like for Christmas?" she says. "Why, this is July!"

"Well, what's the nearest holiday, then?" I says.

Judy picks up this knitting again, passing up my inquiry of even date. "How are you coming along with your reading, Gale?" she asks.

"Great!" I says. "I sit up all hours last night reading the most thrilling book ever wrote. All about Indians, Cannibals, sharks, Bowie knives, beheadings, gem cutting"

"Gale!" Judy interrupts, the bit reproachful. "That sort of thing isn't going to help you. You've been reading a dime novel!"

"Well," I says, "you recommended it to me yourself."

"I recommended nothing like that? What's the name of that book?"

"Encyclopedia," I says. "What are you laughing


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 at? I know you think that name is phoney, and I made it up myself, but that's where you're wrong, Judy. I'll go right upstairs and get that book now and"

"Oh, I believe you," says Judy. "But I just put an encyclopedia on your list for a reference book. What did you look up in it?"

"I looked up everything," I says, "Believe me, Judy, I didn't skip nothing! I started at the A's and I wind up at the Z's and now I'm on my second journey around the circuit and enjoying every inch of the trip."

"You funny boy!" says Judy, trying out another giggle.

"Much obliged!" I says, slightly steamed. "Judy, I know you think I'm cuckoo to sit up half the night reading a encyclopedia. I suppose to most people the average encyclopedia is about as exciting as a rainy Sunday night down on the farm. Well, it's different here. Why, Judy, a fellow like me which is just dying to know what it's all about, can have the time of his life with a good thick encyclopedia. This here ain't just a book to me, it's a pal, what I mean! It's wised me up to things which I never heard tell of before, or if I did hear of 'em, they didn't mean nothing. It's"

"I hope you'll remember what you're reading, Gale," butts in Judy. "And store all that away in your mind to be called forth when needed. Don't skip what you don't understand—just mark those places and I'll go over them with you later. That," you know, "she adds with a smile which goals me as usual—"that is what you're paying me for."


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 Well, here and there they may be some professors which knows more than Judy, but I'll tell the slant-eyed world I had the best-looking teacher in captivity, and that's a fact!

"I notice you don't go to the movies with Mr. Knockout Kelly and Mr. Shapiro any more at night," remarks Judy, after a minute.

"Judy," I says, "them babies don't want to get nowheres—I do! Let them play the movies, I'll stay home with my encyclopedia. Think of being able to get the low-down on stuff like Feudalism, The Spanish Inquisitives, Anaesthasia, Capital Punishment and Sponge Fishing, all in the same night! Can the movies tie that?"

But Judy's laughing again and that gets my animal.

"Listen," I says. "Maybe you think a leather pusher which spends his nights off studying this kind of stuff is a sap, because they will hardly ever be a time in the middle of a fight when the other scrapper will stop socking to ask: "What does feudalism mean, kid?" or anything like that. Well, I don't think I'm no sap for trying to make something out of myself, Judy. If I can't go to no university, I can at least get a homemade education and I can pick up a couple of pennants and a college yell anywheres!"

With that I get up and start out of the room, but Judy jumps up too, dropping the knitting on the floor and laying her hand on my arm.

"Indeed, I'm not laughing at your studying, Gale," she says seriously, making me turn around so's I'm facing her. "I—you have such a—a—funny way of


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 putting things, I can't help laughing at some of the things you say. I—you are so different from any of the boys that—well, I'm not sure that isn't one of the reasons I like you. I have a deep and sincere admiration for your determination to make something out of yourself, as you put it, and I know, I'm positive you will! You won't be able to help yourself, Gale, you're fated to succeed—I—just feel it. Why, look what you've accomplished since you first came to Drew City. You won't be a prize fighter long, and then"

"Listen, Judy," I butt in—I got a one-track mind. "Just now when you started to talk you said you liked me. Does that go?"

Her face gets a deep scarlet, and, gee, but it's becoming! Now it's her turn to look the other way and I'm just slowly turning her around and who knows what might of happened, when Nate pushes aside the portieres and walks into the room. Nate's own mother don't like him no more than I do, but right then I could of smacked him for a Russian picalilli plate and had a clear conscience! Judy, of course, ducked immediately.

"Did I bust up anything?" grins Nate.

"Why don't you blow your horn?" I growls. "No, you didn't bust up nothing, because there's nothing to bust up, but if"

"But if I had put off coming in here till to-morrow I wouldn't of got nobody sore!" Nate cuts me off, still grinning. He takes a little box out of his pocket and hands it to me. "Merry Birthday!" he says, slapping me on the back. At's the best I could get you.


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 They's twenty-seven jewels in 'at watch and no two alike. It set me back seventy iron men. You lose it or bust it and I'll make you hard to catch! I made it the point not to get your initials put on it, because you may git up against it some day and want to hock it and you can git more sugar on it if it ain't initialed."

"You think of everything, don't you?" I says.

But I only get sarcastic because I don't want Nate to see my real feelings. Imagine this ten-minute egg giving me a present! And this watch Nate give me is plenty timepiece, too, don't think it wasn't. All it needed was Judy's picture in the back of the case and I get that the same night. While I'm thanking Nate over and over again, he pulls The Police Gazette out of his pocket, and, folding back a page, hands it to me.

"Here's a laugh!" he says, "Lamp this bozo—it says he'll be the next middleweight champ!"

Well, I look at the page Nate points to and—say, I feel almost like I felt the first time I ever knocked anybody cold. There's a picture of me in ring togs in The Police Gazette, where Dempsey and Leonard and all them guys gets their pictures printed!

But that ain't all. Spence Brock gives me a scarf pin, Shiney Jepp, the dinge rubber, hands me a new pair of purple silk trunks with a red monogram, and to top off the day, Mrs. Willcox puts on a big birthday dinner with chicken, lobster salad, mince pie, etc., and she bakes a cake for me with nineteen candles on it. Some birthday!

The next day is Sunday and Nate lets me off from the grind at our camp because, for one thing, my spar-