Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/103

78 they don't hang, they are carefully held a little out from the sides; and mark the slight, but vastly significant, rounding of the wrist—outward, not inward — the legible and pregnant mark of "The Boxer."

This expressive holding the clenched hand, with the wrist rounded outward, has not been produced in art before, certainly not by any modern artist. But it is the very sign and symbolization of the modern boxer. It is, in a special way, the imprint of Sullivan. It tells the genius of the sculptor and the instinct of the athlete. In that premonitory wrist and fist we see the very natal spring of the round blow. He has but to throw up his elbow slightly, and hand, arm, shoulder, and right leg are ready, and the champion's round blow flies like a thunderbolt.

There is no need to say that this is a wonderful statue—a work of art that will become famous everywhere, that will attract as much attention next year in the Paris Salon as this year when exhibited in Boston. It tells its own greatness to every beholder. Subject and artist came at the right moment; and America is enriched with a work of art that would have won a crown in Periclesian Athens.

Sullivan enters on a fight unlike all other men. From the first movement his action is ultimate.