Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/115

 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.