Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/216

 as a boxer, I'm a success at it, what I mean—and you can't laugh that off!"

"Any husky longshoreman could be the same!" she sniffs.

"Don't you believe it, Judy. There's thousands of huskies in the game, but there's only eight champions!" I tell her.

"Oh, I don't want to argue with you, Gale," says Judy, kind of impatient. "If you've made up your mind to remain a prize fighter, I don't suppose anything I might say would change you."

"But I ain't made up my mind to remain a prize fighter," I says. "Not by a long shot! I have simply made up my mind to stay in this game till I'm a champ. At everything else I've tried my hand at since I been eight years old I been nothing more than a number on a pay roll, holding a meaningless job. I didn't amount to nothing, Judy, and I'd just as soon be dead as be that way! My motto is: 'Stand out from the mob at—anything! Do your stuff! Don't just live and die like a blade of grass—stepped on by everything from laborers to millionaires, ugly by itself, useless except in mass formation and only useful then as fodder!' They's millions of fellows like that, Judy, but I ain't one of 'em!"

"Those are admirable precepts," says Judy, coming back to her desk again. "But what has that to do with your remaining a boxer?"

"Just this," I says. "Like I told you, Judy, before I begin scrapping, I was George W. Nothing. Well, it's different now! Why, even in Europe they've heard