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 bantam-weight championship of terra firma. As Michael left Manhattan at a convenient hour me an' Hazel went to the station to wish him luck. I gave him a four-leaf clover to wear on his belt in the ring, and he was speechless with pleasure, but the next instant he gravely rejected Hazel's offering of a good luck swastika pin, on the grounds that anything pointed in the line of gifts breaks friendship. He promised to call me on long-distance immediately after the fight and tell me what happened, though the result was already a foregone conclusion to him. Mike modestly said that he'd lay Frankie like linoleum.

However, the day of the bout I didn't wait for Michael's phone call. Me and Hazel had gone crazy and bet five hundred dollars each on him at three to one odds and we were an inch from the grave with anxiety. I got a newspaper on the wire and found that our Mike had knocked out the unfortunate Frankie White in the fifth round and his visiting card now read, "Michael McGann, Bantam-weight Champion of the World."

"I liked that boy from the first minute I saw him!" lies the joyful Hazel as she collected her fifteen hundred dollar winnings.

Well, to my great surprise no message of any nature came from the victorious Michael via New Orleans, and it was a week after he became emperor of all the