Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/124

 had him sewed up for several months on a chilled-steel contract callin' for a couple of hours' work every sunshiny day at a niggardly pittance of $60,000 cash and 10 per cent of the loot from the film. Likewise he was allowed to wear white flannel pants and make up his eyebrows in the last reel, and the Jane which took off the part of the innocent little damsel he rescued from the Home for Wayward Girls, or the like, was a second Diana.

Now did that bird want to hurl all this overboard, go into heavy trainin' for a coupla months and then get roughed and jostled all over a ring by my young bone crusher? Sweet Spirits of Niter—NO!!

But the indignant sport writers come to our assistance and without no preliminary warnin' opened up with their heavy guns on the peacefully inclined heavyweight champion of our present world. All the ways across Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, them guys begin runnin' pictures of Kid Roberts with his amazin' casualty list alongside of 'em—then they took their typewriters in hand and let the keys run wild!

In the first place, Kid Roberts was always what is known as "good copy" in the newspaper game. Just gaze over the layout again; it'll only take a second. Here was a ex-famous college star who'd entered the prize ring to put his bankrupt father on his feet, who against all the dope was knockin' everybody dead, whose heiress had gave him the gate on the strength of it and who'd fin'ly punched his way to a chance at the world's championship. There we have as much romance, human interest, thrill, and suspense as they was in the French Revolution, as some bird wrote after