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 It's unfortunately true that our dear old hardworkin' U. S. likes to relax every now and then and gets hysterical over them foreign whatnots which comes here to grab off some real dough for a change and then goes back and roasts us to a fare-thee-well. But in spite of this slight weakness, we are far from a nation of come-ons, as many of them patronizin' tourists discovered, after the first wild cheers had died out. We don't care how much we spend for our toys, but we do wanna see 'em go! We insist that our plumbers plumb, our bankers bank, our actors act, and our fighters fight. We allow no guy to stall unless he gets sentenced to Congress—the only cruel and unusual punishment now legal under our punch-drunk Constitution!

Well, after a conference with his manager, press agents, and photoplay magnates, the champ presented the press with a statement in which he claimed he'd be willin' to listen to us on the subject of fisticuffs the minute he laid off elevatin' the screen, or, in the other words, three months. In the mean's while, we wouldst have to dispose of the Hon. Tiger Capato, the only heavy in captivity which Kid Roberts had been unable to make kiss the canvas and recline thereon till the referee had pronounced him dead.

The Kid almost wept for joy when the news reached him that he was gonna get a crack at the world's championship. He tore into our bower at the big-league hotel we was stablin' at now, wavin' a bunch of evenin' papers and grinnin' like a second Fairbanks.

"Six months from now I'll be champion!" he yells, with a slap on my back that loosened four buttons on