Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/128

 in the blood! They fought for money, of course, but it was principally the sheer love of battle that drove them to crawl through the ropes to kill or get killed, long after their star had set. I am not a born pugilist. I say that without any intent to sneer at what might have been a great game if it could have been kept clean! But it is a genealogical fact that I was born and reared in an entirely different atmosphere. I have no love for professional boxing, and I'm simply using it as a means to an end."

I sit and watched this big blond shavin' for a minute, feastin' my trained orbs on the easy play of ripplin' muscle over them white shoulders which loomed up out of his summer lingerie. A fighter? Say—they was champion wrote all over him, from the heel of his shoe to the roof of his dome! The only thing which spoiled the general effect was his intelligent look.

"I wouldst fain differ with thee, Big Guy," I grins, after a while, "on the subject of you not bein' born no fighter and likewise how ill in the abdomen the box-fightin' game makes you. I admit that, from the nursery up to a recent date, you was more used to afternoon tea parties than twenty-four-foot rings and that in your first few brawls you liked to cried your eyes out every time you knocked some bimbo for a goal. But a great change has come to the pass, Kid, and whether you noticed it or not, I don't know, but I did, because I'm gettin' paid to notice everything which is in the slightest way connected with you—get me? I only wish I had a photo to show