Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/264

 we get together—this evenin's talk will be devoted to his one amazin' adventure as a movie hero.

Movie cameras shootin' at the ringside of a regular prize fight, by the way, has never made no hit with the battlers, though, of course, the sugar they get therefrom has. The presence of the camera filmin' a man's every move has a tendency to make him want to pose, and, caught off guard for a fatal second as a result, he may be knocked stiff.

On the ways out to the State where all the good little actors hope to go, the streets bein' paved with gold and all the angels wavin' movie contracts, me and the Kid is kept supplied with giggles by Knockout Burns, a tough old war horse which I brung along to keep the champion in condition. It was the first time Knockout had ever rode in a Pullman where the doors was on each end instead of the sides, and he spent most of his time on the observation platform markin' off the various slabs on his time-table as we breezed through 'em, remarkin' that like as not the engineer would hold a couple of these burgs out on him if he didn't check them up. The first night he crawled in to his upper berth he laid awake two hours waitin' for a Chink to come along with the hop layout he figured went with it, and, not bein' able to sleep, he spent the night heavin' the gallopin' dominoes with the porters, winnin' $180 by daylight. In the diner, when the waiter tells him his oysters is out in the kitchen gettin' stewed, Knockout puts forty grouches in good humor by askin' is they any objection to him goin' out in the kitchen and gettin' stewed with 'em. Goin' through Arizona, the Kid remarks that