Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/78

 Kid Roberts done, and that's how I made him heavyweight champion.

Followin' the wind-up of love's young dream, and my return from the Merchant of Venice with a handful of the root of all evil, Kid Roberts shuts the door of our bower in the hotel and indicates by signs that he wouldst like me to be seated.

"I have fought twice," he says, "and I've made somethin' less than a thousand dollars."

"That's better than diggin' streets, ain't it?" I says.

"It won't do!" he tells me. "I'm not in this beastly game for the love of it—I'm in it because it appears to be the only thing at which I'm skilled enough to make big money. I'm going to fight my way to the top of the pile so that I can demand enough for my bouts to rehabilitate my father and myself, and then I'm going to get out of it. I'm not satified with my progress to date. I don't want any more matches with those tenth-raters—those battered, loathsome brutes whose very appearance make the Darwinian theory a base libel on the monkeys! I'm sick of pounding them to a pulp for a few dollars. There's no semblance of a contest about those things; it's sheer, wanton brutality. Go ahead and match me with some of these so-called logical contenders for the heavyweight championship, or I'll be my own manager. I'm not trying to desert you, but I want you to thoroughly understand that I hate this game and everything connected with it, and the quicker I get out of it the cleaner I'll feel! I can't get out until I've made good. Is that clear?"

"Oh, easily that," I says, "and I don't blame you as much as a particle for wantin' to make money. There's