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It was nearly always about the same crowd, however, made up of dyed-in-the-wool fans, a few newspaper men, and a sprinkling of thrill-seekers from other walks of life far removed from the prize-ring. Jimmy often noticed women among the spectators well-dressed women, with every appearance of refinement, and there were always men of the same upper class of society.
The sight of Meehan whipped him into greater fury. "I want that man broke. I want to see you strip his shield off him now, you unnerstan', now for 'saulting me, for 'saulting an officer in the United States army. And, if you don't," he threw himself into a position of the prize-ring, "I'll beat him up and you, too." Through want of breath, he stopped, and panted.
He was somewhat tamed, and then I lifted my hat, so that he could see my close-cropped hair, which was as short as his own, only not for the same reason. "You don't seem to know who I am," I added, hoping he would now take me for a member of the prize-ring. But my appearance did not frighten him.
I will not call it, young gentlemen, the fond return of Melusina to the gambols of the mermaid, or Undine's momentary unconsciousness of a soul, because these are poetic and pathetic suggestions. The prize-ring is disgusting and inhuman, but at least it is a voluntary encounter of two individuals. But college bullying is unredeemed brutality. It is the extinction of Dr. Jekyll in Mr. Hyde.
You can't really fake them not after you've once known the real thing. And as it happens I have known it, for I came from a village up that way myself. "And, then, I was curious, too. I've always had a private opinion that if chance hadn't pitchforked Conway into the prize-ring he'd have made a grand success as a blackjack artist or a second-story man.
Charles Freeman, a very superior giant of American birth, seven feet four, I think, in height, "double-jointed," of mylodon muscularity, the same who in a British prize-ring tossed the Tipton Slasher from one side of the rope to the other, and now lies stretched, poor fellow! in a mighty grave in the same soil which holds the sacred ashes of Cribb, and the honored dust of Burke, not the one "commonly called the sublime," but that other Burke to whom Nature had denied the sense of hearing lest he should be spoiled by listening to the praises of the admiring circles which looked on his dear-bought triumphs.
The feeling was doubtless genuine, but it might possibly have had an object worthier of a nation's mourning. Another fine athlete and good fellow is Frank Slavin, the prize-fighter. I have acknowledged a hundred times that I belong to a lost cause. My sympathies are with the old exploded prize-ring.
'I've got a paytron, and a man in my profession must have a paytron, or where is he? Where's his money for a trial of skill? Say he saves and borrows and finds the lump to clap it down, and he's knocked out o' time. There he is, bankrup', and a devil of a licking into the bargain. That 's the cream of our profession, if a man has got no paytron. No prize-ring can live without one.
Whoever is acquainted with the modern prize-ring whoever has witnessed the heavy and disabling strokes which the human fist, skillfully directed, hath the power to bestow may easily understand how much that happy facility would be increased by a band carried by thongs of leather round the arm as high as the elbow, and terribly strengthened about the knuckles by a plate of iron, and sometimes a plummet of lead.
The voice that should have made Britain's glory articulate, the voice that might have brought America into the War in 1914 and rendered Germany from the outset a house divided against itself, was never heard. Lord Robert Cecil looked on, and Mr. Lloyd George sprang into the prize-ring with his battle-cry of the knock-out blow. I wonder if even the sublimest humility can excuse so fatal a silence.
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