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I was too serious-minded to think of faking. But several of the boys took to it naturally, and among them was Babe Durgon, the bully. He could be hypnotized and I couldn't. But several years later I had the satisfaction of "hypnotizing" him myself, as I told about in my first chapter.
But Babe Durgon and I didn't go into these matters as we trudged along through the dark on our way to do battle "over the line." At the foot of the hill, Babe exclaimed: "What's the use of going any farther? Let's fight here." It was in front of a new building a church-school half completed. We took off our coats and made belts of our suspenders. Then we squared off and the fight began.
Some of the supers jabbed me pretty hard, among them Babe Durgon, who delighted in tormenting me. "Is it a sheep? Him-yah, him-yah." Again they jabbed me, and I was so mad I was cussing them under my breath. "Is it a pig? Him-yah, him-yah." The audience was breathless with tense excitement. "Is it a goat?" The entire gallery broke into a whirlwind roar: "Yes! yes! He's a goat."
The first time I went to Sunday-school, I met Babe Durgon. He set up the cry: "Little boy, little boy, Does your mother know you're out; With your breeches put on backward, And the seams all inside out!" This was the first time that my spirit had been hurt. His words were a torment that left a scar upon my very soul.
There was only one thing in my favor. I hated Babe Durgon with a bitter loathing that I had been suppressing for years. It all went back to the summer of 1884 when I was eleven years old. Times were hard, and the mill was "down." Father had gone to Pittsburgh to look for work. I was scouring the town of Sharon to pick up any odd job that would earn me a nickel.
So I will tell right here how I whipped the town bully in Sharon, Pennsylvania. I'll call him Babe Durgon. I've forgotten his real name, and it might be better not to mention it anyhow. For though I whipped him thirty years ago, he might come back now in a return match and reverse the verdict, so that my first chapter would serve better as my last one.
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