We’ll just take in a fight to-night for a change. I’ve had you Down the Line, over on the East Side, in the wine joints, behind the scenes, and in half a dozen of the so-called swell restaurants, and all the time there have been all kinds of punching matches going on in a dozen different halls, “Clubs,” they are called, just to sidestep the stern arm of the law, but what difference does it make to a good sport so long as the men are well matched and they are willing to mix it at all times?

Three rounds are the limit, but there is a lot doing between bell and bell—enough to make even the most seasoned ringster sit up and look around as if to say:

“Now here is some punching that does a man’s heart good—it seems like old times, when——.” You know the rest about the days of long ago, and if you listen to him he will hand you a line of talk that will put you away for the count.

You may talk as you like about all the sports you know, but after all there is nothing like a good go with the gloves between a pair who know their business, and there are few men who have any red blood in their veins who will not go a long ways to see a slugfest. Of course you’ll always find up against some bar a bunch of dead ones who will stretch their arms and say: “Not for mine; I’ve seen all I want to see, and I wouldn’t go around the corner to get a ringside seat at a go between Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm.”

There’s a screw loose somewhere in these fellows, or else they are drying of dry rot and don’t know it. Nine out of ten of them are bigger around the waist than they are around the chest, and they invariably talk loud.

There’s a little club that I know of where you can get a great run for your money, and we will go there.

It’s a case of come early and avoid the rush, for when the gong rings for the first bout there is only standing room left and that is at a premium because the prices are low. The manager doesn’t have to bother his head about making matches because the “talent” comes to him, and it often happens that the men who furnish the preliminaries are picked from out of the audience. These three-round affairs have done a lot to bring out a bunch of new ones; any young fellow who knows any part of the game can go on and get a try-out. He earns a few dollars and if he proves to be good, he is boosted along the line.

There is a mixed crowd on hand to-night, and you can expect a good card. In one of the ringside seats is the district attorney, a man who loves a fair fight in or out of the ring. Further up are a few brokers who have thought it worth while to come down here for one night, anyhow. It is safe to say that every class in life is represented, the man who is worth a million rubs elbows with the ten-dollar-a-week clerk and they fraternize as freely as though they were chums.

“This Abe Attell is a clever boy, but they say he hasn’t the punch,” ventures the clerk. “Yes, I saw him recently and he made that big fellow look like a cart horse,” returns the man of money.

The fellow who paid one-tenth of his weekly stipend to join the club for that one night, which, by the way, is the system employed to evade the law on the subject, pulls out a cigarette, and asks:

“Can I trouble you for a light?”

“No trouble at all,” comes the cheerful answer, and a glowing perfecto, which cost not less than thirty-five cents, is handed over.

That miscellaneous crowd is welded into one solid mass by the masonry of sport, even though individual opinions are retained, and the opinion of a seasoned ring-goer is set hard and deep as the rock of Gibraltar.

The smoke is wafted back and forth like the tidal currents of the sea and the exertions of a hundred devotees of nicotine are adding to it every moment. An interminable buzz of voices fills the big room, and there is fight in the very air.

“I tell you the old man could lick O’Brien any day he wanted to; he’s got the punch and he can stand the gaff, ain’t that enough?” This in a strident voice from the cheaper seats, and it was answered at once by an argument that was apparently deemed irrefutable:

“Why didn’t he do it?”

Near the door is a fight bug whom no one ever heard of, and who is interesting simply because he is a freak. He is voluble, emphatic and vainglorious.

“I kin beat Britt an’ he knows it, an’ dat’s the reason he won’t give me a chanst. He’d be a pipe fer me, ‘cos I’d infight him, an’ he couldn’t stand my body punchin’. Dere’s where I’m great—on dose body blows. I challenged him three times an’ he never paid no attention to me. He’s afraid uv me, dat’s what he is. I kin beat ’em all if dey’ll only cum to me.”

“You couldn’t beat a carpet,” shouts a wit, and the bug is temporarily squelched.

The noise of the voices is suddenly emphasized—the first pair are coming and the show is on. Into the ring they climb from opposite corners, principals and seconds, and then, more leisurely, as befits the dignity of his exalted position, comes the announcer. They all have the same speech, which has been doing duty for generations, and this one is no different from the rest:

“A little order, please, gentlemen, and stop smoking while the bouts are on.” But no one ever pays any attention to that last. “These two boys,” he calls them by name, “both members of this club,” another neat little scheme to evade the law, “will box three rounds for scientific points only. Keep a little order, please, because if you make a noise the bouts will be stopped. The men will box straight Marquis of Queensberry rules. All ready, boys.”

He waves his hands toward the corners, and then backs through the ropes conscious of a duty well performed. The gloves, a bit too big for the majority of the onlookers, have in the meantime been adjusted, the referee calls “Time,” they step to the center, shake hands and get down to work. Sparring doesn’t go in bouts of such short duration, so it’s a case of mix it from the start. Here is a sturdy little Italian against a good, fast and clever Irish lad. The good-natured grin of the former is never relaxed for a moment as he wades in, taking a punch to give one. This fellow is fighting his way out of debt, and he’s well on the road to financial freedom now. Last year he figured in more than one star fight and he looked like a money-maker. He took care of his end of the purse every time, but on one of his Southern trips he fell in with a girl that he grew to think pretty well of, and it wasn’t long before she became the custodian of his coin. When the bank roll was big enough to suit her, she blew with another boy and left this one broke. That’s the reason he’s putting the gloves on and going three hard rounds for a ten spot now. The Irish boy is punching him at will and counting up the points every time they come together, but there is steam behind those blows of the Italian, and it isn’t hard to predict the result if they were to go ten rounds instead of three. At the finish they are furiously mixing it in a corner, and the gong rings its notification more than once before they break away, shake hands, the Italian still smiling, and climb out to make way for the next pair.

The boys are put on as fast as they can bring them in the ring, and the bouts are all good ones. Finally there is only one more to come, and it is that for which the crowd has been waiting.

Before the announcer can do his next stunt half a hundred hands—gloved and ungloved—are coming together in applause. The cue came when a trim built, muscular little fellow, whose condition is not too good, slips through the ropes. He smiles cordially at the crowd and nods his head jerkily in response to the reception.

“I take pleasure in introducing Patsy Haley,” begins the announcer, but he is stopped by the applause which breaks out again, and he fails to get in that saving clause about the “club member” business. As if Patsy needed any introduction to that crowd of sports, young or old, who have seen him fight when he was at his best. How can they ever forget the wonderful cleverness he used to show? Don’t you remember when he fought Terry McGovern before the Lenox Athletic Club in 1899? It was all Patsy up to the eighteenth round, and even the wonderful Terry couldn’t find him until then, when he landed the crashing punch that gave him the big end of the purse. Is it any wonder that they applaud him? He’s too wise for the best of them for three rounds even to-day, for he can stall and get away with as little effort as a kid makes when he goes up against a nursing bottle. He hits when and where he likes and how he likes, but he has no punch, as the youngster who is up against him soon finds out, and so he wades in to do a little execution with a wild, swinging right, but the glove never gets within three inches of Patsy’s smiling face. It is jab, jab, jab with the old-timer, and the crowd roars its approval, while the Kid’s seconds keep calling to him in stage whispers which can be heard all over the house, to—

“Mix it there, Kid, one punch will do him.”

Their advice is good, but the bewildered, dazed kid, not hurt a bit, but simply made dizzy by those lightning-like feints, followed by taps that push his head back and throw him off his balance, can’t make good. He rushes, swinging as he comes in, but he finds himself breasting the ropes, and he turns only to get a straight left square on the point of the nose. It’s very discouraging work for a novice. You see, he’s evidently been figuring on going into the ring and putting this old-timer away and then getting his name and picture in the sporting papers. It’s a hundred to one that he’s been in training, and he’s had it all framed up with his trainer just how he was going to do the trick. It seemed very easy in that stable, or loft, or wherever it was that he had his punching bag and skipping rope, and he was told there was no harm in a dozen of Patsy’s punches rolled into one. He knows that now, but that merciless, pitiless jab is enough to worry anyone, and besides, his arms are beginning to ache with the effort of swinging and hitting nothing.

“Close in, Kid; close in.”

They are calling to him again and he makes another rush. He is going to try to knock the smile off that face this time. He puts all his effort in the blow and lets go. He misses, and the force of it brings him to his knees as the bell rings for the end of the first round.

He takes his seat and he knows that those yells are not for him.

His seconds and counsellors are there as quickly as he is, and while he is being fanned, and rubbed and sprayed, he is also being advised how to do it next time. Over in the other corner Patsy is talking laughingly with some ringside friends.

“You’re as fast as ever, son,” says one. “How are you feeling?”

That is always the proper thing to ask a man who is in the ring—that is, when you’ve nothing else to say. I’ll bet no man ever went in the ring who wasn’t asked that question at least a dozen times. It seems to be sort of a stock query, just as every rube considers it his bounden duty to ask an actor who plays his town:

“Where do you go from here?” As if it made any difference to him where the actor went, but he feels he has to say something, so he says that.

The gong rings, and they’re at it again. The Kid has a new set of tactics now, and he proceeds to put them into execution, so as soon as he leaves his chair he starts on a run for his opponent. He’s going after him this time, sure enough. Out goes the left and around goes the right. The right gets Patsy just behind the ear and shakes him up a bit.

“Go after him; you’ve got him,” call out the seconds. He thinks so, too, and he draws back when the versatile Patsy slips into a clinch.

“Break there; break now,” calls the referee. The Kid is pushed away and his antagonist dances back out of reach, not showing the slightest evidence of distress. Truly this is no cinch. Again and again an attempt is made to land that finishing punch, but each time it fails to connect, and when it does land it doesn’t seem to land in the right place. In a mixup his chance comes again, and he rips up a right to the stomach so hard that the old-timer grunts. That gives him a little courage and after the break he rushes again, but the jaw that he aimed for is not there. His nose is beginning to get a bit sore when the bell rings with rather a welcome sound.

Lacking the punch this “vet” seems to be all right for three rounds. He’s a bit winded, to be sure, but who wouldn’t be under the circumstances? It’s good, anyhow, to see him with the mitts on once more. It makes a fellow think of old times. I am just about to become reminiscent when the gong rings again.

“Shake hands and windup,” says the referee.

The padded fists meet for an instant, the Kid steps back one pace and then lunges forward. He comes in with a jab, and he catches Haley squarely on the mouth with his left. Aha, he has landed. He pulls his right back to follow it up, but in that fraction of a second his chance has gone, for he’s up against a ring general. Two more futile rushes and then he tried again. This time he misses with the left, but starting his right without pulling back, he catches his man on the jaw just in front of the ear. He feels the blow land and then he starts in with rights and lefts, but shifty Patsy steps inside of them and they go around his neck. In a frenzy the Kid pushes him away, but for his trouble he gets another jab on that sore nose that brings the moisture to his eyes.

“Make him fight, Kid,” bawls the trainer; “go after him.”

He might as well go after a dancing sunbeam as to go after the elusive, shifty, smiling Patsy, who is stalling and jabbing the third round away, and when the final gong rings he is still going after him with nothing doing. There is bitterness in his heart, but it doesn’t last, for when they shake hands, the little fellow who made many a good one in his day look like a draught horse, remarks:

“You’re all right, Kid, and you’ll beat a lot of them some day.”