pearance forfeit, swore that Kid Roberts would box no more till he met the champ, and agreed to start trainin' on the scene of the battle a month before the clash, the champ poses for some newspaper stills with the Kid, and we're all set. Roberts dashed off to the fair Dolores, figurin' her half dead from lonesomeness, as he hadn't seen her for about a hour, whilst I spent a pleasant afternoon signin' movie and vaudeville contracts for the Kid, to go into effect immediately after the championship battle and to have a value of nothin' unless the Kid finished exactly first in that fracas. Then I grabbed a rattler for the wilds of Maine, where me and my athlete was goin' to hunt and fish and fish and hunt till a month before the big fight.
One of them Yale pals of the Kid's had nothin' less than a shootin' box up there, and he wouldn't have it no other way but that me and Roberts consider it our home till we got ready to go into heavy trainin'. So I went up ahead to get my hands on a couple of guides and the etc., with the Kid due to join me in a week.
Well, boys and girls, one fatal night I was sittin' in a easy-chair before a roarin' log fire, enjoyin' the art of smokin' and readin' "The Life of Napoleon," and thinkin' how many ways me and Napoleon was like each other—and there comes a knockin' on my chamber door, as Eddie Poe, the Raven, used to say.
The next minute I am enjoyin' all the delightful sensations of havin' stopped one of the Kid's hooks with my chin, as a result of havin' just read one of the world's greatest short stories, e., a telegram. Here it is:
