Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/260

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Round Ten
When Kane Met Abel

There's prob'ly no other competition in the world, sportin' or otherwise, which draws a human gatherin' as miscellaneous and interestin' as a prize-fight crowd. Whilst waitin' for the gladiators to enter the bull pen the next time you go to a mill, sit back and look around at the customers, and you'll find every trade, art, gift, science, business, profession, sex, and color represented by one member at the least. Bankers and bricklayers, doctors and dock hands, millionaires and mechanics, accountants and actors, etc and etc., jostle, kid, and argue each other purple in the face over the merits of their respective favorites.

To a guy which thinks the Human Race is easily as excitin' as the one with the chariots in "Ben Hur," the crowd at a box fight is generally worth the price of admission whether the bouts themselves is quiet or riots. Taken as a mass, the fans is always with the boy which is winnin' unless his charmin' vis and vis is a large local favorite or a unusual glutton for punishment. The bird which can hit like nitroglycerine and the tough baby which adores chastisement is the twin gods of the mob. The remarkably clever but light-tappin' boxer, flittin' about the ring