Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/304

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from the ring too long, and bein' in the movies had softened him up. Anybody which could get past the first couple of rounds with him would take him. They never come back, etc.

All this stuff might of got my goat, only I had seen every word of it printed before about the guy Kid Roberts had took the title away from. You've seen it too. It never changes. The only difference is in the names.

The night before we're leavin' town for the long trainin' grind, we have a farewell dinner at Senator Brewster's home on Fifth Avenue. The Sen's igloo would make Buckin'ham Palace look like a stable. The Kid's father is there, lookin' like the king of the world with his fine big handsome head of steel-gray hair and class engraved on him from toe to forehead. Here's a guy which used to make 'em sit up and beg on Ticker Boulevard, and now he's just dubbin' along here and there—and waitin'. Across the long table is Kid Roberts and Dolores Brewster—the collar-ad guy come to life and talkin' to the magazine-cover girl! Every time I look at Dolores the room begins to wiggle and wobble, so I gaze down at my ballroom armor and wonder how in the Hades I ever come to be sittin' in with a swell mob like this.

"It isn't often I try to advise you, Kane," says old man Halliday, "but I do wish you would drop this—eh—this boxing business now. You've done about all you set out to do, and to say that we're all proud of you, boy, is rather weakly expressing it. It isn't necessary for you to continue longer in this beastly—"