Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/88

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couldn't discover the double life he was leadin'. In the afternoons he attended receptions and the like, flauntin' a mean teacup, and at night he give himself over to fisticuffs, swingin' a nasty left hook. He never accepted as much as a thin dime for his services, because he was in the game for the love of it alone, not to mention his ambition to become champion. I had him throw out chance remarks about his "cars" and his "country place" with a occasional mention of "the yacht," and whilst some of the wise-guy sport writers grinned and invited us to take the air, most of 'em eat the stuff up and hollered for more. Havin' once been a habitué of Yale, the Kid was easily able to make the college-boy thing sound good, and as for the millionaire end of it, well—Kid Roberts looked and acted more like a million dollars than two $500,000 bills. He throwed handfuls of poetry at 'em, slipped in a slice of O. Shaw, Rudyard Longfellow, John G. Shakespeare, Washington Irving Berlin, and all them old masters of the English language.

They was one sportin' editor which tried out the Kid on a coupla dozen tough questions in order to prove was he really a highbrow, and Kid Roberts was never even extended, comin' back with a flow of words which would make a Boston high-school teacher take carbolic. Fin'ly they get on the subject of boxin', and with regard to a knockout the Kid explains it like thus:

"The jawbone strikes hard upon the thin plate of bone supporting the delicate labyrinth of the inner ear, and the bony portion thereof is driven upward into the