Morris tribune., 1883-12-01
THE CHAMPION.
A Personal Description OF John L.
Sullivan, the Pugilist.
His wild Animal" look The
"D0rm0use'' state OF Ills
intellectually.
"JeEn in Detroit Free Press.

"JeN" III Detroit Free Press.
What remains of our glory! Echo an
swers what, and truth proudly points her fin
ger to the monogram on the windows of No
ia Washington street, and the sign above it,
"John j. Sullivan" What hath the north,
the SOUTH The east or the west, or all creation,
to compare with him in lofty emineacei
John himself says lie is "the best man on tho
continent" aud the continent don't seem in
clined to deny it. OF course there are differ
| ent kinds of best There is Joseph Cook, for
instance, faciie princeps in real goodness, as
ali men, particu !arly himself, will admit Mr..
| Suiiivan's virtue is of another kind. He
rescm'Icth rather the late Col. Shark, of
WHOM it Was said or sung, that
''When on the shady side he stepped,
To the other side creation crept."
John is the unquestioned champion of all
pugilists. 'Tis the voice Of the slugger; l
hear him complain that there are no more
! worlds to conquer. Let lin rest easy. To
every man colneth his Waterloo, and j. L. S.
viii yet find his'n. Meanwhile, he is a type
| of the times and worth little study. His
bar-room, of which SO much has been said, is
not particularly palatial. 4 good deal of
money has evidently been expended in gid
| in~ glassware and brassware, and there is a
nude picture On the wall nearly life size, rep
resenting the Birth of Ven2S," which prob
| ably cost good deal more money than it Is
artistically or commercially worth. The fail
| Aphrottite is painted i'll the approved Partisan
style of art: that is, she has not pretty face,
and her figure is more suggestive of the cor
set-eduCatcd bOulevards than Of natures
mold, my Nora Creina A bust of the pro-
| pTictor of The place Sufnounts the cormce or
wood over the bar. 1t is cut in some sort of
bard, yellow wood aud is a poor ikenesh So,
by the way, are all the photographs and
| prints of the great man.
| None 90 LiIu justice, for all make him ap-
pear a coarse, thick-lipped bruiser, which he
| is not. He has regular features, a straight
nose and a clean-cut mouth which would be
handsome but for the little logged droop at
tie corners not completely hidden by his jet
! mustache. 1t is also narred little by a
tendency, no doubt legacy from his early
| smuggling days, to throw his under jaw ont, in
| the wellknown conventional ''what-d'yer-
soy" expression which, accompanied by q
| pitching down of the head and a curviDg OF
the shoulders, is the tough boys" favorite
method of carrying dis1nay into the heart Of
an opponent. John has got over the what
d'yer-soy period, but the protruding jaw ap.
pears at times as relic of the obsolete age.
But for it he would be handsome and even
pleasant-looking man until you looked into
his eyes. Pretty hard eyes to describe. l did
not even note their color, the expression OF
! them taking up all ones attention.
Once l saw in Central park a lion which
had been recently imported and had not &C.
quired the conventional blase stare of the
menagerie. When you looked at him and
to catch his eye he looked, not at yol but
through and beyond you, with a compre,
hensive, open gaze in which the human being
before him occupied no more attention than
the mote in the sunbeam. Well, that is just
the way the slugger looks at one, OF through
one--a wild-animal look, but not a wild look.
| You feel that, as an ordinary human, you dc
not even block his light. There is another
expression, and it is also an animal one, g
quick, sharp way of glancing about, without
moving his head, which couvinces me that
would not care to try surprising him with
one under the ear. For the rest, the cham
pion boxer would not attract ones attention
ON the street by any apparent superiority OF
strength or skill He does not look tall OF
strong beyond the sons of men, but they say
that when he is undressed he looms up anC
becomes giant. He did not strip for me
Neither did interview him, save III the
mute and modest manner of ali humble adj
| mirer afar off.
l wish could add that the Hon. Mr.. Sui
Ivan had another and finer nature, that ii
his private and unprofessional life he is al
admirer of Emerson, and always carries 6
copy of "Omar Khayyam" in his gripsack.
am constrained to say however, that Johns
finer intellectual nature is still ''dormouse,
if, indeed, it hath any germ of life at ALL He
is slugger, and nothing else. l doubt if he
even succeeds as vender of the beverage
which out-sluggeth all sluggers. However
he is young yet as was said of "Jim Sulalls,
and there is no knowing what Bostoniar
may sprout into with the growth of the inner
life. To quote again from the Concord
Philosophy" "Feeling implies self-action
the egoaltruistic perceptivity, not only in re-
action of the environment as in nutrition
but in producing the impression made by the
environment within the soul OF the animal
This reproduction is accompanied, co-rela
lively and co-ordipately, by au unconscious
causality, or inference which transfers The
occasion of the feeling to an external world.