Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-04-28

Turk of a gateman to forget it. or some
thing like that, and started to crowd by
him.
Hey, you he said to me, you can't
nudge by here without showing me your
ticket. l don't care if you're bigger than
the big wind of old Ireland; you show me
your ticket or you don't get by-see?
That got me on the raw, for was
thinking only of getting my train and
put a hand on the little mans shoulder to
shove him to one side He pulled back and
handed me one of the hardest right-hand
wallops on my right jaw that l ever got in
my life. 1t Jared me all over If he'd had
about forty more pounds on him I'd have
taken the count for sure. AS it was, the
blow made me rock a bit for half minute.
l stood and looked at the little man and
began to laugh. l knew that l was wrong.
Then / dug into my inside coat pocket and
brought out my ticket and showed 1t to
him, and he let me by He didn't know
who | was. / heard later that after I'd got
on board the train. somebody told him that
| was John L., and that he looked scared
even after the train had pulled out of the
station. There was no reason for him to
look scared. l never clouted a small man
in my life and l never made any buck,
either when l got exactly what L knew l
deserved For a good many years, I'm
told. the Hartford lads were calling upon
that little Mulligan of a Hartford gateman
to pump the mitt of the man who clouted
John L., and the Hartford folks had no
crouch against me, at that, only it seemed
such a remarkable thing to them that l
should have stood for the 1ab without get
ting roily over it.
The other time when I took one that was
coming to me from small man was one
day when l was strolling along street IN
Detroit. | came to Il plant where they
were packing apples in barrels. The bar
rels, filled with big, red. ;hicy-looking ap-
Piles, were all over the sidewalk, and men
were putting tops in the barrels. The
sight of the apples made me hungry for one
of them and I glanced around to see If
there was anybody to step forward and sell
me an apple. But it was a wholesale place
and the men We're all busy packing the ap-
pies. So just picked one of the apples up
and bit into it. | hadn't any more than
got my teeth into it than little chap not
much above five-feet-two seemed to come
out of the ground right in front of me, and
the uppercut that he reached up on his tip
toes and handed me makes my teeth ache
yet to think about it. | stood there like
big Sossoon. with the bitten apple in one
hand and the other hand hanging at my
side. | knew that it served me blamed
good and right for picking up the apple
without asking anybody for it, and the
sight of the little chap standing there wait
ing for me to swell up and come at him
was so funny. nyhow. that | had to laugh.
Then one of the other apple packers slid
over to the side of the little man and whis-
pere in his ear:
DILL. you 1ooi-cant you see that
THE little man gave me one frightened
look out of the tail of his eye and then
turned and bolted for it. There wasn't any
need for him to do that. and | tried to call
him back. but he was on his way, sure
enough. and he was turning corner on
dead lope before I could count five. Those
apple packers sent to me at my hotel that
afternoon a barrel of the finest apples they
had. There was a note accompanying the
apples The note said that the little man
hadn't come back yet and that he was
probably hiking over the Ohio state line by
that time"
John l.. is full of these "reminiscences, for
he begins to live good deal in the past,
and certainly there are few men who have
so many things to call up in remembrance
in their elderly day. But presently veered
him around to the subject of the fighters of
his time and of the present day.
Old Style Has Passed Away.
well, there's no way, of course, Of veri
flying any such comparison that comes
to- he said; but don't mind saying that
1 believe the style of fighting of today is
far and away ahead of the old style. There
don't appear to be many first-rate expo
nents of the new style coming to the front.
but this is probably because the fighting
game is suffering from a black eye all over
the country nowadays, and men don't want
to get too deep into a game that can he
practiced for profit in such very few
places.
1t has taken me a good many years to
make up my mind to it, but 1 believe now
that, with Jefries at his best and me at INV
best, Jeffries could have put it on me T
never was a really scientific fighter. and
nobody needs to be told that never was A
cool one. My game was the old game
standing up and fighting and depending
upon sheer power and pure strength and
endurance to get by. | won most Of nv
nights by rushing, and 1 was always pretty
thoroughly enraged something or
other when l made these rushes that won
for me. But If a big man today were TO
night the same way l did and try those
rushes on with man like Jeffries he'd get
slaughtered. that's all. He'd get himself
killed.
The fighting style of today is all shift
ness, and that's the stuff that enables a
It's the only thing that has saved Jack
o Brien, for Jack is far from being a first
rate fighter. It's only his marvellous Shift
ness that wins for him. A second-rate
shifty man of this period could put it all
over first-rater of my time, 1 verify be-
lieve, could they be brought together.
'Corbett, 1t must be given to him, was
the first of the big opponents of the shifty
game, and 1t was my luck to stack UP
against a man like that just when the
fighting style was undergoing an actual
revolution. l didn't know anything about
the Corbett stuff before l ran into it. /
was warned about it by my friends, but ]
was bull-headed and incredulous, and ]
couldn't understand how mere quickness
was going to win over me. 1 was such a
pig-head about 1t, when 1t comes to that,
that honestly believed that Corbett would
be a mark for me, and 1 trained for the
fight on Bass ale and big black cigars so
! to speak. Well. everybody knows the rest
of it. ! was trimmed, and trimmed good,
by the boy who was open-minded enough
to study the fighting game from a new
angle. and let nobody ever believe that his
style of doing 1t didn't furnish me the sur
prise of my life. 1 believe that. even if
had trained faithfully and been In perfect
shape for that fight, Corbett with his
panther agility and his new style of getting
in and out again, would have handed it to
me that time. I was up against it. You
wouldn't expect harpsichord player of
couple of hundred years ago to be able to
play a modern grand piano. would you, sup
posing the. harpsichord player had been
put UP against proposition like that dur
ing his life? Well. that's it. Corbett had
an instrument that simply knew nothing