Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-12-08
By Clarence L. Cullen.
.respondence Of The Star.

Special Correspondence of The Star.
NEW YORK, December .. 1907.
The Burns-AIoir bit out of the Christ
mas pantomime OF the London holiday
season is a laugh over here. None OF
the hitting fancy looked for any other
outcome; but the languid. bored ease with
which the trick was done elicits the
laughter of the bunch at this end of it.
What kind of a glug can this gunner
COB be?" is the question they asked when
full details of the funny affair at the Ma
tional Sporting Club sifted over TINS way
For. be it understood. the fighting push
in this town don't entertain any oeluslohs
with respect to Mister Burns-Brusse, the
American British Canuck Detroiter-Los
Angelesian who put the large. clofnplsH
English artilleryman away after All Oh
that funny lolling around and waiting
To- the moving picture people to get run
for their money.
They've got Burns appraised over here.
They look upon that lighting person as
something falling just about between
second and third rater. They hsure MN
as the lucky lummox of his eDoch---Iucky
because there are few f2lrish people OF ms
weight engaged in lighting just now.
Burns it is well understood here. bored
into the limelight at the psychological
moment for getting himself wealth and
things. He bobbed over a whole raft oil
ridiculously easy stuff in the fighting line,
and then, because all OF the good heavy
weights were out of ii. and because the
high-hitcher of them all, j. j., the alta ia
farmer of California. had voluntarily
crept into a hole of his own making,
Burns, just a teenchy shade better than
anything happening to be around. nudgeJ
to the payroll line and collected the swag
Nobody who has the slightest line of past
performance dope on the big men enter
tains the belief for an eighth of second
that Burns at his best, could ever put
away men of the type of Corbett or F'itZ-
simmons or Sharkey or Rubin or even
Kid Mccoy or Choynski. Any one of
these people, it is considered certain.
could have made Burns. had his day been
theirs, look like a member of the street
cleaning department. be.
Burns Brusso will be back here pres
emily. failing his arms around and 'dou-
be-dog-daring all hands to come at him
for he knows that there aren't any of
them TO come at him, just now. that he
can't juggle with, except Johnson. Prob
ably he will dodge the Johnson negro
draw the color line" as the term runs.
The truth seems TO be that Burns is
afraid of the tall Johnson negro. The
additional truth appears to be that he
has mighty good reason to he afraid of
Johnson. That inky one hasn't been
fully extended yet He's won mostly on
the bit every time he's climbed into the
ring. None or tneH ever got MIN out 10
anywhere near the last ounce. Moreover
he's improving right along. He has In
telligent people managing him. He's a
mighty quick man and it's the certain
thing that he has all sorts of a punch
tucked away on his person. The ma
iority of the fighting gang over here will
he pretty sore on Burns If he attempts
to crawfish out of a scrap with johnson
by pulling the color bluff.
Not that they're not pretty sore on
hot rs pnrp
Brusso's over yonder in England in at
tempting to curry favor and to do the
kow-tow, salaam thing by processing to
be British subject while he cabled to
this country about the American colors
that he was going to wear for a belt in
the fight-that stuff curdlad them over
here, and they were ready to be curdlad.
at that knowing. as all of them do
a lot Of stuff in connection with that
Burns-OBrien affair. When Burns told
'em over yonder that ne was a British
subject they were perfectly willing over
here to let him run for the Union Jack:
and there wasn't particle of citation or
enthusiasm when the announcement
flashed over here that Burns had made a
chimpanzee of the gunner firkin.
Burns announcement in England that
he was British subject gave it to the
Britishers both ways and they're just
the boys that like to have it coming and
going that way. If Moir had won. they'd
have conveniently forgot all about Burns
little artless story about his being
British subject. and would have fiared
out in big headlines about how the gun
ner had walloped the American cham
peen. But. as the affair broke. they We're
enabled to cheep. superciliously. ''Oh.
well, 1T was one of our men pounding
another one o. us. that's ALL" and that's
exactly what the Brit'shers have been
saying ever since the fight. The mittish
talent over this way might have taken
Burns spraddling attitude on the ma
regarded the man as sure-anough
champion. But they didn't. and don't
look upon Burns in that light and so
they've been light calm and complaisant
throughout the proceedings, they sure
have.
Recently I saw George Dixon down in
SD street, where he lives as best he can
among people of his own color. who
treat him very kindly. The little African
csc fighter of the gone time is in dire
poverty. Nobody can figure just how
many hundreds of thousands of dollars
Dixon picked UP at the fighting game
(chlefy for his backers), but he hasn't
had a nickel that somebody hasn't slipped
him for number of years now. He is a
quiet chap but seemed to be sore over the
self-advertising which Joe Cans handed
himself when the latter gave it out that
he'd asked Dixon to drop down to his
Baltimore hotel and take the job there
of head barkeep. Dixon stoutly maintains
that he never had any such an offer at
Cans hands, and he was there with an
observation or two about Cans self-ex-
ploitation at the expense of a down-and-
outer of his own race that would have
made the Baltimore scrapper's ears tin
gle had he heard the stuff.
Frank Erne. one of the niftiest boxers
that ever donned EN- hereabouts, dropped
into New York the other day. looking
like all the money. l met him at the
Metropole. and it was the first time I've
seen him since the night. quite stretch
of years ago, when Terry McGovern gave
him such a frightful beating in three
rounds. breaking Ernes face to a pulp.
Erne took that beating, 1t seems pretty
reasonable to suppose. because he'd
weakened himself to a shadow in getting
down to the weight-12S pounds. But
Erne is glad that he got out of the game
He's running boxing club Tor the Yale
students now, and he derives a fat in
come from that thing. Nobody would
ever suppose this man to have ever been
a prizefghter. He is the picture of fin
ished. not to say refined. man. splendidly
groomed, non-dashy. quiet-spoken, we'll
read. thoroughly well educated-one of the
few men 10 emerge from the old biting
game without carrvirE the rough marks
and the roughening instincts of il through
life with them. The plug-uglies are guy