The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-03-12
W.-My Maiden Speech
KHY HILE 1 am a great admfrer IVY of President Roosevelt, I
 w think he is laying claim to
By BATTLING NELSOl
Lightweight ChaTnpion of the Worl


 years ago. l notice from the papers that he is to receive $1 word for shooting lions. and some of the maga- zines say that that is the record price. But it isn't. Right after my fight with Mickey Riley in Milwaukee in 1901 made a speech for which I was paid at the rate of g word. It happened like this: Riley danced around me and would not give me a chance to land on him hard enough for knockout. As a result the referee gave him the de cision on points. My friends in the crowd thought that I got little the worst of it, however, and they began to yell for me.
 Speech! Speechv' was yelled from every side of the ring, and me. poor little lad, had to try and say some thing. I would rather have taken a whipping, as I had never said a word in public in my life.
 "Go on and say something, kid" said Tom Andrews. Pull something. boyr' urged my second. "You might get a piece of money"
 Everybody in the crowd began to yell again. and. with a sickly grin on my face, I stood up in the middle of the ring and looked around. You would have thought that I was deaf and dumb. To save my life I couldn't think of word to say. Hurry up," said my seconds. Pull it."
 Hit In Mouth With a Dollar.
 A great big lump rose in. my throat, but finally I managed to start word around it.
 "Gentl''- And before I could get the word out of my throat on account of that lump-zip! Some> fellow hit me squarely in the mouth with a sill yer dollar. came near swallowing the dollar. lump and all. That ended that speech. As I had only said one half a word and got a dollar for it. that was at the rate of $2 a word, and I claim the record, even over MT. Roosevelt.
 As I was about to duck under the ropes money came raining from every part of the house-dolIars, halves, quarters, dimes. nickels and pennies. A lot of it rolled off the sides, and right then I got the idea of being a business man.
 ''I'll give you fellows 10 per cent of all you find" I said to my seconds, and there was a wild scramble to pick up the scattered money. Finally they got together $109.23. Having paid the 10 per cent, this left me $9S.31, in ad- dftfOn to which I got $35 from the club management. I nearly broke my neck getting to the postoffice the next morning so that I could send my moth CT $100. That was by far the largest amount of money I had ever made up to that time.
 Bat Buys Some Swell Clothes.
 The next day I made tour of the gents furnishing stores and attired myself in a swell looking outfit, made up of seven dollar suit of clothes, a dollar derby hat, a dollar and a half pair of kicks and the prettiest green neckties you ever saw in your life. I am not Irish, but l certainly do love the green.
 You can imagine how tickled was over this enormous amount of money, as little while before that I had been robbed out of $2.5O, which I needed badly. in my first fight with Joe Per cente. the Italian. I was to have re- cefved $17.5O win. lose or draw. won the fight on foul. but instead of giving me $17.50 he gave me $15. 'If you had lost" the manager said to me when I kicked, ''I would have given you but $1O." didn't understand how men could be dishonest up to that