The Hartford herald. [volume] (Hartford, Ky.) 1875-1926, 1916-03-01
1870 ~ -
SULLIVAN GIVING
KNOCKOUT BLOWS
To His Old Chum, the
Liquor Traffic.
KNOWS WHEREOF he SPEAKS
Once Champion Prize Fighter
Now In Ring Against John !.
Barleycorn.
A SHORT SKETCH or HIS LIFE

John L. Sullivan, once champion
prizefighter of the world again is il
the ring.
This time he faces the vanquishcr
of more men than ever fell in battle,
for he has signed a five-year con-
tract to give temperance lectures
throughout the country.
His plea will be, for total absti-
nence; and he will back it up with
one of the most dramatic experience
es yet credited to drink-his own.
Twenty-seven years ago when he
was 80 and regarded as the most
perfect human fighting machine ever
produced, he gained world note ard
championship by defeating Jake Kill
rain in a seveTity-hve-round fight in
Mississippi. Five years later he was
unable to stand up after twenty-one
rounds with a young bank clerk.
Sullivan had taken booze for a
sparring partner, and booze had
douUir-cTDssed him ------
Leaving the prize ring he hecama
a saloonkeeper. He was his own
best customer, and few years saw
him reduced to abjoct poverty. As
the Outlook tells the story:
An order was issued dispossessing
him from his home. When the Sher-
ifs deputies arrived to carry out the
order of the court at ten O'Clock in
the morning Sullivan, in drunken
stupor, was lying fully dressed on
his bed, where he had fallen on ar
irving home few hours earlier. 1t
was impossible to wake him, and the
officers carried out of his rooms the
furniture, carpets and curtains, and
finally lifted him off the bed in or
der to remove that, and left him ly-
ing on the bare floor.
One of the deputies had sufficient
admiration for Sullivan's past king
ship as pugilist and sufficient pity
for his present state to return to the
room. after the others had left, with
a bottle of whiskey, which, in pa
thetic kind of friendliness, he placed
on the floor beside the sleeping
drunkard, in order that he might find
some sort of solace when he came
to himself. When Sullivan awoke
he hardly recognized the empty,
carpetless room. but the truth final
ly dawned upon him. 1t was the low
est point that he had reached. His
friends finally had discarded him.
He was truly down and out.
Then and there he determined to
show that he could come back"
He picked up the bottle of whiskey
and smashed it against the wall. For
several months he tried to practice
the policy of moderation, making
SOME progress toward rehabilitation,
but frequently blacksliding. 1t was
not until he pledged himself never to
touch an intoxicant of any kind again
that he was safe.
With just one conviction that no
man is strong enough to stand up
against drink. and without pet or
set notions. he is going to "box
BOOZE from coast forecast and back
again. AS he wrote to an acquaint-
ance not long ago.
IF l had not quit drinking when
did and gone to farming with my
good wife there. would "A be some
where in Boston suburb a modest
tombstone with the inscription on it,
Sacred to the memory of John l..
Sullivan" That is why | am putting
the farm and coming back" to have
a go with bigger champion than
ever was-the champion of champ
ions. John Barleycorn.
There is only one way to get the
best of John Barleycorn. and that is
to run away from him. There are
men who say about liquor that they
can take II or leave it, but those are
the ones who always take il. And I'm
the end it gets them. am leaving
I