Sam in this battle displayed great science, and his mercy to his opponent did him still greater honour. Medley showed game, but his hits were too light for a fighter, being in fact the taps of the sparring school.
Sam now resolved to retire from the ring as a principal. He was thirty-five years of age, and had always fought what is termed “up-hill;” that is, men of greater weight and size than himself. It would have been well for him had he adhered to this resolution, as we shall presently see.
Five years had elapsed during which Sam’s intemperance was the subject of regret among his acquaintance, when Bill Nosworthy, the baker, a wrestler and boxer of some repute with the “dead men” of the metropolis, offered himself to Sam’s notice; by whom, as we have already said, the poet’s warning was as unheeded as it was probably unknown:—
“Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
For, in my youth, I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood:
Nor did I, with unbashful forehead, woo
The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly.”