THE SEX'S PROGRESS.
THE PUNCHER'S GRIEVANCE.
"You journalist chaps just spoil us," said Puncher Pete, when I called upon him yesterday at his training camp. "You draw us into conversation, stick down our remarks in your note-books, and then make us out to be the biggest boasters on the face of the earth. It's not right.
"For instance, you've got it on the tip of your tongue to ask me if I think I'll lick Jimmy Battle next Thursday. Well, of course I'll lick him. Jimmy's a good boy, but he can't stay, and then he hasn't gone twenty rounds with three blacks, as I have. But what's my opinion matter to you? Why make me shout it out like a cock on a steeple?
"Yes, I shall beat Jimmy. Six rounds will cure him. All right. Very well then. Leave it at that.
"One of your fellows called upon me two days ago. 'Pete,' he said, 'they say you're ill.' 'You tell 'em to mind their own ills,' I gave him back. Ill, indeed! If I were ill could I walk my forty miles a day and think nothing of it?" Could I lift Harry Blokes there with one hand and hold him above my head? D'you suppose a sick man could do this?"
The Puncher seized a skipping-rope and did marvellous things with it. Then he smashed lustily at a punch-ball, left, right, left, right, duck, bing! "Here, Harry!" he cried. His sparring partner approached, bruised but beaming. The Puncher knocked him down.
"I seem ill, don't I?" said Pete, turning to me. "But what's it got to do with all you chaps, anyway? Wait till Thursday. Then you'll find out whether I'm ill or not. And even if I was ill Jimmy couldn't do it. Jimmy's got as good a punch as the next man. I'll say that for him. If he gets it in it would foil an ox. But can he get it in? Not next Thursday.