Ambrose Bierce

The San Francisco Examiner/January 1, 1888

A Record of Individual Opinion.

The conviction entertained by an Oakland contemporary, that “the destinies of the German Empire may be profoundly affected by the death of Dr. Mackonochle,” seems to me one of the most mysterious of intellectual phenomena. It impresses one with something of the awe that is felt in the presence of some uncanny manifestation of the supernatural. In what way the destinies of the German Empire were interlocked with the personality of the once notorious English Ritualist, it is not given to the merely human intelligence to discern; that occult relation can be visible only to the spiritual eye of one whom long experience in Oakland journalism has purged of his earthly dross and informed with the divine fire which illuminates the understanding with a revealing light like that of a peeled potato in a sack of coal.

A Chicago wedding was darkened by but a single untoward incident—the absence of the bridegroom. This person has now “turned up,” and explains that while on his way to the place of execution, on that fateful day, he was rudely assailed by two gentlemen whom he had not the pleasure of knowing, and by them chloroformed and removed to an unfamiliar place. This is a singular occurrence—it is singular that two strangers, or even one, should have taken so sympathetic an interest in an intending bridegroom as to administer the kindly rite of anaesthesia; and still more singular that a man should take the trouble to explain why he did not marry a Chicago girl.

It is related in the news dispatches that a balloon having been seen to descend in a Kentucky swamp, a search was set afoot with the result of finding the aeronaut’s “emaciated” body. Poor dear man!—the balloon must have been some hours above the whisky belt, and he had forgotten to put aboard his private barrel!

The incident related in the foregoing paragraph reminds me of a Kentucky Colonel—a real Colonel—whom I knew when I was soldiering. Suddenly seized one day by a diligent discomfort in the region of the sword-belt, he was advised, in the absence of the regimental surgeon and his medicaments, to drink a scoundrelly potion compounded of turpentine and water! He took it down with never a wink. “How do you like it, Sir?” asked the Major, with mock solicitude. “Bah—it is nothing,” said the hero of the infernal performance, as tranquilly as he would have described the loss of a leg by a cannon-shot—“I could drink it without the turpentine.”

Every lover of his race will burn and thrill with ecstasy on learning that the British Government has decided to banish King Jaja, of Oporbo, to the island of St. Helena. There let the monster expiate his giant crimes! There let the unshrouded specters from a thousand battle-fields confront him in the silent solitude of his evil distinction, in the darkness of his great remorse, and pointing him out with fleshless fingers—the weapons of the dead—perform their horrible office upon his guilty soul! In the thunder of the Atlantic, whose unappeasable billows batter forever at the rocky defenses where

St. Helena’s castled steep

Frowns defiance o’er the deep.

Let him hear the voice of Nature’s wrath against the slayer of her sons! And at the last, when brought to bed of cancer in the stomach, let him die an inglorious death, murmuring the impotent words, “Head obde Ahmy,” and take his appointed place in history’s Chamber of Horrors, execrated ceaselessly by all the nations that he overcame and mourned by all the followers whom he left alive.

As Washington telegrams mention,

“D. Young” is awarded a pension.

O can it be Michael, I wonder,

Who (Sprockets opposing) fought under

The banner of Mammon and also

A stool, and endeavored to bawl so

That angels and saints would all rush to

The rescue though devils would blush to.

‘T would be a consistent attention

If Michael is drawing a pension

For wounds in his body and breeches,

Subduing the skill of the leeches.

To comfort his spirit’s internal

Contusion by calling him “Colonel.”

O Knight of the Tripod, if Spreckels

Again ever wickedly freckles

Your surface with ballets, I beg you

To rival the great feats of leg you

Performed on the other occasion

To equal his bullets’ abrasion.

Like that, I may venture to mention.

You “heeled at the first intention.”

In an Eastern telegram a few days ago was related the incident of a “cowhiding” performed at a Christmas festival, the victim being the master of that revel and the victors a brace of young women concerning the respectability of one of whom he was said to have uttered a doubt. When the first young woman had so exhausted her strength that it was possible for a number of men to restrain her arm, though probably not her tongue, the other “delicate creature,” as Shakespeare would call her, snatched the scourge and began the work de novo. The outcome and finality of it all was a fearfully and wonderfully ribbed and striated man and a town which on the question of the propriety of the performance was divided against itself, the fools all fervently affirmative.

That there can be two opinions of such an affair—of any affair in which a woman uses retaliatory violence against a man—must be accepted as one of the many evidences of hideous imperfection in the human organ of thought, and of the brevity of the step which the race has taken out of the night of unreason. It seems incredible that any adult male able to count ten on the fingers of one hand and having a just sense of the advantages of going in when it rains should have failed to discern the rationale of that social convention which forbids a man to lay his hand upon a woman unless she wants him to—as I am told sometimes happens. No one who has discerned it can, without repugnance and disgust, contemplate the spectacle or entertain the thought of a woman assaulting a man even with that intemperate tongue which tradition ascribes to her sex. It is written all over creation in letters of blood that the weak shall not irritate the strong.

The custom that prevails among the generally rather prosperous members of a small class in the population of every civilized country, of conceding to the physical feebleness of woman immunity from physical violence at the hands of man, is no exception to the universal rule that every privilege is fettered to its obligation. A man must not strike a woman, because (1) men believe women to be better than themselves, and (2) they know them to be weaker, and therefore incapable of defense. But, obviously, this immunity implies that a woman shall not strike a man, except, of course, her husband.

If it should become customary for women to lift the band against men, it is clear that it could no longer remain customary for men to refrain from lifting the hand against women. In attacking a man, a woman unsexes herself in this sense: she repudiates her obligation, and by that act must be held to have forfeited the privilege of which it is an essential condition, voluntarily placing herself upon ground where considerations of sex have no validity and do not, in fact, apply. In exact justice she might be, and in point of expediency ought to be, promptly knocked down. By her violation of the wholesome and immemorial understanding—the unwritten contract between the sexes—she has not only invited the blow but she has earned the execration of her entire sex; for her act has, to the limit of its influence, tended to release men from the self-assumed obligation upon which the security of all women depends.

She has, in short, committed a crime against the whole race, and is, in cold truth, a rascal. That men suffer the pungent touch of her cowhide, the penetrant impaction of her bullet and the ripple and plash of her vitriol, not only without retaliation but even without effective defense, goes a considerable way toward proving that in point of magnanimity man is distinctly superior to the tiger.

The reader was kind enough some weeks-ago to indulge me in various remarks indifferently respectful to the national custom of calling men by fictitious titles and titles that have lapsed. The practice seems to me more discreditable and mischievous the more I think of it, and I am now disposed kindly to the notion that it ought by law to be made a misdemeanor, in the same way and for the same and many additional reasons that in some states it is made a misdemeanor to wear a Grand Army badge without taking the trouble to have been a soldier in the great estrangement. One of the disadvantages of the folly herein deprecated is its tendency to beget confusion in the minds of foreigners who “come over” to study our social and political systems in propinquity, or, for that matter, remain at home and trust to that “comprehensive view” which “surveys the.world, from China to Peru.” Fancy such a person taking up last Saturday’s issue of the Diligent Sycophant and reading an editorial beginning: “Governor Stanford has introduced, or given notice of the introduction of, a bid into the Senate,” etc. Wherever throughout the article Senator Stanford is mentioned in connection with his bill he is called “Governor.” Of course our intelligent foreign student could in honor, conscience and decency do no less than make the article the foundation of an impressive pyramid of literary wisdom, solid, strong and eternal—an immortal book entitled: “Gubernatorial Lawmakers; an Examination of the American Political Iniquity of Combining the Executive and the Legislative Function in a Single Person.”

To all old Californians Senator Stanford is still “Governor”—their only objection to the title is that it once really belonged to him; but as he has not for something like a quarter of a century had the shadow of a right to it, it is at least preferable in their view to the one that is legally his. I once knew a man whom everybody called “President” and nobody knew why. He was a musician, and one day in a local newspaper yellow and friable with age I read a report of a wedding, in which it was stated that he “presided at the organ.” A gentleman who presided at a flute in a lodging-house is, I suppose, eligible to the title.

The German Department of Justice is said to have sent a Commissioner, Judge Aschrott, to this country to study the American penal system with a view to its adoption in the Empire. It is sincerely to he hoped that the Germans will not “take it down whole.” It would be well, for example, to set aside for later examination in the light of our own more extended experience our practice of putting into the various penitentiaries our future rulers instead of our former ones.

“Professor Dahm’s” explanation of the circumstances under which two same girls entered his lair and left it as gibbering lunatics may be true or not, but it does not acquit him, in any event, of “astrology.” I know something of this wretch and his fellow wretches of the “astrology” imposture, and when I am Dictator the headsman’s ax, its cheeks rosy with their blood, will be “the very picture of health.” I will not leave an astrologer of them all, so help me Satan! Do you know, you fat and prosperous fellow sitting at the receipt of custom in your bank or counting room—do you know where your wife was yesterday with her new friend, the charming and very respectable Mrs. Runningmate? Sir, she was one of the score or more of similarly sexed dupes and idiots in fashionable attire whose money was graciously taken in by the somewhat clouded hand of the world renowned thaumaturgist, Professor Hoopin Helworth. And your daughter, sir, the beautiful and accomplished Amiabilia Delicatessa, she was there, unknown to her mother, the day before, and afterward visited the web of Professor Arachnus Pandarus, recommended to her by the celebrated inspirational manipulatrix, Mme. Blatsky, the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter, born with a caul—and a gall. I will tell you no more, my very good but rather too “busy” man of affairs. There is more—more than enough, more—to tell, but, of course, it can’t be true of your wife and your daughter—Holy smoke, no! Besides, you have so little leisure to read. You really cannot take the time to have your eyes opened by installments: it must be broken to you roughly; and the chances are that it will be. In the meantime do not let any earthly consideration come between you and your dolluring. Above all, don’t corrupt the minds of your wife and daughter by knowledge of evil. Don’t venture to explain to them the ravening infamies infesting all the jungles of cities, the hungry rascalities that crouch by every path of life. Faith! why should she know of wickedness, whose only relation to it is that of present dupe and future victim? She can be both with no knowledge “unfitting” her for the “domestic circle.” Dear old domestic circle! within whose narrow plot Satan, like a skilled skater on a small pond, executes his beautifulest work!

My professional and commercial friends—my well-to-do friends—my respectable, clean-bodied, church-going and tax-evading friends, your names in the society columns of the newspapers every week and your hands, generally speaking, in the pockets of your neighbors—my well-mannered and well-meaning friends, a trifle over-addicted to pillage—my oleaginous and saponaceous friends, lubricants of the social machine—my friends spectacularly austere, who impress me with a delicious sense of having got into the show for nothing—look to your women and girls! It is they who make possible the pandering “astrologer,” the procuring “healer,” the unspeakable “manipulator” and all the horrible pirate crew of them. What! do you think “the lower classes” support all this superincumbent mass of imposture and vice? They have not the money. It is yourselves who foot the bills: it is from your own purses that the wants of these malefactors are supplied; it is in the sweat of your brows that they eat souls. Look to your women, I say—look to your women. Some of them may possibly be worth saving.

He strolled along the avenue,

Two “ladifrens” beside him:

A swinging parrot met his view.

Who indolently eyed him.

Some dread fatality provoked

His humor to attack her.

Close to the cage his nose he poked.

With “Polly want a cracker?”

Polly barely turned her sleepy head

’Twas plain that she desired

But little talk with him—and said

“Go ’way—you make me tired.”

It is hoped that with further practice the good people of Scott City, which appears to be in Missouri, may acquire greater skill in extracting small children from well-tubes. The plan of letting down a hook when the child is at the depth of eighty feet and fitting the tube like a cartridge in a gun was tried the other day and was only partially successful. The hook took hold very well, under the chin, and a strong pull by willing hands hoisted the small unfortunate a considerable part of the distance to the surface, where its anxious mother and friends (including the blacksmith who made the hook) awaited it; the screams became more audible every moment, carrying joy to every heart. But the friction and consequent fatigue were very great and the men at the rope ceased work for a moment to rest. By some mischance the rope was permitted to slacken and the hook, having unluckily been made without a barb, disengaged itself by its weight, and as the child settled slowly past it refused to take hold again. The whole work had now to be done over again, but these brave hearts never faltered in their humane efforts, although a spectator whose suggestion of baiting the book had been received with contumelious inhospitality coldly remarked: “I told you so” which was not accurately true. Further attempts, however, were unavailing: the hook would not take a firm hold, though an occasional timely scream as the rope drew taut inspired a momentary hope which speedily proved fallacious. The hook, repeatedly drawn up and examined, showed each time enough new and crimson evidence of its partial efficacy to raise the spirits of all except the mother; but finally this method of rescue was reluctantly abandoned and the child got out by digging. Unfortunately it had in the meantime died. The tube-wells of Scott City are now closed, pending the blacksmith’s production of a more effective appliance for saving life—something, preferably, acting on the principle of the corkscrew.

I never was quite clear about the relative rank and importance of the world’s great men, and daresay I am quite wrong, but it seems to me a little singular that the Emperor of Germany pays railroad fare when he travels, and Colonel Jackson of the Wasp goes wherever he wants to for nothing.

Damon Runyon

Wilkes-Barre Evening News/February 13, 1926

Mr. Harry Greb, the celebrated Pittsburgh windmill, middleweight champion of the world, called on the local trade recently and the folks are still wondering just what to make of him. They shake their heads in a bewildered manner when his name is mentioned and say, “My goodness!”

Mr. Greb came out here to give Mr. Ted Moore, of England, a fanning at the Vernon Club. I saw Mr. Greb a couple of nights before the struggle doing his roadwork in the Plantation, which is a sort of road-house, and therefore very appropriate for roadwork.

Mr. Greb charlestoned about eight miles all told, and then the orehestra rung a waltz on him. I feared the waltz might prove just a little more training than Mr. Greb required, and cause him to go stale, but the manner in which he fanned Mr. Moore proved that the extra work had put the windmill right on edge.

Mr. Greb had an engagement in Oakland to give Mr. Jimmy Delaney, of St. Paul, a slamming, so he resumed his roadwork at the Plantation. He was stopped in the middle of a fox trot by Mr. Tom Gallery, the matchmaker for the American Legion’s famous club in Hollywood, where the movie actors go, and requested to fill a date there with one Mr. Buck Holley, of Stockton.

Mr. Greb obligingly consented. It only interrupted his roadwork for a few hours. He plunked Mr. Buck Holley with several gross of gloves until Mr. Holley’s chief handler chucked in a towel.

This was after the fifth round. Mr. Holley’s chief handler was Mr. Charley McDonald, an urbane young man who confided to me afterwards that he was getting dizzy himself watching the gloves, and knew that Mr. Holley must also be feeling quite topsy turvy.

I sat just behind Mr. Greb’s corner that night, and Mr. Greb took aim at me with his best eye—the other not being as good as it used to be, and said, “Hello.”

“How is it?” I asked.

“Well, I’m feeling a little stiff,” said Mr. Greb, twisting his shoulders about. It was probably a good thing for Mr. Holley that Mr. Greb wasn’t loosened up.

From Los Angeles, Mr. Greb went to Oakland a few days later and pummelled Mr. Jimmy Delaney with neatness and dispatch. The last I heard of him he was headed into Arizona where he had another customer. Just before coming to Los Angeles, he stopped over in Omaha and gave Mr. Joe Lohman a shellacking.

He had four fights in less than a month, all against pretty fair opponents, and two decisions. Mr. Buck Holley struggled ten noble rounds with Mr. Tommy Loughran, of Philadelphia, a year back, and made it close.

Moreover, Mr. Harry Greb is bearing down upon a fifteen round battle for his title against the rather formidable Deacon Flowers, of Georgia. I doubt that the history of the Manly Art of Scrambling Ears will disclose a world’s champion of such inordinate appetite for activity as Mr. Greb.

As I have said before, twenty years from now, we of this generation in the Manly Art of Scrambled Ears will be telling the little folks what a great fighter Mr. Harry Greb, of Pittsburgh, was. We shall never see his like again.

I have an idea that Mr. Greb fights often to avoid real training. In other words, I think he figures that it is no harder work fighting these ten round bouts than it is to toil in a gymnasium.

I observed him closely in his Los Angeles bouts, and I believe the secret of his astonishing endurance is the manner in which he practically rests while he is fighting. He is always relaxed, save when he is actually buzzing gloves at an opponent in one of those mix-ups he seems to love.

He frequently falls against the ropes and hangs there, arms limp at his side, and every muscle loose, getting several seconds of relaxation while in that posture. He stands perfectly still in the ring at times, watching his man, but quite relaxed. That way he is avoiding the physical tautness and strain that most fighters undergo.

He rarely visits a gymnasium between bouts of this kind, because Mr. Greb has social duties to discharge in every city he visits, and gymnasiums take up time.

The Los Angeles folks viewed Mr. Greb’s social activities, noted him at his roadwork in the roadhouse, then saw him whistle through round after round of boxing, and they shook their heads and said, “My goodness! How does he do it?”

I must confess I don’t know. I believe that some deeper thinker than myself on the Manly Art of Scrambling Ears once summed it up when he said of Mr. Greb, “He ain’t human.” I know of no other explanation.

Damon Runyon

Wilkes-Barre Evening News/February 17, 1926

The Manly Art of Scrambling Ears has now been going on under legalized conditions in California for over a year, and it seems to be doing as well as could be expected—perhaps better.

It is thriving better in the southern part of the state than up north around San Francisco, which may seem surprising if you remember that San Francisco was once one of the world-capitals of Fistiana. There was no better fight town anywhere.

The absence of boxing arenas of any size up north is probably responsible for the fact that the game is not what it used to be there. Several open-air shows in San Francisco have drawn upwards of 40,000 but apparently the patronage of the indoor pastime hasn’t been sufficient to justify the building of any temples of Thesus, such as they have in Los Angeles.

There are two big clubs in this city, the Olympic and Jack Doyle’s Vernon Club, still one of the finest arenas in the country, although it is dwarfed by the Olympic. This club, located almost in the heart of Los Angeles, was built in the past year, and not even George Tex Rickard’s mighty Madison Square Garden is any finer taking it just as a boxing arena.

The Olympic seats about 12,000, and from nearly every seat in the place you could toss your hat into the ring. The balcony seats are as good as the floor seats. They run boxing shows at the Olympic with all the decorum of grand opera.

The Olympic was reared by local capital, and the head of the club is Jack Root, the first light heavyweight champion of the world. Jack is now as bald as your hand, and emanates an air of prosperity in keeping with a fat bank account.

Joe Levy, who once managed Joe Rivers, a good Mexican lightweight of years ago around Los Angeles, is the matchmaker, and Harry Pollock, formerly associated with the late Pat Powers in the management of the old Madison Square Garden, has charge of shows and exhibits outside of boxing.

You sit back in an opera chair and view the gladiators in the Olympic, while an electric bulletin board advises you of what is going on. It is a remarkable institution, this Olympic Club. The referees and the announcer appear in evening clothes.

The announcer is Mr. Frank Kerwin, a good-looking youth with a loud clear voice, and when he raises his hand from the middle of the ring, you get the impression that he is about to deliver an after-dinner address.

Besides the Olympic and the Vernon Club, there are half a dozen smaller clubs in Los Angeles, or hard by including the famous Hollywood Club, where the movie actors assemble every Wednesday night as regularly as if they were under orders.

Under a new rule of the boxing commission, the Olympic and Vernon Club can produce shows only once every two weeks, while Hollywood Club gives weekly entertainments. This rule which seems discriminatory favors the Vernon Club. The Hollywood Club really does not figure in the matter, because it draws from its clientele regardless of what is going on at the others.

But Vernon is some distance from the city, and weekly shows at the Olympic would probably leave nothing for Mr. Jack Doyle in the course of time. There are not enough matches for weekly shows at two big clubs as it is and the Olympic might make the ringworms forget the Vernon.

The latter club was built by Doyle in the days of the four-round game, and he made plenty of money there. The ten-round legalized pastime has not been exactly to his advantage, especially since the Olympic opened.

I would not be surprised to see the Vernon Club discontinued eventually and Doyle running the Olympic with weekly shows. That would seem the sensible thing. I doubt that New York would support two clubs the size of the Olympic and the Vernon Club with both giving weekly shows. They couldn’t get the entertainment.

Good matches draw well at either the Vernon or the Olympic. It takes rather better matches to draw at the Vernon than at the Olympic because of the distance from the city.

Hollywood draws regardless of the matches, although its customers favor local boys. Harry Greb, the middleweight champion, couldn’t fill the small Hollywood arena not long ago.

Poor matches play to empty seats at both the Olympic and Vernon as the promoters have discovered to their very great sorrow. However, I think that is the experience of boxing promoters all over the land.

The Los Angeles ringworm is peculiar in that he will not go to a boxing show merely to see one man. The promoter has to provide what looks to be a real match. A champion will not draw against a fellow that the local ringworms regard as a pop-over.

In this respect the Los Angeles ringworm is different from his Eastern brother, who turns out to see Harry Wills, or some other pugilistic notable, bowl over the set-ups. You couldn’t draw a dime in Los Angeles with some matches that have pulled thousands in the East in the past year.

Furthermore, an Eastern reputation in The Manly Art of Scrambling Ears often doesn’t mean a thing out here. The boxer has to show what he can do before he is accepted. This surprises some of our exponents of the Manly Art who think they have national reputations, only to come out here to learn that they can’t get semi-windup money for their services in their first shot.

And yet, if a chap makes good he can get plenty of work and money here. A youth named Ace Hudkins, who was what they call a hundred dollar boxer around the Middle West a little over a year ago, is said to have picked up $50,000 for his “bit” during the past twelve months because the ringworms like him.

Damon Runyon

Wilkes-Barre Evening News/February 19, 1926

Of course it had to be one of those sun-splashed days as the Southern Pacific train rolled out of Los Angeles, just to increase the poignancy of one’s regret over leaving California.

If it had been raining, or dark and cloudy, or a little raw around the edges, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But the old sunshine was knee-deep even under the train shed, and Signor Luigi Montagni, rather better known as Mr. Bull Montana, who was a member of the committee on departure, was wearing a light seer-sucker suit, without a vest, and was mumbling something about it being a trifle warm.

So one might readily be excused for shedding a weeny-teeny sigh as the varnished caravan steamed away with the gun’l’s awash with sunshine, and with the soft breezes whispering the languorous language of the Springtime to the nodding orange trees.

Heigh-ho! What a day to be leaving California.

They are playing golf back there on a score of green courses, and the club house verandas are bright with the coloring of summery gowns of the girls.

They are playing baseball back there on a score of diamonds, and the shouts of the umpires carry far on the gentle warm winds that come down from the snowy mountains that ride the horizon off yonder, or up from the blue waters of Santa Monica, where all day long wise-looking old pelicans squat on the piers waiting for some friendly soul to toss them a fish.

They’re pitching horseshoes and playing dominoes in the shade of the trees at Long Beach. They are walking the street of Los Angeles with their coats thrown back, and their hats in their hands, while the sunshine sprays their hair.

They are sitting on the benches in the little park opposite the Biltmore, mid the palm trees, inhaling the gracious ozone that rests the tired nerves.

And down at Tia Juana the horses are running, and as the drum of their hoofs dies away in the rolling green hills, the lights flare up in the Casino, the music rises soft and soothing, and the high falsetto voice of Willie “Kid” Nelson once more shrills over the room:

“Kiss Me Once Again,

And ho—O—O—ld Me—

Mexicali Rose, good—by-y—y!”

What a day to be leaving California!

I am in the main free from envy, and I begrudge few men their lot. However, I cannot resist envying those Californians. Life is a mighty pleasant proposition to them out there. They live in the playground of the world, and they enjoy a democracy of sport that exists nowhere else in the world.

There is no caste in sport there. Other sections of the country have the same sport, or most of it, that you find in California, but not in every section is the sport democratic. The big football games of the East, just as an instance, are mainly designed for a special clientele; the polo games, the big boat races, and the golf and tennis tournaments are class affairs, so to speak.

In California, all sports events seem to belong to the general public. Everybody goes to them, and talks about them with an air of proprietorship and personal interest. And nearly everybody in California seems to take part in some form of sport.

Moreover, the Californians have most of their sport the year ’round. They can golf every day. There is a baseball January, and they have stadiums out here that put the game in easy reach of the general public, which therefore knows a lot more about football than the general public of the East.

They have horse racing, auto racing, dog racing, swimming, boating. They have boxing in the finest arenas in the land. There is not a single day passes in California, especially in the vicinity of Los Angeles, that there isn’t something going on worth seeing, and to which the public isn’t welcome.

They are playing ice hockey in Los Angeles right now in enclosed rinks just as they are in New York. When the Winter is in the hills, it is only a short ride to skiing, and sledding and other winter pastimes, if you care for that sort of thing.

The snow-capped hills stalk right down to the edge of the blue water out Santa Monica way, and you motor over roads as smooth as glass with them at your elbow, through a warm shining land that makes you feel that this must have been the very garden that old Adam was foolish enough to get chased out of.

The chances are he had to quit Eden on just such a day as I left California. I know exactly how he felt.

Damon Runyon

Wilkes-Barre Evening News/February 20, 1926

P. T. Harmon, more familiarly known as “Paddy” in these parts, is a short, square-rigged gentleman somewhere in the fifties of life, who is planning a monument to himself in Chicago in the form of a sports arena that is to be known as Harmon’s Stadium.

An offhand statement of Mr. Harmon’s idea might lead to the impression that the gentleman is only dreaming, especially when it is stated that the stadium is to cost $8,000.000. But Mr. Harmon’s friends assure me that he is no dreamer, that he is a mighty practical man, who has made a lot of money out of public dance halls, and that he is not given to foolish statements.

They think he will put over the stadium just about as he says. Aside from the public dance halls, Mr. Harmon has been something of a sports promoter out here for years. Everybody calls him “Paddy.” He seems to be a genial Irishman with many friends. He has a wide, square face and smiles easily. He wears an emerald ring, emerald cuff buttons and an emerald tie pin, or maybe they are tournamalines. Anyway, they are green.

He is as enthusiastic over his stadium as Mr. George “Tex” Rickard was over his new Madison Square Garden. Mr. Rickard slept with the new Garden until the last beam was in place. They call Mr. Harmon the Rickard of the West, but they are quite different types. Where Mr. Rickard is suave and persuasive, Mr. Harmon is bluff and aggressive. Men acquire results by different methods and manners.

I met Mr. Harmon at the Chicago six-day race, which is one of his promotions. He was eating a sandwich in a small impromptu cafe in the basement of the old coliseum. He began talking of his new stadium at once. He already knows it by heart from the architect’s plans.

He plans to seat 60,000 persons, all under one roof, and there will be standing room for many more. It will be quite possible to play football games under cover in this stadium.

With boxing coming on in Chicago, the first thought that occurred to the public mind was that Mr. Harmon will go in strong for the manly art of scrambling ears. However, like Mr. Rickard when he planned his new Madison Square Garden, Mr. Harmon has slight reference to the manly art in his plans. He knows that it is at best an ephemereal pastime at the mercy of legislators and what-not.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Harmon won’t care much if there is no boxing in Chicago at all, so far as any potential revenue to him from that source is concerned. If it comes, he will look for some big matches, to be sure. If it doesn’t come, he will put in hockey and other sports. 

I think there is no doubt about Chicago supporting a stadium of the kind Mr. Harmon has in view. It has no public hall or arena on the order of the new Madison Square Garden, the old coliseum being very small and antiquated for the purposes of modern day sports.

There are some great outdoor stadiums here, including the magnificent structure on the lake front, almost in the heart of the city where the Army and Navy game is to be played in the Fall, and the stadium of Chicago University, which is soon to be replaced by a newer and grander field. Then there are several ball yards of considerable size besides the homes of the White Sox and the Cubs.

But Chicago needs its new Madison Square Garden, wherefore Mr. Harmon is something of a public benefactor, even though he plans to do all right for Mr. Harmon in the stadium. In fact, Mr. Harmon just hopes to make a lot of money.

If he carries out his plans, his stadium will seat nearly three times as many persons as can be seated in Madison Square Garden. It is claimed that it will be possible under the arrangements planned by the architects to empty the place in ten minutes, which will be fairly speedy work.

Damon Runyon

Wilkes-Barre Evening News/February 23, 1926

John Arthur Johnson, former heavyweight champion of the world, called in some state. He was attended by a sort of committee, which included Mr. Dan Cole, of Nogales, Arizona, who is promoting a demonstration of the manly art of scrambling ears in which the participants will be John Arthur Johnson and Pat Lester, of Arizona.

You wouldn’t believe that John Arthur Johnson is rising forty-eight. He has his head shaven so that the froth of time cannot show here. His black scalp fairly gleamed as a vagrant sunbeam drifted in through the window and used his skull as a toboggan slide.

The ghost of the famous old golden smile flitted over the room as John Arthur Johnson shook hands. He was wearing a brown suit that seemed to fit him a little too soon, but that was because it was one of those narrow-cut garments of another sartorial era. No diamonds sparkled on his fingers, as of yore. In fact, there was a somewhat subdued air about Mr. John Arthur Johnson.

He has been living quietly in Chicago for some time, he said. Married again—the fifth trip to the matrimonial barrier for him. This time to a woman of French descent. He tried to pronounce her maiden name without much success. It was Poin-something, he said.

His first inquiry was about “”Mist’ Tad”, the great cartoonist. John Arthur Johnson always thought more of Tad than of any other newspaper man in the business. Incidentally, Tad was about the first newspaper man to proclaim John Arthur Johnson’s pugilistic greatness when few others could see it.

In a few minutes. John Arthur Johnson was bubbling with all his old time good nature as he began telling fish stories, and arguing with Mr. Cole, and Mr. Sisk and Mr, Bishop, the other members of the committee, about the merits of the fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, as against other parts of the world.

He is a cosmopolite, this burly negro who was the first and only member of his race to hold the heavyweight championship. He spoke glibly of India, of Australia, of South America, of Mexico, of France, and England—and he has been to all those places. He has traveled more than any living pugilist, much of the time with John Law reaching his coat tails.

He talked of old time fights and fighters. He showed all his gold teeth in a guffaw when someone mentioned Stanley Ketchel. and asked him what he thought of Ketchel as compared to the present day in middleweight and light-heavies. It took John Arthur Johnson twelve rounds to subdue Ketchel.

“’At li’l’ boy could suttinly fight,” said John Arthur Johnson. “Jiminelli but ’at boy ’d have a picnic today.”

Ho said he never had any personal animus against any opponents in his career save Tommy Burns, Frank Moran and Frank Childs, a negro heavyweight contemporaneous with him. He said he tried his best to damage them when he fought them.

Burns he disliked because the Canadian talked bitterly about him before they met. Moran, he thought, was a party to an attempt at crossing him in Paris, while he never cared for Childs on general principles.

“Burns didn’t have much heart out o’ the ring, but inside them ropes he was a lion,” said John Arthur Johnson. “He was the gamest man ah ‘evuh see.”

Mr. Sisk asked what sort of a fight I thought Lester would make against John Arthur Johnson. He seemed somewhat amused when I said that if Johnson didn’t beat the redoubtable Pat very easily, he wouldn’t beat him at all.

Lester is a big, strong, improving young fellow, who takes a hard punching. It isn’t in the cards that a man of John Arthur Johnson’s years can struggle fifteen rounds against that type of an opponent, though he may make Lester look foolish in the early rounds.

They meet in Nogales, Sonora, which is across the street from Nogales, Arizona, on May 2, in a bull ring that seats about 8,000. Mr. Cole the promoter, tells me that he hopes for a capacity crowd.

Lester is an Arizona product, handled by the celebrated Spider Kelly, formerly of San Francisco, who has been living in Tucson, Arizona, for some years. Kelly went there for his health. He found Lester one day in the army, as I recall it, and has been slowly developing him ever since.

Lester is the type of fighter who comes on slowly. He has tremendous heart, or you can bet Kelly wouldn’t have fooled with him for any length of time. The redoubtable Tim McGrath has been handling Lester around San Francisco for the Spider, and he says of Pat, “He’s a brave fighter.”

John Arthur Johnson is probably getting a fair sum for the fight. He never rated his services cheaply, even when he needed money, which I imagine is his status at this time. He has been making a little out of exhibitions, and the show business but this will be the first purse he has collected from real pugilistic endeavors in some time. 

He won from Homer Smith in 1924 in ten rounds. Prior to that he got a technical knockout over Farmer Lodge in four rounds in Havana, and boxed old Jock Thompson fifteen rounds in the same place. His last appearance before the Smith bout was in an exhibition at Quebec with poor Battling Siki.

Damon Runyon

Wilkes-Barre Evening News/February 24, 1926

At 6 A. M. every morning, Mr. Jim Mullen begins meeting the incoming trains at the different Chicago stations, bouncing from one to the other with astonishing rapidity, to greet the wayfaring representatives of the manly art of scrambling ears.

It is claimed for Mr. Jim Mullen that he has a record of having met two trains arriving at identically the same time, and at different stations. I do not quite understand by what process of legerdemain Mr. Mullen accomplished the feat, but I do not doubt it.

Perhaps there are two Mr. Jim Mullens. I feel sure that there must be more than one, because I have never been in Chicago that I did not see a Mr. Jim Mullen, or a Mr. Harry Hochstadter, which really amounts to the same thing. Mr. Mullen and Mr. Harry Hochstadter, who was christened Heine and adopted the Harry to catch the Irish trade, are partners.

They conduct a gymnasium in the Loop which is the headquarters for the visiting firemen in the manly art of scrambling ears. They both have keys to the cash register, but the master key is by mutual agreement in the custody of Mr. Society Hogan, their social secretary, and the register is opened only in the presence of competent witnesses. Thus Mr. Jim Mullen and Mr. Hochstadter get along very well together, and make money.

They are arranging to open a new gymnasium, which will be the largest in the middle West. This is against the coming to Chicago of legalized boxing, when it is expected the city will require extensive quarters for the exponents of the manly art.

For years Mr. Jim Mullen has been the leading pugilistic entrepreneur of these parts – in fact, about the only one. He is the best known and undoubtedly the most capable of the midwestern promoters, and I am inclined to think that when the pulling and hauling ceases around Chicago after the boxing law comes in, Mr. Jim Mullen will be found among the fittest surviving the early struggles.

To begin with, Mr. Jim Mullen knows what it’s all about. He is thoroughly familiar with every angle of the boxing game. He knows every boxer and every manager of any importance in the country. He has extended favors in one form or another to most of them. Few boxers or managers would think of passing through Chicago without pausing to say hello to Jim Mullen.

He is a boxing big leaguer, at heart. He has all the gambling instinct of a Tex Rickard in the matter of making matches, and he is a real showman. Moreover, he has a real interest in the boxing game, aside from any potential profit to himself. He has been keeping the game alive around Chicago for some years by promoting bouts in East Chicago at a financial loss.

His arena is too far from the Loop to draw well, but Mr. Jim Mullen has gone on putting on real shows weekly just the same with the idea of keeping up interest in boxing until the game is legalized. He had much to do with the passing of the law by the last legislature which gives the cities of Illinois local option in the matter of boxing.

Mr. Jim Mullen is thick-set red-faced man with iron gray hair, who looks as if he might have been cut out for a priest. He was formerly an iron worker. I have this on the authority of Mr. Harry Hochstadter, who is a well known sports writer in addition to being Mr. Mullen’s partner.

Mr. Jim Mullen is either in the late forties, or up in the early fifties. He is always in good humor, even when he sees Mr. Harry Hochstadter bearing down upon the cash register alone. He knows that Mr. Hochstadter must have his own, and the master key.

I presume that Mr. Jim Mullen must sleep somewhere some time, but I often wonder when, and where. He is always around. He certainly does not sleep in the daytime, after the custom of Mr. Nate Lewis, and he cannot sleep at night, because you see him here and there. I am almost convinced that there is more than one Mr. Jim Mullen.

His word is accepted throughout the Manly Art of Scrambling Ears. His telegrams on matches hold as well as written contracts. He has no trouble in getting bouts for his little East Chicago arena, putting on stars who know they cannot get a great deal of money, but who like to favor Mr. John Mullen.

Oddly enough, Mr. Jim Mullen has an even greater weakness than boxing in sport. It is football. He is an out-and-out football bug, especially on Midwestern football which he holds is the best football in the world.

He attends all the football games around Chicago. He followed the Illinois team to Pennsylvania last year, and then remained in the East to see other games. He went back to Chicago convinced that the football of that section is far ahead of the football of the East.

I have an idea that when the boxing bill becomes a law in Chicago, Mr. Jim Mullen will bob up with a big arena, and will be promoting the biggest shows in that city. He is saying very little about the matter now, and does not even admit that he will be in the field. I am informed by others, however, that he is well prepared to do business on a large scale when the time comes.

He will have one tremendous advantage on his competitors in his personal acquaintance among the boxers and the managers, and their confidence in Mr. Jim Mullen’s integrity and ability, although it may surprise you to learn that a man can enjoy a reputation for such in The Art of Scrambling Ears.

Damon Runyon

Wilkes-Barre Evening News/January 6, 1926

Ten years ago, Mr. Jim Coffroth bought into the race track at Tia Juana, sixteen miles below San Diego and just across the Mexican line. Tia Juana, by the way, means Aunt Jane.

Someone else had started the track but lacked the money to complete it. Mr. Jim Coffroth was a pugilistic entrepreneur of some note in San Francisco, when he took up the project with several associates and opened the premises for racing on a modest scale.

His criminal investment was not large, but today Coffroth is rated a millionaire, and racing at Tia Juana has reached such proportions that the future race of the long winter meeting will this year be worth about $55,000 to the winner. This race is called the Coffroth Handicap.

There are about 1,000 race horses in the stables at Tia Juana at this time, and several big Eastern stables represented. Coffroth makes a strong canvass for the Easterners every year, and is gradually drawing them to his track in increasing numbers.

The Eastern trainers do not care to ship so far, but Coffroth points out that horses that have been conditioned and raced in Mexico generally return east in the spring to run good races.

Coffroth had a world of litigation covering several years over the ownership of the Tia Juana track, and it probably cost both sides a lot of money. The legal tale is too long and too involved to be gone into here.

Finally, the Mexican government took title to the land on which the track stands, and Coffroth now pays rent along with his taxes to the government. It is said that this amounts to about $6,800 per day. The admissions and the pari-mutuels stand this off.

The plant survived a lot of political and military uneasiness in Mexico, and several changes in government. The unrest prevented Coffroth from replacing the old frame buildings and stands on the property with steel and concrete, but in the meantime he has managed to beautify the grounds with trees, and flowers and shrubbery.

It is a picturesque place, with rolling hills on every side. A company of Mexican soldiers guards the stables at night against fire and depredation. The stables are pitched on the hills overlooking the track, and all the buildings and the stands are done in white paint.

The track draws for its attendance on San Diego, and Los Angeles. It is a four-hour ride from Los Angeles by special train service and on Saturdays and Sundays and the big holidays, the movie colony at Hollywood is strongly represented.

It is a popular pastime to make the journey by motor car. The roads all the way from Los Angeles to Tia Juana are as smooth as a floor. Everybody has to be back across the border by 9 o’clock at night . Unless they want to stay in Tia Juana all night—and there are few places to stay there.

Thus San Diego is the real seat of the racing operations at Tia Juana and San Diego is one of the loveliest cities in the universe—all white and green and clean—a progressive city that one day may be a large city. Coffroth lives there in baronial grandeur, which reflects the prosperity that has come to him since the days when he was a fight promoter.

He was a good fight promoter at that—the Tex Rickard of the Pacific Coast, so to speak. Now and then when he feels the need of a little extra publicity, Coffroth casually talks of promoting a heavyweight championship at Tia Juana. But I doubt that he has any serious thought of again entering the Manly Art of Scrambling Ears.

His retainers at Tia Juana include many noted old timers of the manly art. However, he showed me the spot at one end of the many bars scattered around the plant at Tia Juana where Tom Sharkey, the old heavyweight is usually standing. Coffroth calls the bars “traps.”

Coffroth said he would have bet 2 to 1 Sharkey would be standing there when we came along. But for some reason the ex-sailor was missing. Coffroth pondered this as a grave mystery for some time.

Billy Roche, once one of the best known referees in the country, is working for Coffroth. I noted my friend, Mr. Frank Eaeppel, on exhibition in a mutuel booth. Lending Broadway atmosphere to the surroundings, high up in a sort of pulpit, writing out tickets, was Mr. Jack Gagliardi, another Broadway-ite.

They use both the mutuels and the old time booking system at Tia Juana. Coffroth refers to these, too, as “traps.” He surrounds the business of horse racing with no illusions.

Those who like horse racing hope that it may one day return to Southern California, with the mutuels, in which event Mr. Jim Coffroth’s Tia Juana track must inevitably pass away.

California was once one of the great racing centers of the world, with several big tracks, and numerous breeding farms, but the game passed from the Coast years ago, returning briefly quite recently when some optimistic sportsmen tried to put on a meet without betting in San Francisco.

The experiment was not exactly a howling success. I hope and trust that the altruists will not take offense. But horse racing without betting is like ham and eggs without the ham. It can’t be done. And I imagine it would take a prodigious effort to get the voters of California to pass a law providing for racing with betting.

Until that is done. Mr. Coffroth will continue to keep his “traps” at Tia Juana properly oiled and always set.

Damon Runyon

Wilkes-Barre Evening News/January 11, 1926

In the casino of Mr. Jim Coffroth’s race track at Tia Juana, Mr. Willie Kid Nelson sang “Mexicala Rose” for me in a high falsetto, by way of atmosphere, the casino band in dinner jackets standing behind him furnishing the music.

“Mexicala Rose” is a ballad that seems to me to gather into yearning melody all the heart aches and the sobs of the “drums” of the borderland. This is not a “plug” for the song. I do not know the authors, or the publishers. 

The casino is a combination gambling house and cafe, a series of big rooms, rather artistically decorated. There are a couple of bars, paneled with pictures of bull fights, and Mexican love scenes, and crude conceptions of early western life, such as card games and gun fights among booted, bewhiskered gents.

Until the first of the year you could dine, dance and lose money shooting craps or playing twenty-one, a polite name for the army’s old blackjack, in the casino. Then the gambling was closed down by the Mexican authorities, and the gaming tables stand blanketed and silent.

But you may still dine there, as you may dine nowhere else in the world, on fresh turtle soup, and Mexican quail and other culinary productions of vast merit. They have a remarkable chef in the casino, and a good band. The cigar girls and the police officer loitering about the entrance furnish a certain touch of Mexican color. But you really need Mr. Willie Kid Nelson singing “Mexicala Rose” to get the true atmosphere.

It is said the gambling in the casino was stopped because the business men of Oldtown, which is Tia Juana proper, complained. They said the folks visiting Mr. Coffroth’s race track were disposed to linger in the casino doing their gambling, and also any drinking they might have to do right there instead of going on to Oldtown which makes something of a bid for gambling and drinking.

You can scarcely blame the business men of Oldtown for desiring to protect their chief home industry. No one might go there at all, although I would recommend a half hour’s conversation with Mr. Herbert Jaafe as something of an excuse for a visit.

Mr. Herbert Jaafe, a member of an old time Southern California family, is just completing the most palatial bar and cafe in all Oldtown, though not the longest. That distinction is held by a place across the street where the bar, as stepped off by your correspondent, is about the length of a football gridiron. A man would need a bicycle to drink with every party at the bar.

But Mr. Jaafe has gone in for elegance rather than mere length in his new San Francisco bar. He has reproduced as far as possible an old time San Francisco bar of some fame in the days before the big fire and he has added some ideas of his own including a reproduction of the curtain of the opera house in Milan, Italy and an antique room.

Mr. Jaafes’ antique room contains such relics as bronzes that belonged to the czar of Russia and old prints and paintings that came from France, as well as armor and weapons of ancient Rome, and the spurs that poor Maxmilian wore when the Mexicans executed that unfortunate fellow sent from France to rule their country.

Mr. Jaafe speaks at far greater length on the value of his antiques than he does of the merits of his wines, liquors and cigars so liberally displayed within easy reach of a dozen bartenders. He has mingled art and alcohol, so to speak, and with some success.

He is one of the few survivors of that once familiar race of liquor vendors who tried to make their ginmills attractive to their customers. I hope and trust that Mr. Jaafe will not resent the reference to his palatial emporium. At least it is not a speakeasy. On the contrary, you have to speak loudly to be heard above the babble of other patrons.

I should say offhand that every door in Oldtown is a saloon, and they closed up a lot of ad lib institutions not long ago, at that. The boys were making their whiskey one night, and selling it the next, a practice tolerated only in the U.S. A. 

The big gambling house of the town is called the foreign club, and it takes a Iine plunger like Jakey Slagle to get close to one of the numerous twenty-one or crap tables through the mass of men and women players, mostly Americans. They don’t permit roulette though I don’t know why, unless they figure roulette gives the customers too much chance.

But for all the drinking and the gambling, Oldtown prides itself on its peacefulness. There is rarely a fight over there, and when one does happen to blow up it seems that they have efficient officers to take charge. Some of these officers were pointed out to me, and they seemed to be wide-hatted, easy-moving gents of impressive appearance. They ware their John Roscoes, or pistols, out of sight.

As I gather, Oldtown has undergone something of a moral wave recently. One of the leading citizens assured me that vice is minimized. He spoke of the paved street with some pride. His remarks produced in me the fear that if they keep on they may make Oldtown quite unattractive to the casuals from over the border.

However, I think it will be a long time before they are able to entirely efface the atmosphere or the strange one-story town that you get, in a measure, from Mexicala Rose as sung by Mr. Willie Kid Nelson.

Damon Runyon

Wilkes-Barre Evening News/January 15, 1926

You may take the news that went out of Los Angeles the other day about the movement to produce the Dempsey-Wills fight here not only as quite authentic, but as the one movement that will probably bring the Manassa Man Mauler and the Brown Panther of New Orleans together.

I am inclined to think that you will find them squaring off at each other in this city along toward Labor Day, and I might add that this about the first time that I have ever really thought the spectacle stated as a strong probability.

I have never taken the plan to pitch the struggle in the middle west very seriously, although I give Mr. Floyd Fitzsimmons, the celebrated promoter of Michigan City, due credit for trying, and you can’t rule ’em off for trying.

But I did not believe, and do not now believe, that Dempsey and Wills can be successfully presented in any of the theatres that Mr. Fitzsimmons had in mind, with the possible exception of Chicago. And you can’t be certain of Chicago until they get boxing there.

It could be done in New York to be sure, but Mr. Jack Dempsey, the party of the first part, says he doesn’t wish to fight in New York. Some will argue that this statement makes it a sure thing that Mr. Dempsey will fight in New York, if only because Mr. Dempsey invariably does the thing he says he doesn’t wish to do.

But I believe the inducements that will be offered by Los Angeles will offset any that can be offered anywhere else, because, to begin with, the men behind the movement out here have no thought of personal profit in connection with it. That cannot be said of promoters anywhere else in the wide world.

They are substantial businessmen of vast means, whose names would float any venture in the business world far up into the millions. They are bankers, and businessmen, who are interested heart and soul in Los Angeles, and in California generally, and who have hit upon the Dempsey-Wills fight as a means of attracting attention to Los Angeles, and of bringing visitors out here.

Not one of them cares to be the object of any publicity in connection with the venture. They are putting forward Jack Boyle, who is a sort of Tex Rickard of Southern California, as the promoter. Doyle has been operating boxing shows in this part of the country for years. It is a species of advertising by men who know that advertising pays. The plan is to present the pugilistic spectacle in the coliseum of Los Angeles, the most majestic structure of the kind in the land, which can be arranged to seat over 100,000 for a boxing contest. They can put 90,000 spectators into the place for a football game.

The most casual estimate of the total gate, scaling the premises all the way from $5 to $50, is $2,500,000 and of this amount the fighters would probably get in the neighborhood of a million. The profit is to go to public charity. Not even the promoter is to make anything out of it, although of course, behind the plan is the thought that the influx of visitors for the fight is bound to produce financial benefit to California business.

I believe that it would bring in not less than 50,000 visitors from outside of California, and you can conservatively figure that each of these visitors would spend at least $1000 on the trip. I believe that as many more would come from the other cities of California. 

Furthermore, Los Angeles would hold datelines in the newspapers of the world for months, which is something to be considered in connection with a movement based primarily on a theory of advertising. 

For a long time I rather doubted that Mr. Jack Dempsey cared to meet anyone in defense of his title. In fact, I had commenced to doubt that Mr. Dempsey cared to meet anyone in defense of his title of heavyweight champion of, the world.

From the fact that he is hopscotching around the country giving exhibitions for comparatively small money, I deduce that Mr. Jack Dempsey finds himself in the position of many other mortals on this mundane sphere of needing ready dough.

If he can get $750,000 in one chunk for his pugilistic efforts against Harry Wills, I think Dempsey will seize the opportunity to chase the wolf from his door for some time to come, and I doubt that he can get that kind of money anywhere else in the world outside if Los Angeles.

I think the thing that is worrying Mr. Dempsey at this time more than any one other thing is how much money will they lay “on the line” for him?

That is to say, how much can he get in advance? I understand that Dempsey is thinking of $250,000 as about the right and proper advance payment, but I doubt that any promoter would give him that sum for his own immediate use. They might give it to him in escrow, the actual payment to be deferred until he crawls into the ring, otherwise what guarantee would they have against his demise, or the demise of Wills?

I talked with Mr. Jack Dempsey over the telephone on the subject of the proposed struggle in Los Angeles and I gathered that the matter of the immediate payment was uppermost in his mind at the moment. He said he had a couple of angles of his own, apparently meaning that he had offers elsewhere.

But he said that Mr. Floyd Fitzsimmons is out of the picture but I believe that has been said before. No sooner is it said, however, than it is almost immediately said that Mr. Fitzsimmons is back in the picture.

Wherefore, I hesitate about assigning definite status to Mr. Fitzsimmons at this time. He may still be trying, and I repeat that you can’t rule ’em off for trying. However, I think it is almost a sure thing that the curtain has descended on South Bend, and adjacent ports, as the potential scene of the Dempsey-Wills encounter, and is rising in Los Angeles.

If Mr. Dempsey really wishes to fight the Brown Panther in New OrIeans, I believe the thing will be duly signed, sealed and delivered with a comparatively short time, and if he doesn’t wish to fight him, this is a right good time to so state.