partially to
assert the rights of a simple tax-payer and partly to secure for myself
a name. I was, as a boy, the pride of my parents, and they wanted me to
amount to something. So far, the results have been different. Will you
not aid me, a poor struggler in the great race for supremacy, to obtain
that notice which the newspapers now so reluctantly yield? You are said
to be generous to a fault, especially your own faults, and I plead with
you now to share your great fame by accepting my challenge and appearing
with me in a mixed programme for the evening, in which we will jointly
amuse and instruct the people, while at the same time it will give me a
chance to become great in one day, even if I am defeated.

I have often admired your scholarly and spiritual expressions, and your
modest life, and you will remember that at one time I asked you for your
autograph, and you told me to go where the worm dieth not and the fire
department is ineffectual. Will you not, I ask, aid a struggler and
panter for fame, who desires the eye of the public, even if his own be
italicised at the same time?

I must close this challenge, which is in the nature of an appeal to one
of America's best-known men. Will you accept my humble challenge, so
that I can go into training at once? We can leave the details of the
fight to the _Mail and Express_, if you will, and the championship belt
we can buy afterward. All I care for is the honor of being mixed up with
you in some way, and enough of the gate money to pay for arnica and
medical attendance.

Will you do it?

I know the audience would enjoy seeing us dressed for the fray, you so
strong and so wide, I so pensive and so flat busted about the chest. Let
us proceed at once, Colonel, to draw up the writings and begin to train.
You will never regret it, I am sure, and it will be the making of me.

I do not know your address, but trust that this will reach you through
this book, for, as I write, you are on you way toward Canada, with a
requisition and the police reaching after you at every town.

I am glad to hear that you are not drinking any more, especially while
engaged in sleep. If you only confine your drinking to your waking
hours, you may live to be a very old man, and your great, massive brain
will continue to expand until your hat will not begin to hold it.

What do you think of Browning? I should like to converse with you on the
subject before the fight, and get your soul's best