elebrated a character. The Dead Boxer, however, appeared to be
exceedingly anxious to gratify this natural propensity. He walked
out from the head inn, where he had stopped, attended by his servant,
merely, it would appear, to satisfy them as to the very slight chance
which the stoutest of them had in standing before a man whose blow was
so fatal, and whose frame so prodigiously Herculean.

Twelve o'clock was the hour at which he deemed proper to make his
appearance, and as it happened also to be the market-day of the town,
the crowd which followed him was unprecedented. The old and young, the
hale and feeble of both sexes, all rushed out to see, with feelings of
fear and wonder, the terrible and far-famed Dead Boxer. The report
of his arrival had already spread far and wide into the country,
and persons belonging to every class and rank of life might be seen
hastening on horseback, and more at full speed on foot, that they might,
if possible, catch an early glimpse of him. The most sporting
characters among the nobility and gentry of the country, fighting-peers,
fire-eaters, snuff-candle squires, members of the hell-fire and
jockey clubs, gaugers, gentlemen tinners, bluff yeomen, laborers,
cudgel-players, parish pugilists, men of renown within a district of ten
square miles, all jostled each other in hurrying to see, and if possible
to have speech of, the Dead Boxer. Not a word was spoken that day,
except with reference to him, nor a conversation introduced, the topic
of which was not the Dead Boxer. In the town every window was filled
with persons standing to get a view of him; so were the tops of the
houses, the dead walls, and all the cars, gates, and available eminences
within sight of the way along which he went. Having thus perambulated
the town, he returned to the market-cross, which, as we have said, stood
immediately in front of his inn. Here, attended by music, he personally
published his challenge in a deep and sonorous voice, calling upon the
corporation in right of his championship, to produce a man in ten clear
days ready to undertake battle with him as a pugilist, or otherwise to
pay him the sum of fifty guineas out of their own proper exchequer.

Having thus thrown down his gauntlet, the musicians played a dead march,
and there was certainly something wild and fearful in the association
produced by these strains of death and the fatality of encountering
him. This challenge he repeated at the same place