arrel of money. Say, Aunt Almira has got so she
can kick clear up to the gas jet, and she wants to play Juliet. I am
going to play Jeffries to her Juliet."

"Oh, you and your aunt have got things all mixed up. She does not have
to kick to play Juliet. And you can't box well enough to get into the
kindergarten class of prize fighters. What you want to fight for anyway?
Better go and study your Sunday-school lesson."

"I don't know," said the boy, as he tied on a boxing glove by taking
the string in his teeth, "there is more money in prize fighting than
anything, and Jeffries was a nice Sunday-school boy, and his father is a
preacher, and he said the Lord was on the side of Jim in the fight that
knocked out Fitzsimmons. Do you believe, Uncle Ike, that the Lord was in
the ring there at Coney Island, seconding Jeffries, and that the prayers
of Jeffries' preacher father had anything to do with Fitzsimmons getting
it right and left in the slats and on the jaw?"

"No! No! No!" said Uncle Ike, as he shuddered with disgust at the
thought that the good Lord should be mixed up in such things just to
make newspaper sensations. "There is not much going on that the Lord
is not an eye-witness of, but when it comes to being on one side or the
other of a prize fight He has got other business of more importance.
He watches even a sparrow's fall, but it is mighty doubtful in my mind
whether he paid any attention as to which of the two prize-fighting
brutes failed to get up in ten seconds. Boxing is all right, and I
believe in it, and want all boys to learn how to do it, in order that
they may protect themselves, or protect a weak person from assault, but
it ought to stop there. Men who fight each other for money ought to be
classed with bulldogs, wear muzzles and a dog license, and be shunned by
all decent people," and the old man lit his pipe with deliberation and
smoked a long time in silence.

"But they make money, don't they?" said the boy, who thought that making
money was the chief end of man. "Think of making thirty thousand dollars
in one night!"

"Yes, and think of the train robbers who make a hundred thousand dollars
a night," said the old man; "and what good did any money made by train
robbing or prize fighting ever do anybody? The men who make money that
way, blow it in for something that does them no good, and when they come
to die you have to take up a collection to bury them. Don't be a prize
fighter or a train robber