uff, and
what's more, you _know_ it, cheer up! Because you can bet the gas-bill
money that you got somethin' just as good. Some trick concealed about
you that'll keep you out of the bread line. The thing to do is to take
an inventory of yourself and find it!

Look good--it's there somewheres!

Kid Scanlan's was hangin' from his left shoulder, and it made him
enough dimes in five years to step out of the crowd and watch the
others scramble from the sidelines. It was just an ordinary arm, size
36, model A, lot 768, same as we all have--but inside of it the Kid had
a wallop that would make a six-inch shell look like a lover's caress!

Inside of his head the Kid had nothin'!

Scanlan went through the welterweight division about like the Marines
went through Belleau Wood, and, finally, the only thing that stood
between him and the title was a guy called One-Punch Ross--the
champion. They agreed to fight until nature stopped the quarrel, at
Goldfield, Nev. They's two things I'll never forget as long as I pay
the premiums on my insurance policy, and they are the first and second
rounds of that fight. That's as far as the thing went, just two short
frames, but more real scrappin' was had in them few minutes than Europe
will see if Ireland busts loose! Except that they was more principals,
the battle of the Marne would have looked like a chorus men's frolic
alongside of the Ross-Scanlan melee. They went at each other like
peeved wildcats and the bell at the end of the first round only seemed
to annoy 'em--they had to be jimmied apart. Ross opened the second
round by knockin' Scanlan through the ropes into the ten-dollar boxes,
but the Kid was back and in there tryin' again before the referee could
find the body to start a count. After beatin' the champ from pillar to
post and hittin' him with everything but the bucket, the Kid rocks him
to sleep with a left swing to the jaw, just before the gong.

The crowd went crazy. I went in the hole for five thousand bucks and
the Kid went in the movies!

I had been handlin' Ross before that battle, but after it I wouldn't
have buried him! This guy was a ex-champion then, and I don't want no
ex-nothin' around _me_--unless it's a bill.

Right after that scrap, Scanlan sent for me and made me a proposition
to look after his affairs for the followin' three years, and the only
time I lost in acceptin' it was caused by the ink runnin' out of my
fountain pen when I was signin