s;
and, when the chief instructor interfered and ordered his assistant
out of the ring, I begged for more; and so a fresh man was put in, and
another, and another, until six men had failed to tire me, or to
disturb me in the least. After the first two I laughed, laughed
loudly, in the midst of my aggressive work, and enjoyed it every
moment of the time, and, when occasionally I was the recipient of a
stinging blow, it merely added to my zest.

Next morning I found myself a hero. In the course of the night, I had
become famous in a small circle as a bruiser. In accomplishing this, I
had thrown aside for the time being my religious scruples on the
question of boxing, not only on boxing, but fighting, and I had set
aside a good deal of my prejudice in my struggle for an education, and
my success in the thing I started out to do almost unbalanced me.

I had for the first few days after this encounter a terrific struggle,
a struggle of the human soul, between my character and my reputation.
Only about one hundred and fifty men saw the encounter, but, before
parade time next morning, fifteen hundred men were acquainted with it.
It had reached the officers' mess, and, as I went back and forth, I
was pointed out as the new discovery. I finally reached a state of
mind that filled me with disgust, and I took an afternoon stroll down
the road to Walmer Castle; and just opposite the window of the room
in which the Duke of Wellington died--on the sands of Deal beach I
knelt on my knees and promised God that I "wudn't put th' dhirty
gloves on again," and I kept the promise--while in the training depot.

Early in 1882 I was drafted to headquarters near London--a trained
soldier. My forenoons were spent in parades, drills, fatigue and other
duties. In the afternoons I continued my studies. I entered into
religious work with renewed vigour, connecting myself with a small
independent church not far from the barracks. My thick Irish brogue
militated against my usefulness in the church, and in expressing
myself with warmth, I usually made it worse. In the barrack-room, my
brogue brought me several Irish nicknames which irritated me. They
were names usually attached to the Roman Catholic Irish, and having
been brought up in an Ulster community, where part of a boy's
education is to hate Roman Catholics, I naturally resented these
names. A Protestant Irishman will tolerate "Pat," but "Mick" will put
him in a fighting attitude in a moment.