C. S. Montanye

“ It was brutal though comical until sympathy overpowered me and I drew Sapp around one corner of the barn to give him the benefit of some kindly advice.
“Listen, Brainless,” I said seriously. “Ottie Scandrel is a friend of mine but there are other limits besides the twelve-mile one which even friendship oversteps. In case you don’t know it I feel it’s my duty to tell you that you’re not being treated right. You're not getting a square deal. You don’t have to be a chopping block as long as you have a mouth and know how to use it. Tell him to raise your wages or tone down the knuckle music. ”

“ Total strangers tied into one another with the greatest of enthusiasm. Strange young men went to the cobbles in death grips, elderly gentlemen got back their second youth and the noise of the battle sounded like a boiler factory running wild.
“Snapping turtles!” Ottie guffawed, rubbing his hands. ”

“ There was material for a dozen musical comedy wows up at Dooley’s Lodge!
In spite of all of the laughs, however, the lair was an ideal place to ready up for a fistic introduction to anybody and Scandrel wasn’t backward about making the most of it. Zeb, the hired man around the place, who was old enough to have boasted acquaintance with Columbus, erected a ring out in the orchard and in his spare time made a gym of the stable for Ottie to step his stuff. The highways were delicious for road work. ”

“ They’re giving guys gifts of twenty years every day for safe blowing. I always felt that sooner or later your old pals would be running up the river and asking the warden if they could go up and visit with you in your cell!”
“My fist will visit with you on that curiosity you call a chin if you get rosy with me!” Ottie bawled. “If you ever went to the pen to see any of your own relatives it’s an even-money bet that you’d never get out. That map you're wearing is enough to convict you for life. You’re my personal idea of a hundred dollars’ worth of nothing. ”

“ Ottie guffawed. “Absolutely, I never seen nothing like this before. Get wise to yourself, Attractive. They pay day laborers six dollars an hour for less work than you do and they can have all the company they want when the whistle blows. You might as well know now that like Hercules I’m strong for you. And when I’m strong for a gal nothing stands in my way. Get me?”
“You'll have to excuse me,” Cinderella replied. “I think I hear the kettle beginning to boil.”
If the ambitious daughter of the house didn’t come down to watch Ottie’s daily dozen, Mother Dooley did. ”

“ Ottie smirked, “you’re advising me to quit the business. Well, possibly I will after I knock this Old Father Hubbard for a Bulgarian velocipede. To change the subject, where are we going this evening?”
Cinderella winked at me.
“I don’t know where you're going this evening but I do know where you're going now. That’s away from here. If my mother catches you chinning with me you'll be looking for a new apartment to-morrow. She’s fierce that way. Young men to her are the same as snakes.” ”

“ The stock market might have given me a twist but you know the old saying—you can’t keep a good man in glass houses. Right now I know where there’s a package of money all wrapped up and waiting for me to call around and collect it. ”

“ The records have it that it’s a long, long journey movie actors, pugilists and other celebrities in the public optic have to travel to reach the land of fame and fortune after they have once slipped. In fact the going is so tough there’s plenty alibi for those who totter and fall by the wayside. This spicy narrative has to do with a certain party who made the grade and came all the way back from nowhere at all.
If you haven’t met him before allow me to introduce you to Ottie Scandrel. ”

“ Hen isn’t cut rate but he’s awfully absent-minded and nearly always he gives you too much change. Just turn at the next corner.”
“Right here?” Ottie grinned, when we pulled up in front of a pill factory that was as dusty as a vacuum cleaner. “You ought to see the sickness shops in New York, honey. Nobody ever went in for a nickel’s worth of quinine and come out without buying a bathing suit, a set of Shakespeare, an electric fan or one of these here thermometer bottles that keep coffee hot until drunk. We'll stop off in the big burg when we go on our honeymoon.” ”

“ Neither Scandrel, myself nor any of the gym prima donnas had ever glimpsed the hustling welterweight.
When articles were signed Hubbard was trekking through upper New Jersey and lower New York with a circus and obtaining frequent leaves of absence to grab off a fight on the side. I had reason to know that he had spent years and a fortune in postage trying to get a bout with Mr. Champ and being laughed off for his pains. ”

“ Ambitious young man not too proud to be knocked out occasionally. Salary no object and good future assured. Apply Tucsday morning at ten o'clock. Ask for SCANDREL, O’Grady’s Gymnasium, Bronx.
“If that don’t get ’em,” he said when I had handed his literary chef-d’œuvre a stare, “they run gondolas in the subway. These fashion plates who win their bread money by loafing around here think I’m trying to show off when I tell them I’m financially impoverished. The cheapest any of the clique will work for me is for fifteen dollars a day with lunch money. ”

“ Sapp confided to me in an idle minute. “It ain’t every one who can have his pitcher in a newspaper—only big bootleggers, high-class crooks and them kind can do it. And that reminds me. I’m getting along swell these days with the gal. Yesterday she give me leave to clean out the kitchen stove, polish it up and get four pails of water for her from the well.”
The day after that rheumatism put Mother Dooley to bed and Cinderella, dispatched to the village pharmacy for some patent remedy, accepted Ottie’s offer to drive her down to the village in one of the Lodge’s cars. ”

“ Scandrel glanced in the direction of the dining room down the porch and gave me a nudge.
“You’ll see the reason when we go in to feed, Joe. She’s as blond as a gold watch chain, has a voice like a victrola and eyes that kill you dead. I hear she’s straight out of a burlesque show that got stranded in Patterson and is playing waitress here just to pick up enough car fare to get back to Columbus Circle. ”

“ The king of the welterweights had told Hubbard to fight some one who meant something and Hubbard’s manager had openly confessed to Ottie that the principal reason they were willing and anxious to meet him was because once Battling Scandrel was knocked for fish, the persistent challenger would then be in a stronger position to pester the champ anew. ”

“ To me it’s nothing at all. I’m not as good as I formerly was—I’m better. Smacking the half-wits who bother me has kept me right at the top of my form and I’m so tough that I’m thinking of buying a leopard instead of a police pussy. There’s plenty plums in the shape of purses ready and waiting for me and with a few grand in my kick I'll be standing pretty again. I’ll be my own manager, I’ll find a cheap sparring partner—some boy who ain’t afraid of being beaten up for three dollars a week—I'll train in the country where there’s lots of climate and——”
“You big clown!” ”