James Greenwood

“ Have you seen this?' It was the paper she meant. 'No,' I says, 'I ain't.' She says, 'Have you seen this Tom Paddock?' 'No,' I says. 'I have,' says she, 'a needle-pointer at Redditch; a fellow with no more breadth to his shoulders than there is between the eyes of a mouse, and he challenges you to fight. And I tell you this, Bendy, if you don't take the challenge you are a coward. And I tell you more, if you won't fight him I'll send and take up his challenge myself.' Eighty-two she was at that time. ”

“ It may not be out of place, before I endeavour to reproduce for the reader's edification Bendigo's narrative pretty much as he confided it to me, to render some idea of the sort of man, as regards personal appearance, the renowned champion, now in his 63rd year, is. Aged and used-up prizefighters are not invariably pleasant objects to contemplate, but Bendigo is a shining exception to the rule. ”

“ The parson he turned away, but I could tell by the move of his shoulders that he was laughing too; which, perhaps, made it a little better. They thought it was a joke of mine; but it wasn't. I took to it too serious for joking, and when I got to my cell and was quiet, I kep' thinking about it, and about how somebody must have helped little David to lick the giant with his sword and armour, and about them old times when I used to ask that I might win the fight, that I might keep my old mother out of the workhouse. ”

“ What is more, I never in my life had a hit on the nose hard enough to make it bleed, and in all my battles I never got a black eye. I've got a broken thumb, as you see, and a broken finger, and I've got the bridge of my nose rather flattened, and one of my teeth knocked out, but that was through a kick in the face I got at football many years ago. ”

“ So in the dark, and with the snow coming down, I went on my knees and prayed as well as I knowed how; and when I got up I felt a new man. I didn't quite go without ale; I had one half-pint between then and Sunday, and then I went to the chapel again and on to the platform, and, in the face of everybody who was there, I knelt down and told em how I was changed, and how that nothing should tempt me to go wrong again, and I've kept my word, and I mean to go on keeping it. ”

“ So I'll skip over the time that I was knocking about Nottingham, and when the most common line in the newspapers was 'Bendigo in trouble again,' and which led to my seeing the inside of Nottingham Gaol seven-and-twenty times. I will skip over all that till we come to the twenty-eighth time. What was it for? Not for thieving. No; it was never as bad as that. When I was a boy, and up to the time when I was a young fellow, my life was a rough 'un, and if I saw any chap eating, and I was hungry, I'd take his grub away from him, Oh, yes, I'd do that ”

“ He is light on his feet, and as active with his arms as a school-boy, and he has the laugh and certainly the bright eyes of one, all evidences of great physical power, and which are the more remarkable taken in connection with the tact that he has, in one sense, had "everything against him" all through his life. ”