Harry Charles Witwer was born in Athens, Pa., on March 11, 1890. He
attended St. Joseph's College, Philadelphia, and his pre-literary
career included: Errand boy in butcher shop, bellhop, managing prize
fighters, and plain and fancy reporting on newspapers in Florida,
Elizabeth, N.J., Newark, N.J., Atlanta, Ga., and New York (_American_
and _Sun_). In 1917 he was a war correspondent and the following
year his popular stories in slang first achieved book publication
(_From Baseball to Boches_). He has had approximately a book a year
ever since, of which _The Leather Pushers_ was one of the most
successful and _Bill Grimm's Progress_ is the most recent. Besides
something like 400 magazine stories--over 100 of them for a single
magazine--he is the author of at least 125 motion pictures, a couple
of comic strips and one or two plays.
_Classics in Slang_ is a series of tales told by a prize fighter,
One-Punch McTague, who has inherited a bookshop, conducted for him by
an attractive young woman named Ethel Kingsley. At least she is
attractive to McTague and he finds her altogether too attractive to a
customer named Hootmon and probably Scotch. Ethel has been trying to
instil in McTague a love for reading and in each story the prize
fighter gives his own version of some literary classic she has put in
his hands. There is also a running account of his own personal
affairs, including fights in the ring and encounters in the bookshop.