|I HAVE just returned from a little two-handed tournament with the
gloves. I have filled my nose with cotton waste so that I shall not soak
this sketch in gore as I write.
I needed a little healthful exercise and was looking for something that
would be full of vigorous enthusiasm, and at the same time promote the
healthful flow of blood to the muscles. This was rather difficult.
I tried most everything, but failed. Being a sociable being (joke) I
wanted other people to help me exercise, or go along with me when I
exercised. Some men can go away to a desert isle and have fun with
dumb-bells and a horizontal bar, but to me it would seem dull and
commonplace after a while, and I would yearn for more humanity.
Two of us finally concluded to play billiards; but we were only amateurs
and the owner intimated that he would want the table for Fourth of July,
so we broke off in the middle of the first game and I paid for it.
Then a younger brother said he had a set of boxing-gloves in his room,
and although I was the taller and had longer arms, he would hold up as
long its he could., and I might hammer him until I gained strength and
finally got well.
I accepted this offer because I had often regretted that I had not made
myself familiar with this art, and also because I knew it would create
a thrill of interest and fire me with ambition, and that's what a
hollow-eyed invalid needs to put him on the road to recovery.
The boxing-glove is a large fat mitten, with an abnormal thumb and a
string at the wrist by which you tie it on, so that when you feed it to
your adversary he cannot swallow it and choke himself. I had never
seen any boxing-gloves before, but my brother said they were soft and
wouldn't hurt anybody. So we took off some of our raiment and put them
on. Then we shook hands. I can remember distinctly yet that we shook
hands. That was to show that we were friendly and would not slay each
other.
My brother is a great deal younger than I am and so I warned him not to
get excited and come for me with anything that would look like wild and
ungovernable fury, because I might, in the heat of debate, pile his jaw
up on his forehead and fill his ear full of sore thumb. He said that was
all right and he would try to be cool and collected.
Then we put our right toes together and I told him to be on his guard.
At that moment I dealt him a terrific blow aimed at his nose, but
through a clerical error of mine it went over his shoulder and spent
itself in the wall of the room, shattering a small holly-wood bracket,
for which I paid him $3.75 afterward. I did not wish to buy the bracket
because I had two at home, but he was arbitrary about it and I bought
it.
We then took another athletic posture, and in two seconds the air was
full of poulticed thumb and buckskin mitten. I soon detected a chance
to put one in where my brother could smell of it, but I never knew just
where it struck, for at that moment I ran up against something with the
pit of my stomach that made me throw up the sponge along with some other
groceries, the names of which I cannot now recall.
My brother then proposed that we take off the gloves, but I thought I
had not sufficiently punished him, and that another round would complete
the conquest, which was then almost within my grasp. I took a bismuth
powder and squared myself, but in warding off a left-hander, I forgot
about my adversary's right and ran my nose into the middle of his
boxing-glove. Fearing that I had injured him, I retreated rapidly on my
elbows and shoulder-blades to the corner of the room, thus giving him
ample time to recover. By this means my younger brother's features were
saved, and are to-day as symmetrical as my own.
I can still cough up pieces of boxing-gloves, and when I close my eyes
I can see calcium lights and blue phosphorescent gleams across the
horizon; but I am thoroughly convinced that there is no physical
exercise which yields the same amount of health and elastic vigor to
the puncher that the manly art does. To the punchee, also, it affords a
large wad of glad surprises and nose bleed, which cannot be hurtful to
those who hanker for the pleasing nervous shock, the spinal jar and the
pyrotechnic concussion.
That is why I shall continue the exercises after I have practiced with
a mule or a cow-catcher two or three weeks, and feel a little more
confidence in myself.