likely to be roughly handled.

It matters little that the sense of honour was crude and rough. It was
there, and all bullies and blackguards were compelled to abide by it So
long as it was the fashion to fight with fists, the use of the knife,
the bludgeon, and the brickbat was far rarer than it is now. The most
ignorant crowd could be trusted to police a brace of combatants. There
is no harm in a stand-up fight with the weapons of nature. Men _will_
fight, and we English people had the least harmful way of fighting of
all the peoples of the world. No man was ever good for much with his
hands who was not chaste and temperate in life. Excellence in this
pursuit was the growth of all the more masculine virtues.

I have the kindliest memories of some of the old heroes. The very
first man who helped me on with a pair of boxing-gloves was the mighty
'Slasher'--the Tipton Slasher, William Perry, who in the days of my
nonage kept the Champion of England public-house in my native parish of
West Bromwich, in South Staffordshire. He it was who trained my youthful
hands to guard my youthful head; and I have a foolish stupid pride and
pleasure in the memory of that fact The Worcester and Birmingham Canal
divides the parishes of Smethwick and West Bromwich, and the Slasher's
house was the last on the right-hand side--a shabby, seedy place
enough, smoke-encrusted on the outside and mean within, but a temple of
splendour all the same to the young imagination. The Champion of England
dwelt there--the unconquered, the undisputed chieftain of the fighting
clan. He reigned there for years, none daring to make him afraid.

I have been soundly flogged time and time again for visiting him. I have
been put on bread and water and held in solitary confinement for the
same misdemeanour, but the man had a glamour for me and drew me with the
attraction of a magnet. I can see him now, almost as plainly as if he
stood before me. He was a Hercules of a man, with enormous shoulders,
and his rough honest mid-England features had a sort of surly welcome in
their look. But for an odd deformity he would have had the stature of a
giant; but he was hideously knock-kneed, and his shamble when he walked
was awkward to the limits of the grotesque. You have only to invert the
letter V to have an image of the Slasher's legs from foot to knee.
His feet were strangers to each other; but his knees were inseparable
friends, and hugged each other in a perpetual int