imacy. In fighting
he used to await his man, propped up in this inverted V fashion, and
somehow he gained so solid a footing in that strange and clumsy attitude
that he never, in all his experience of the Ring, received a knock-down
blow until he encountered Tom Sayers in that last melancholy fight which
cost him the championship, and the snug little property in the Champion
of England public-house, and his friends and his reputation, and all he
had in the world.

I earned one of the soundest thrashings I ever got in my life by playing
truant from school in order to follow the Slasher to a wretched little
race meeting, held at a place called The Roughs, on the side of the
Birmingham Road, in the parish of Hands-worth. My hero was there in
glory, followed about by an innumerable tag-rag and bobtail, and I am
afraid that on two occasions at least he was tempted to swagger and
'show off,' as children say. He shambled up to one of the 'try your
strength' machines: the figure of a circus clown, with a buffer to
punch at in the neighbourhood of his midriff, and a dial on his chest to
indicate the weight of the blow administered. The Slasher tossed a penny
to the proprietor of the machine and waved him on one side; but the man
stood in front of the contrivance and besought him pathetically not to
strike.

'Not you, Mr. Perry, 'he said humbly; 'oh, not you, Mr. Perry.'

The Slasher, with an 'Away, slight man' motion of the hand, said
'Gerrout!' and the fellow obeyed, seeing that there was nothing else
for it. Hercules spat upon his hand, clenched his fist, and smote. Crash
went the whole machine into ruin, the wooden upright splintered, and
the iron supports doubled into uselessness. The destroyer rolled on
rejoicing; but the crowd made a subscription, and the owner of the
machine stowed away his damaged property well pleased.

Mr. Morris Roberts was a gentleman known to local fame in those days--I
am writing of five-and-thirty years ago--and Mr. Morris Roberts had
a boxing-booth on the ground. In front of the booth he had a little
platform, and from it he addressed the congregation gathered together at
the beating of a gong.

'Walk up, gentlemen; walk up, and see the noble art of self-defence
practised by Englishmen, not like the cowardly Frenchman or Italian,
as uses sticks, knives, pistils, and other firearms, but the wepons
pervided by nature. I've got a nigger inside as won't say No to no man.
Also George Gough, as h