e was decidedly superior to an
average spar for a championship in point of excitement, I went no more
to the competitions. Since then six or seven generations of boxers have
passed into peaceful pursuits; and I have no doubt that my experience is
in some respects out of date. The National Sporting Club has arisen; and
though I have never attended its reunions, I take its record of three
pugilists slain as proving and enormous multiplication of contests,
since such accidents are very rare, and in fact do not happen to
reasonably healthy men. I am prepared to admit also that the
disappearance of the old prize-ring technique must by this time have
been compensated by the importation from America of a new glove-fighting
technique; for even in a knocking-out match, brains will try conclusions
with brawn, and finally establish a standard of skill; but I notice that
in the leading contests in America luck seems to be on the side of
brawn, and brain frequently finishes in a state of concussion, a loser
after performing miracles of "science." I use the word luck advisedly;
for one of the fascinations of boxing to the gambler (who is the main
pillar of the sporting world) is that it is a game of hardihood,
pugnacity and skill, all at the mercy of chance. The knock-out itself is
a pure chance. I have seen two powerful laborers batter one another's
jaws with all their might for several rounds apparently without giving
one another as much as a toothache. And I have seen a winning pugilist
collapse at a trifling knock landed by a fluke at the fatal angle. I
once asked an ancient prizefighter what a knock-out was like when it did
happen. He was a man of limited descriptive powers; so he simply pointed
to the heavens and said, "Up in a balloon." An amateur pugilist, with
greater command of language, told me that "all the milk in his head
suddenly boiled over." I am aware that some modern glove fighters of the
American school profess to have reduced the knock-out to a science. But
the results of the leading American combats conclusively discredit the
pretension. When a boxer so superior to his opponent in skill as to be
able practically to hit him where he pleases not only fails to knock him
out, but finally gets knocked out himself, it is clear that the
phenomenon is as complete a mystery pugilistically as it is
physiologically, though every pugilist and every doctor may pretend to
understand it. It is only fair to add that it has not be