knew something
touching the "noble art of self-defense," as the followers of ring
sports would say, was something that I had never had an opportunity of
doing before, and it is hardly to be wondered at that I availed myself
of the chance before I had been there a very long time.

I towered over McLean like a mountain over a mole hill, and I remember
well that the first time that I faced him I thought what an easy matter
it would be for me to knock his reputation into a cocked hat, and that
before a man could say "Jack Robinson." In a very few moments, however,
I had changed my opinion. I had fancied that I was a pretty good sort of
a man myself with or without the gloves, but long before the end of that
first lesson I had come to the conclusion that my education in that
line, as well as others, had been neglected, and that I still had
considerable to learn. McLean went around me very much as a cooper goes
around a barrel, hitting me wherever and whenever he pleased, and the
worst of the matter was that I could not hit him at all. It was not
until after he had convinced me just how little I knew that he began to
teach me, beginning with the rudiments of the art. I proved to be an apt
pupil and soon became quite proficient at the game, in fact so good was
I that I sometimes fancied that I could lick a whole army of wildcats,
this being especially the case when the beer was in and the wit was out,
for be it beer or wine, the effect is generally the same, a fact that I
had not yet learned, though it dawned on me long before I left
Philadelphia, and I quit it for good and all, to which fact I attribute
the success that I have since met with both in the sporting and the
business world.

It was in 1875 and during my last season with the Athletics, if I
remember rightly, that I became involved in a saloon row, that, to say
the least of it, was not to my credit, and that I have been ashamed of
ever since. We had been out to the grounds practicing until nearly
nightfall and on the way home we stepped into a German saloon on the
corner for the purpose of refreshing the inner man and washing the dust
out of our throats. In some way the conversation turned on the doings of
various fighters and I expressed myself pretty freely concerning their
merits and demerits, for having taken boxing lessons, I was naturally
anxious to set myself up as an authority on matters pugilistic.

Just as we were in the midst of the argument a fresh po