The following six articles have the common theme of Ashley Sterne amusing himself away from home. Watch for the delightful wordplay with "hop scotch" in the article Up and Down the Downs So Free.
Haymaking [Oct 1915]
The Joys of Fishing [Dec 1915]
Buying a Melon [Oct 1916]
In a Turkish Bath [Mar 1920]
Up and Down the Downs So Free [Mar 1921]
My First Boxing Match [Sep 1921]
[NOTE: The first article contains some references that may
puzzle the modern American reader.
"Chiltern Hundreds" refers to a political appointment taken by
a member of Parliament wishing to resign his/her seat. "Sal volatile" is a form of smelling
salts, and the "mangold wurzel" is a cultivated root vegetable used
as livestock fodder.]
Haymaking
By
Ashley Sterne
Have you ever tried to make hay?
It's really quite, simple. You merely get a blade of grass, hang it up to dry
in the sun (or, if there's an eclipse on, in front of the kitchen fire), and
then remove it and place it in a heap. When you've collected and dried all the
hays available, you arrange them with their heads pointing one way and their
tails the other in the shape of a stack, get your thatcher to thatch a nice
straw lid for it, and your hay is ready to hide needles in, or to feed your
lowing kine upon, or to stuff dolls' bodies with.
I am just back from the country
where I have been lending a helping hand to a farmer friend. When he wrote to
me asking if I would assist him I had no idea the process was so simple. I
thought it required skilled labor; and when I told him so I was very agreeably
surprised to receive his reply that any fool could make hay and that I should
not feel at all out of my depth.
Strictly speaking, hay is born, not
made. That is to say, when the grass is quite ripe it is hay; it only requires
to be mown. This mowing is great fun. Sometimes it is done with a horse hitched
up to a dynamo, sometimes by hand. We cut ours by hand. A scythe is a curious
weapon to handle if you don't know it well enough to speak to. As you are
probably aware, the blade is shaped some what like a boomerang—a fact it is
well to remember. I unfortunately forgot it, with the result that the first
stroke I made I missed the hay altogether and mowed off the toe-cap of a new
brown boot and ripped off the turn-up of one trouser-leg. The second attempt
was somewhat more successful. I mowed at least three blades of hay; but owing
to the impetus of my stroke, the enthusiasm I put into it, and the very slight
resistance which the vegetation afforded to it, I was swung right round, and
nearly mowed my farmer friend into two distinct portions. At the third stroke I
made a praiseworthy but abortive attempt to mow a large boulder which had got
mixed up with the field. This necessitated my sitting down and stropping the
scythe with a thing like a petrified cucumber. My fourth stroke was another
miss. The scythe went sailing out of my hands, and hit an honest laborer a few
yards off in the small of the back, while I fell into a clump of stinging
nettles.
"You'll soon get into the way
of it," said my farmer friend, as he pulled me out and started rubbing my
face and neck with dock leaves.
Truth to tell, I was a little
discouraged, and about to explain to him that I thought of applying for the
Chiltern Hundreds and returning to town by the next train. But his words put
fresh courage into me, and so I started again, and by dint of keeping one eye
on my farmer friend and the other on the honest laborer (who had meanwhile
revived from the effects of the terrific "kidney punch" by drinking
large quantities of—I suppose—sal volatile out of a tin can), I managed to mow
at least a pound of hay.
At midday we fell out for lunch,
and I noted with pride that the palms of my hands were covered with beautiful
blisters. They had not been in that condition since the day, years ago, when I
punted fifteen stone of solid maiden aunt from Staines to Windsor. In the
afternoon we went at it again, and by sundown the meadow was practically bald.
The next day we laid another meadow low, and another the following day, at the end
of which time I should not have been ashamed to mow hay against the professional
champion. I was really quite sorry when it was all carted and stacked. I even
offered to mow the mangold wurzels from sheer love of mowing, but my farmer
friend would not hear of my doing any more work for him. (That was after I had
mowed a row of them just to show him I could.)
Haymaking is really a very fine
exercise, and put me into excellent training. I weighed ten stone when I went
to the country and nine stone ten when I returned. I thus lost four pounds, to
say nothing of the fifteen and-six at solo whist coming home in the train. But
that is another story.
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The Joys of Fishing
By
Ashley Sterne
It was Sir Izaak Walton, the famous
mathematician and Senior Angler, who, writing so eloquently upon the soothing
delight of a summer day's fishing, recently inspired me to try its effect upon
myself. I know lots of men who are devoted to the sport; who go off early in
the morning with rod, line, camp-stool and empty creel, sit on the back of a
damp and draughty mill-pond all day, and return in.the evening with a creel
emptier than ever and the beginnings of a thoroughly reliable quinsy; and who
speak in most enthusiastic terms of the entrancing hours they have spent.. But
hitherto I had never experienced them myself. I therefore persuaded a friend to
lend me a complete outfit, and one morning last week I set off for the country
at an hour at which I rarely rise except to attend diamond jubilees or
coronations.
I arrived at the fishing-ground
shortly after seven o'clock, and at once proceeded to put together my rod. By
bumping it lustily against a tree I eventually contrived to get all the joints
fixed, and I then got out the line. During the journey down, this almost
superhumanly intelligent article had managed to escape from the reel and to
crochet itself into one of the most exquisitely beautiful and complex designs I
had ever seen. I sat down under a tree and began to unravel it. During the hour
I spent at the job, I think I negotiated that line into pretty nearly every
design known to fancy-work. I successfully made a d'oyley, a table-centre, a
hammock, a shopping-bag, a toilet mat, a fringe-net, and finally a dear little
cellular vest. I was so pleased with the latter that I seriously contemplated
foregoing my fishing and sending the dainty garment, just as it was, to our
vicaress, who is organising a sale of work for the purpose of sending nice
thick winter sporrans to the Scottish regiments at the front. However, I picked
it up carelessly, and—mirabile dictu—it all came undone, and lay before me a
perfectly straight and incorruptible fishing line.
I do not attempt to explain this
phenomenon. I simply state the bare fact. I have narrated the circumstance to
other anglers, who inform me that there is nothing singular in my experience,
and that conversely they have known straight lines to become inextricably mixed
up into a ball while their backs have been turned for just the few seconds
required to open a fresh bottle of ale.
Rod and line thus being prepared,
there still remained the gut tackle to affix. This was a comparatively easy job
when I at length managed to extract the hook from the back of my hand; but I
felt so weak and anaemic from loss of blood that it was imperative to revive
myself with a little nourishment. Therefore, as a church clock in the distance
struck nine, I began to eat the lunch which, in normal circumstances, I should
not have touched for another four hours. I ate it ravenously, and then I must have
dropped off to sleep, for when I opened my eyes the clock was striking eleven;
and it struck twelve before I finally got the hook out of the back of my
trousers. I can only conclude that I inadvertently sat upon it when I settled
down to eat. Twice I undressed—the first time to cut the hook out with my
pocket-knife, the second time to liberate a wasp that had unfortunately become
incarcerated in my clothing upon the first occasion.
Then it began to rain. I was drenched
to the skin in five minutes. I had no mackintosh with me, but I had a railway
time-table. Sheltering myself in the depths of a bramble-hedge which I can positively
guarantee contained more thorns to the cubic inch than any other bramble-hedge
in the world, I found that there was a train home in half an hour. I decided to
abandon my sport, in spite of the fact that my friend had told me that fish
always bite better after rain. However, it wasn't rain as I understand the
term. It was a sheer heartless cataclysm; and my friend had not told me what
fish do after cataclysms. Possibly they clamber up the bank and eat out of your
hand. Possibly, too, they retire to the comparatively dry surroundings afforded
by the uttermost depths of the pond. Anyhow, I didn't wait to see. I broke the
rod in two places whilst taking it to pieces. The line is still—for all I know
to the contrary—firmly entangled in the oak-tree. The hook I left embedded in
my shoulder-blade until I got into the railway carriage. I forgot the creel
altogether.
The one bright interlude in my
day's fishing was afforded by my catching my train, which was the only thing I
did catch—unless you count a mild attack of influenza. However, in any event, I
should not have caught any fish, because I subsequently discovered that I had
omitted to provide any bait.
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[NOTE: In the next article there is
a reference to a board game named "ludo."]
Buying a Melon
By
Ashley Sterne
I was at the counter, counting out
my money. The greengrocer was in the shop-parlor, eating bread and
dripping. The maid was in the gar— No,
I'm wrong. The maid wasn't on in this act; only the green grocer and me—I mean
I.
"Good morning. Have you any
fruit?" I asked, as he entered the shop.
"Fruit? Let me see now, have
I?" he mused, scratching his chin. "Yes, since you mention it, I
believe I have got a little somewhere. Now, where did I put it? Ah, would you
mind getting up off them tomatoes and sitting on them artichokes instead?"
I got off tho first them and sat on
the second while he rummaged about among some market baskets.
"Here we are!" he
exclaimed at length. "What would you say to a nice pomegranate?"
"I haven't a notion," I
replied. "I've never spoken to a pomegranate before. I should be
tongue-tied with bashfulness. Introduce me to some thing easier to start with,
a red currant or a stewed prune, and gradually work up to the
pomegranate."
"Here's some nice little green
gooseberries," he said. "What d'you think of them?"
"They're rather small and
green," I observed.
"Little green gooseberries
usually are," explained the shopman. "Take one in your hand and
stroke it."
"It hasn't got any whiskers
either," I said.
"Nor'd you at that age,"
he said. "Don't hurry, Take a chair while it grows some. I've nothing to
do. I only run this shop as a hobby. But stay."
I kindly stayed.
"P'r'aps you'd prefer a
nectarine?"
"What's that?" I asked.
"Anything like a soup-tureen?"
"A beautiful fruit," went
on the greengrocer. "If there'd only been nectarines in the Garden of Eden
there'd have been none of that apple scandal. These"—he got a box out of
the window—"are the finest Cape nectarines on the market—come straight
from the Horn, they did. You might turn Covent Garden upside down and shake it
without finding a better fruit. Sure to give satisfaction. Remove that horrid
sinking feeling. Children like 'em.
Float in the bath. Make old hats like new. No more tired, aching feet,
and all the rest of it. Give 'em a trial."
He held out the box, and I ate six.
"I don't like them," I
said. "Take them away. Do I get any rebate if I send the stones
back?"
"Not allowed to do it,
sir," said the greengrocer. "I should get my licence endorsed. Sorry
you don't like 'em. What about a persimmon?"
"That's a pretty name," I
remarked. "Most inspiring. I believe I could write a poem about Percival,
the Parsimonious Persimmon. Show me one. Let me see one face to face, eye to
eye, shoulder to shoulder, each to each. I feel I am going to love
Percival."
As luck would have it, the one
thing I wanted could not be found. The man searched vainly in all sorts of
boxes and baskets. He even opened a drawer labelled "Persimmons," but
none came to light. Then he commenced to feel in all his pockets, and, eager to
help, I felt in all mine, too. I was almost inclined to run for a policeman,
and feel in all his pockets. The more we couldn't find a persimmon the more
anxious I grew to meet one. We went systematically right through the shop, and
finally we climbed into the shop-window and went right through that into the street.
It was as I was coming up for the
third time that I suddenly thought of melons, I can't explain why; I just did.
Things happen like that with me. I remember I once thought of a rum omelette in
the middle of the Handel Festival. Be that as it may, as soon as we got back
into the shop I turned to the greengrocer, who was placing a slice of raw
banana on his right eye.
"I've made up my mind," I
said cheerily. "I've thought of a melon."
"Double it," he said;
"take away the first number— "
"You're thinking of
ludo," I put in. "I want a
melon—a yellow Rugby one, not a green soccer one."
Ho found one almost at once in a
drawer labelled "Melons."
"This is a good 'un," he
said, passing out from touch. "Match size."
"Has it got any roe
inside?" I asked, catching it and holding it to my ear. "I can't hear
a sound. I particularly want one with a roe. Those dear little pip things, you
know," I added, as he looked puzzled.
"Oh, sure to," he said.
"All the best melons have pips."
"Shall we open it to make certain?"
I suggested. "Cuthbert, the canary, will be so disappointed if it's a
male."
"Don't you worry," said
the greengrocer, reassuringly. "Just take 'em for granted. That'll be
one-and-ten."
"One and ten's eleven," I
calculated rapidly, "Cast out nines that leaves two. Got change for a
three penny-bit?"
He signalled two bulls and a wide
on the cash register, and handed me a packet of pins.
"Should you find
Percival," I said, "perhaps you would send me word. You know where I
live? No? I'm sorry I haven't a card, but you'll see the name of the house
painted on the
gate."
It was not till I reached home that
I found that I had left the melon in the tram. I was on the point of starting
for Scotland Yard to see whether the Master of the blood hounds could trace it
for me, when I suddenly remembered what had put the thought of melons into my
head. I dislike them more than any other fruit I've ever met.
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In a Turkish Bath
By
Ashley Sterne
If, next time you meet me, you
notice that my clothes hang rather loosely on me, don't think that I have
bought a ready-made suit in the dark, or that I have lost my butter coupons.
I've only had a Turkish bath, that's all.
It happened in this way. I had been
bathing at the seaside one day without noticing that the harbor-master had
omitted to close the harbor bar. Well, I am always susceptible to draughts, and
the result was that I contracted a lot of rheumatism. A man who was staying at
the same hotel advised me to try a Turkish bath.. Being friend less and alone,
I did so.
My troubles began in the hot room.
I started by reclining on the steam heating apparatus instead of on one of the
wooden benches. This made a very pretty pattern on my back and shoulders, but
otherwise I derived no benefit from it.
Then when I lay down on the wooden
bench I broke out into a profuse perspiration. Well, I hadn't gone there to do
that. If I want to perspire, I try to balance my passbook, or read the
instructions on my ration-card. The atmosphere, too, was terribly hot and
close, so I rang the bell, and asked the attendant to open a window. He told me
there weren't any, and that the heat and the closeness and the perspiration
were part of the bathing.
He said that the heat was only dry
heat, and that you can't be boiled in dry heat, and that Turkish baths worked
that way. I told him that it wasn't a bath at all; it was a beastly grill-room,
and that I was not a steak and tomatoes. I informed him, further, that his
wretched inferno was not in the least like what I had imagined a Turkish bath
to be. I had always thought that it was a nice large marble affair, with a few
goldfish and a water-lily or two floating about in it for decorative purposes,
and that as I reclined by the side of it, with my feet dangling in the water,
damsels in baggy trousers refreshed me from time to time with lumps of
bosphorus and Turkish delight, while concealed musicians played "Yaaka
Hula Hickey Dula" on dulcet dulcimers and soft-sounding sackbuts. At
least, that was the impression I gained from a picture I had once seen in the
Royal Academy.
However, when the attendant learned
that I'd never had a Turkish bath before, he said that perhaps I had rather
overdone the hot-room business, and that I had better be washed. So he took me
into another room where there were a lot of marble slabs, like bacon counters
in grocers' shops, and threw me down on one. Then the ruffian put on an
india rubber boxing glove and simply knocked me about as he liked. Every time I
tried to protest he thrust a huge, soapy lathering-brush into my mouth, and
went on punching me and slapping me and scrubbing me with his beastly boxing
glove.
Twice I managed to kick him in the
st—, in the struggle, I mean; but as on each occasion I rolled off the slippery
slab on to the floor and hurt my self, I gave up reprisals.
He then thrust,me into a cabinet
and turned on a scalding hot spray. I came out promptly and asked what he was
doing. He answered that he was opening the pores of my skin. He hurled me back
again and turned on an icy-cold spray. Again I sprang out and asked him if he
took me for a walrus or a penguin. He replied that he was now closing the pores
of my skin so that I shouldn't catch cold, and once more he shoved me into the
cabinet. And there I remained while the ruffian did just what he liked with my
pores, opening and shutting them as if they were his own.
Finally he turned off the water,
pulled me out, and wrapped me in so many towels that I couldn't move a muscle.
Then he carried me to my dressing room and flung me down on the couch with
instructions to stay there until I had "cooled off."
This took me exactly five seconds,
for as soon as he had gone off to torture another victim I freed my legs and ran
straight upstairs to the bureau to inquire for the man who had advised me to
try the bath. Unfortunately, he had left while I was having it, but if ever we
meet again I shall ask Joe Beckett to come and hit him for me.
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[NOTE: a "char-a-banc" is
an open-topped motor coach used for sight-seeing in the country. "Turmet" is Wiltshire dialect for
turnip. A "beauty chorus" is a group of chorus girls.]
Up and Down the Downs So Free
Ashley
Sterne Enjoys a Char-a-Banc Holiday.
"O, who will o'er the downs so
free—O, who will with me ride?" sang the conductor of the char-a-banc, as
he strolled up casually and lit a cigarette at the sparking-plug. "You,
sir," he said, addressing me. "You look as if you'd never had a ride
on anything more exciting than a rocking-horse. How could you like to up and
follow me, and win a blooming bride in this fifty candle-power, fitted to
measure, jewelled in every hole Jam Rolls?"
"Where are you going to, my pretty
maid?" I carolled back.
"To Shovehem-in-the-Ditch, via
Pushem-in-the-Hedge, kind sir, she said," warbled the conductor, getting
out a bundle of tickets and preparing to punch one in the eye.
"Then I'll go with you, my
pretty maid," I trolled "Have you any room?"
"Yessir, yessir, three bags
full," he chanted. "There's a top-hole, tip-up seat between this fat
lady—'ere, shore up, auntie, and let the gentleman look at it! —and old Granfer
Fungusface with the overflow of whiskers. Now, anybody else comin' on this
circular, personally misconducted tour? There is still room for a couple more
in the grease-box? No? Very well. Give 'er 'er 'ead, 'Erbert." The
conductor ran round to the front of the joy waggon, seized the handle, and
played a selection from "Cavalleria Rusticana"; then he rushed back
and flung himself into his seat just as the char-a-banc got the clutch between
its teeth and plunged headlong in the direction of the far blue hills, Marie.
We were a right goodly company
forsooth! On the front seat with the driver sat a magnificent lady upholstered
in rich and heavy furs—skink, munk, silver fox, Ostend rabbit, and whatnot—from
which I gathered she was either a Duchess or a beauty chorus. With her was an
Eton collar with a little boy inside it, his head lavishly anointed with oil,
and a little girl with ginger hair, a box of chocolate, silk stockings, and a
West Kensington accent.
In the next row there were five
young and beauteous damozels, a bag of buns, a bunch of bananas, a pint and a
half of monkey-nuts, and five unfinished jumpers still on their scaffolding. My
row consisted of the fat lady, myself, Granfer, a stock-broker, and a retired
lighthouse-keeper.
In the row behind sat a honeymoon
couple holding thumbs, two young fellows, aged about three-and-twenty and
twenty-three respectively, and a sad looking man who looked as if he lived on
aciddrops, prickly pears and turpentine.
My word, you should have seen us
chara and banc! The ground fairly slid beneath us. We were out of the suburbs
and into the rhubarb before we had time to kiss our hands and wave our flowers
to our relatives on the quay. We did Brixton in a flying leap, Streatham and
Norbury in three hops and a scotch, and reached. the Potted Bloater at Croydon
(where I did one hop and had three Scotches) before the fat lady had time to
realise that we were not the 196b motor-bus to Earl's Court.
Then we started off again and went
along so fast that a policeman who tried to push us over and take our number
got stuck to the radiator by the air pressure.
"We'll keep him here as a
mascot," cried the stockbroker; and old Granfer Fungusface said that these
be 'mazing times, that they be, and they never had nothing like it, that they
hadn't in his young days.
At last we were in the open
country. and all went merrily as a marriage licence. Yokels stopped hoeing
turmuts in the fields and gazed at us open-mouthed as we sped by, our engine-driver
returning the compliment by opening our throttle. One threw a horse and cart at
us for luck, while another mistook us for a circus, and the conductor managed
to sell him a couple of ticket-counterfoils for the second house at the
Coliseum for last Thursday week as we whizzed by.
We passed through a number of
charming villages, and in every one we created a great sensation. The villagers
came trooping out to greet us. and flung empty bottle, brickbats, dead cats,
potato-peeling, babies—any little gift they could lay their hands on, in fact—into
the char-a-banc.
And then, when we at length reached
Shovehem-in-the-Ditch, the Mayor himself, arrayed in a fluffy dressing gown and
a necklace of curtain-rings. accompanied by his mace-bearer and his clove-bearer
and his sword-swallower and the keys of the village on a green plush
pin-cushion, came out to greet us, and read out what we at first thought was an
address of welcome, until the two twenty-three-year-olds explained that it was
the clause from the Riot Act dealing with exceeding the speed limit.
After that interesting ceremony we
all got out and dispersed to see the sights. Some of us "did" ye olde
village church which dates back to Edward the Professor; some "did"
ye olde village workhouse which dates back to the Ministry of Pensions; others
"did" ye olde village drinking fountain which dates back to Trust
Houses Limited; while the villagers did the lot of us over the sale of picture
postcards of their loyal and ancient burgh.
Then, just as ye olde village clock
struck, we all got abroad again, and commenced the homeward journey, which we accomplished
without delay, except that we stopped once to leave a pedestrian at the
mortuary, and once owing to engine-trouble. The engine-driver and the
conductor, however, got busy with the tin-opener, and soon had the lid of the
engine off; but it wasn't until they had opened the carburettor and taken out a
couple of mice that had started to build there that they were able to make the
wheels go round again.
But it's an ill wind that has no
silver lining, and if it hadn't been for that last little mishap I shouldn't
have committed the pleasing error of clambering back in the thickly-falling
dusk into the wrong seat and finding myself wedged in amongst the five
beauteous damozels.
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My First Boxing Match
By
Ashley Sterne
One morning I had been down
Billingsgate way on business—as a matter of fact I had been to wish good luck
to an old pal who was to be be headed on the Tower Green for profiteering (he
had a topping day of it) —and was returning through the fish market when a fish
fancier banged me on the back of the skull with a crate of mackerel he was
carrying on one shoulder.
I turned round to expostulate with
him, and he promptly butted me in the eye with a sturgeon he was carrying on
his other shoulder. I swerved to let him pass, and received a stinging smack
behind the ear from the tail of a conger eel he was carrying in his mouth. I
dodged behind him to get out of the way, and a lobster the size of a small
crocodile, which he was carrying on his back, scratched my nose with its claw.
I can put up with a good deal
without complaining, but this cowardly blow from the lobster was the last straw
to give the camel the hump.
"Who's the clumsy fellow
with a face about as handsome as a dog fish?" I enquired of a bystander
(from the pins stuck in the lapel of his coat, I judged him to be a
professional winkle-taster).
"Which one?" he queried.
"That fellow taking the
Brighton Aquarium for a walk," I answered. indicating my assailant.
"What d'yer want to know for?
Wanter buy a goldfish or a whale or somethink? If so, I—"
"Well," I interrupted,
"I feel inclined to run after him and give him a good hard slap. He nearly
broke my head with his beastly mackerel, knocked my eye out with his confounded
sturgeon- "
"Oh, I'd let bygones be
bygones if I was you," broke in the winkle-taster. "That chap happens
to be Bill Buggins, the Billingsgate Bruiser."
"That's no excuse," I
exclaimed, hotly. "Even if a man is a boozer—"
"Bruiser," the
winkle-taster corrected. "Champion light-weight of Billingsgate he is; and
if you wanter see as how he can put it across yer, you'd better buy a ticket
for to-night's show. He's boxing Bert Bloggins, the Bermondsey Basher, for the
championship of England and a purse of five 'undred quid."
"And where does this whitebait
championship, or whatever you call it, take place?" I asked, interested.
"Stadium, nine o'clock
sharp," said my informant. "Do yer far more good than taking a girl
to the pictures and holdin' hands all the evenin'."
"Thanks," I replied,
"I'll be there. Much obliged to you. Good morning,"
"Not at all," said the
winkle-taster, heaving a couple of moribund halibut and a disused cod after me
for luck.
And that is how I made my first
acquaintance with the noble art of self-defence. When I reached the Stadium
that evening the Bruiser and the Basher were being held down in their
respective corners by their seconds to prevent them flying at one another's
throats before the gong went. After a little difference of opinion with the man
in the next seat, whose nose I had mistaken in the subdued light for a hat-peg,
I managed to settle down comfortably to watch the fight.
The ring was cleared; the Bruiser
and the Basher shook hands, and the next moment the Bruiser knocked the Basher
clean over the ropes into the audience. They threw him back into it the ring,
where he quickly regained his feet, and before the Bruiser could say "Jack
Robinson" — provided, of course, that he wanted to say "Jack Robinson"
at that particular moment—the Basher had punched him in his dinner. The Bruiser
retaliated by giving the Basher a ringing box on the ear, which the Basher
countered by knocking all the Bruiser's teeth out. In a tinkling the ring
looked like an American dentistry depot. And that concluded the first round.
"How'd you have parried that
left hook if you'd had been the Bruiser?" asked my now mollified neighbor.
"You mean the blow that
knocked all his teeth out? Well, I should have jumped on the Basher fellow's
stomach and bitten his ear," I replied, heartily.
My neighbor stole one frightened
glance at me, and then clambered over the back of his seat and took another
three rows further back. He was clearly astounded at my knowledge of
ring-craft.
The second round began briskly.
This time the Bruiser and the Basher hit each other a terrific blow
simultaneously, with the result that they were both knocked out of the ring
into the auditorium, where they rolled under the seats and couldn't be found
until time had been called.
They looked a bit dazed as their
seconds carried them back to their corners, but after they had each had a bottle
of beer and a cigarette they looked in the pink of condition—especially the
Basher, who was so pink that he might have fallen into the tomato-chutney
instead of just an ordinary audience. Otherwise he was all right, except for a
bump on the back of his head the size of a pomegranate, while the Bruiser's
left ear looked like an overfed muffin.
Naturally, their increased size
gave each man an advantage over the other, and I wasn't surprised when on the
call of time the Bruiser beat the Basher to his knees by thumping him on the pomegranate,
and the Basher bewildered the Bruiser by smacking him severely on the muffin.
Then they clinched, and the referee
tore them apart and flung them into their corners, whence they sprang at one
another again like tigers.
The excitement was intense.
Everybody felt that something was going to happen, and presently it did. If the
referee hadn't got in the way and intercepted a frightful blow from the Bruiser
with his shirt-front it would certainly have punched a hole clean through the
Basher.
"Follow it up! Hook him on the
jaw!" yelled the Bruiser's seconds; and, carried away by the excitement, I
stood up on my seat and shouted, "Pull his hair! Dot him on the snitch!
Kick him on the shins!"
"Sit down, that double-barrelled
ass there!" screamed the people behind me, and the referee blew his
whistle and stopped the fight.
"Chuck that melon-faced,
pie-can out!" he cried, pointing at me with a forefinger that was simply
livid with rage—and about five seconds later I hit a passing motor bus with
such terrific force on the radiator that I feared at first I had knocked it out
....
I come out of hospital next
Tuesday.
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