Once upon a time a charming young man with the high sounding title of William Shakespeare hauled off and committed a play called "Romeo and Juliet." This frolic could easily be rated a first-class success as it is now in its fifteen thousandth week, with every indication that it will be a riot on the road. Along around the second act of this delightful evening at the theater, Romeo steps boldly to the footlights and hurls the following at the dumfounded audience:
By any other name would smell as sweet!
From then on the fun waxes fast and furious, but as the critics say, I won't disclose the plot and spoil the show for you. That one speech is all I'm going to take up now. Far be it from me to argue with Bill Shakespeare, but honestly I'm satisfied that the world's champion playwright's foot slipped when he indicated there was nothing in a cognomen. I don't doubt that soap would furnish as much lather if it was called mush, that Coolidge would still be President if his name was Smith and that the income tax would be just as poisonous if we paid it under the head of outcome tax; but really, when a person is used to their own name for years and then is suddenly called upon to change it, it does affect he, she or its game. Honestly it does!
For today's lesson I offer the case of Hershel Rosenberg, a bellhop in the winter under his honest-to-Boston name, a prizefighter in the summer as "Kid Rose."
When they took away Hershel's name they took away plenty.
One morning during a lull in the daily hostilities, I'm busy doing nothing and just being myself when Jerry Murphy prowls up to the switchboard.
"Well, Cutey, what d'ye know?" he remarks with what he thought was a killing smile.
"Oh, nothing much—two and two's four, that's about all I'm positive of, Jerry!" I says. "What do you suspect?"
"Not a thing, kid," answers Jeremiah. "I ain't even heard no rumors. D'ye want to get a laugh?"
"You've already given me one of your photos," I says sweetly.
"'At sounds like a dirty dig," says Jerry. "But then I never clout no women. We win a new bellhop this mornin' and if he ain't a clown, I'm a French pastry! He speaks English like he picked it up in Siberia. His name's Hershel Rosenberg and he hops a nasty bell, what I mean!'
"Where's he come from?" I ask idly.
"Dublin, of course," snorts Jerry. "As I was sayin', his name's Hershel Rosenberg, but 'at monnicker only goes when he's a bellboy. When he climbs into citizen's clothes, his name's Kid Rose, the box fighter. Personally I don't think this egg could punch his way out of a paper bag. He's only been workin' in this trap two days, but he's already got Pete Kift fit to be tied!"
"What did Hershel do to Pete!" I ask dutifully.
"Well, to begin with," says Jerry, waxing confidential, "Pete sends this master mind up with a pitcher of ice water to Mister Young in five-o-two. You know how liberal 'at old mock orange is—he ain't puttin' nothin' out. 'At baby would throw a drownin' man an anvil, any time. Well, in a few minutes old man Young comes boundin' downstairs squawkin' his head off. He wants to leave the St. Moe flat, he wants last week's rent back and he wants the manager's job. But most of all he wants Hershel Rosenberg's heart!"
"How come?" I asked, out of idle curiosity.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" cackles Jerry. "Oh, this is one for the book! Hershel tried to sell the old jazzbo the ice water and when Young wouldn't buy it at a quarter a pitcher, Hershel tells him to take a drink from the sink, 'Vot d'ye tink, ve get this ice for nothin'—you should run a hotel!' says Hershel and then he had to take it on the lam!"
At this minute Pete Kift came by to pay his respects.
"I'm just after tellin' Gladys about Hershel," says Jerry. "I understand he's givin' you a shovin' around and makin' you like it."
"I'll make that banana love it before I get through with him!" says Peter, bitterly. "I asked him this mornin' where he ever hopped bells before and he says he never was no good at rememberin' names. Can you tie that? If we wasn't short of boys I'd throw him out in the alley. As it is, I got him ruined—I put him on a elevator, where tips is as plentiful as mufflers in Hades!"
"'At's what you think!" grins Jerry. "But I think he'll cross you! 'At baby's no mug and if you figure he is you're crazy. He'll be chargin' the guests a dime a ride on his elevator as sure as you're born!"
Pete starts to laugh, frowns, looks thoughtful and then dashes off to see for himself.
A few days later I had the pleasure of making Hershel's acquaintance. He sidled over to the switchboard on his lunch hour, a thing that is as much against the St. Moe rules as hitting the manager with a slapstick. That, however, didn't appear to bother Hershel.
"They call me Hershel Rosenberg," he says, without any preliminaries.
"I can't help it," I says truthfully. "Take the air, Hershel, you're on a busy wire!"
"Say, don't put on dog vit me," says Hershel. "I ain't exactly vot I look like."
"See if I care," I says. "Do you know any more jokes?"
"Say, if I vos a goil and as pretty as you, I'd nevaire be no operator from a telephone," remarks this inveterate fool. "I'd go to work and, now, marry a rich millionaire and"
"Tend to your own sewing, will you?" I butt in frigidly. "When I wish advice I'll go to a lawyer and when I wish to get married I'll marry whoever I please!"
"Vell, you please me!" grins Hershel. "So ve got that all settled!"
If I had Hershel's nerve I'd throw up my job and go through Gehenna with a line of foot warmers. But honestly, you couldn't get sore at him.
"What do you mean by saying you're not exactly what you look like?" I asked him, to change the subject and also the predicate.
"Vell, I look like a bellboy, but I ain't," he explains. "I'm only a bellboy in the, now, vintaire time. In the summaire time it's too hot I should be vorkin' from a hotel. So from June to August I'm a fightaire. I'm Kid Rose, the sensational middleweight. In twenty-four fights I only been knocked out twenty times."
"Wonderful!" I says, trying without any success to keep from laughing in his face. "Did you win the other four?"
"No," says Hershel. "By a odd coincidence, I lose 'em on rotten decisions from rotten referees. But vait til"
"Don't tell me any more about that, I can't afford to get hysterical on the job," I shut him off, wiping my eyes. "What was the idea of trying to sell the party in five-o-two that pitcher of ice water? If you hadn't been so grasping he might have given you a nice tip."
"Vot do I want vit a tip?" says Hershel. "I vouldn't play the races and I'm off from Vall Street. Say, a couple months ago a cousin of mine took a tip he should buy, now, Mexican Pete. Oy oy, vot a tip! You couldn't trust them Mexicans. My cousin lost his store, his car, his insurance policy, his house and his, now, vife!"
"It's a wonder he didn't lose his temper too," I says when I could talk.
"Say, vot's the matter—you're laughin' from me?" asks Hershel indignantly.
Just then Pete Kift comes up with murder in his eye.
"Get on that elevator, monkey," he hollers at Hershel, "or I'll knock you from under your hat!"
"Thenks just the same," says Hershel, moving away, "I could take it off myself!"
Thus Hershel.
Really, how this young man ever managed to hold his portfolio at the St. Moe is a subject for bigger brains than mine, but hold it he did. In spite of constant persecution from morning till night, he carried on smartly and clung like a cold in the head. Hershel was a little too burly for the other bellhops to trifle with and then that "Kid Rose" seemed to mean something to them too, but honestly, Jerry and Pete made his life positively brutal. That bothered Hershel the same way the income tax bothers an almshouse habitué; he was a silent partner in the noted firm of Grin & Bear It, an absolute gourmand for cruel and unusual punishment!
One day Hazel drags me off bodily to a private auction sale. Private auctions are the milk-fed Hazel's specialty; she bids as if she was playing pinochle and I have yet to see her come home from one of these things with something of any more use to her than a second nose. While personally I could never cuddle up to them, there's a lot of our sex who go to these auction sales like they'd go to a show. They hang around all day, bid their heads off on every article offered for sale, eat the usual nifty lunch put out by the hoarse auctioneer and his merry men and then go home with a second-hand vacuum cleaner or something that cost them about four dollars more than they could get a new one for in a store.
Well, anyways, on this day Hazel and me ran amuck and blew about a hundred dollars each on a choice collection of knick-knacks that no self-respecting junk dealer would be found deceased with, really. The auctioneer rubbed his hands together and said we got a bargain for our hundred, but Hazel sneered that it was about the same kind of a bargain as we'd have got by paying a hundred dollars for a cauliflower. Mr. Auctioneer, who wasn't any more girlproof than the rest of 'em, then tries to promote himself with us and plied us each with a Japanese pin tray—value, about three marks. Always looking for the best of it, Hazel is talking herself into a carved mantel clock when I hear a familiar voice behind me and wheel to see the grinning face of Mr. Hershel Rosenberg, née Kid Rose.
"Vell, vell, vell—vot a small voild it turned out to be!" he says. "A feller couldn't go nowheres no more vitout he should meet somebody. How's it by you?"
"What are you doing here?" I asked him surprisedly.
"Vot's the matter—shouldn't I go places?" says Hershel. "Just because I'm a, now, bellhopper I don't have to hide ven I ain't vorkin', do I? C'mon vit me, I'll show you a real auction—McCue and Levy, over by Sixth Avenoo. Oy, vot bargains! Say, ven you walk out from that place vit your arms full of goods, you feel like a tief!"
Glancing out of the corner of my eye, I happened to see the feverish auctioneer presenting Hazel with that beautifully carved clock, in return for a phone number that would get anybody in the world but Hazel. Out of pure maliciousness I immediately introduced her to Hershel.
Hazel was an instantaneous hit with our dizzy boy friend and as my delightful room-mate likes anybody who can make her laugh, why, Hershel managed to get past. Honestly, he was just twice as funny as he should have been, because he had no idea he was comical—his delivery was all impromptu, if you know what I mean. He took us to his friends McCue and Levy where another auction was under way and when we left there at five in the afternoon we had more packages than Parcel Post himself. All articles we needed like we needed scarlet fever. Hershel was busier than an ant with a bread-crumb. He was all over the place—bidding for us, pointing out the auctioneer's "plants" in the audience, laying us off the apple sauce goods and telling us which was the bonded stuff. Hazel, who believes one and all guilty till proved innocent, said Hershel for making us buy probably got ten percent of what we squandered. That was doing Hershel a rank injustice, really. I found out afterwards he only got five percent.
While we're disrobing to commute to Dreamland that evening, Hazel gets inquisitive.
"Where on earth do you get those Johns like the one we met this afternoon?" she asks me. "You must have nailed that bird the minute he escaped from the immigration people."
Some day I'm going to send Hazel a present. I'm going to give her a nice box of catnip.
"You seemed to think he was pretty keen when he was paying for that vase you insisted on having," I says, a bit steamed.
"Blah!" says my lovely girl friend. "It only set him back fifteen dollars and the tears just streamed down his cheeks when he paid off. What's his trick?"
"He's in the hotel business," I says carelessly.
"He owns a hotel?" asks Hazel, sitting up straight with glistening eyes.
I pensively pulled back the covers of my downy bed.
"He's a bellboy," I says, having the time of my life.
"My Gawd!" gasps Hazel, dropping her hair brush. "A bellhop—and I gave him my address!"
"What you need is a guardian, Hazel," I purred with a smile.
"What we both need is keepers!" Hazel angrily cuts me off. "If that dialect comedian ever comes up here he'll run into nothing but grief. I'll about crown him with that vase he made me take!"
A week later, or maybe it wasn't, I'm sitting at the switchboard absorbing my daily dose of culture by reading the ads in the "Pacific Monthly" when a voice remarks:
"I vant Kin-al eight six five three vun and make it sneppy, please!"
In about four minutes I look leisurely up and see a heavy-set youth with an unquestionably broken nose and a face that is strangely familiar. He looks like someone I know, but I don't know who, get me?
"Ven you get 'em, say Kid Rose vishes to speak vit 'em," continues the handsome city chap.
"Kid Rose!" I says in astonishment, thinking of Hershel Rosenberg. "Are you Kid Rose?"
"Absolutely!" he says proudly, swelling up like a balloon, "I"
"Say—what's your real name?" I interrupted.
"Do I have to pass a civil service examination to get a telephone numbaire here'r" says the stranger peevishly. "I vos born in Koshva, I'm single, I got my foist papaires, I'm a fightaire, Vashington vos the foist President, I don't believe in the I. W. W. and my name is Rosenberg! Now could I get that telephone call?"
"Your name is Rosenberg?" I gasp. "What's your first name—Hershel?"
"No—Isaac," he says. "I got a brother Hershel. You know that lowlife?"
"He works here," I told him. "He's a bellboy and he also calls himself Kid Rose. Your family's a regular bouquet, isn't it?"
"Oy, catch me a gless of vataire!" says Ike, with a groan. "So that's vot he is—a bellhop, hey? Gevhalt, that's a business!"
"Which of you is the real Kid Rose?" I asked him, as curious as you are.
"Vy, naturel, I am, of course!" says Ike. "Hershel couldn't vin a fight if they should let him come in the ring vit a hatchet in each hand. He don't know a right hook from the timekeepaire!"
This affectionate brother then proceeded to give me the lowdown on his charming relative, and honestly it was rich. It seems that Ike Rosenberg, the real fighter and cake provider of the family, had built up quite a reputation for himself as Kid Rose. On the other hand, Hershel Rosenberg had never been anything but unnecessary overhead as far as the old folks were concerned, Hershel liked work and arsenic the same way and had run away from everything from school to the probation officer in his home town, Idiotic, Wyoming. In his travels hither and yon, Hershel one day found a newspaper that somebody had hurled from a Pullman window and sitting beside the right of way he gave himself up to the vice of reading. On the sporting page he found this:
Kid Rose Gets Five Thousand For Stopping Fearful Fallon.
That anybody should get five thousand for stopping or even starting anything interested Hershel highly, and when he read further that Kid Rose was no less than his loving brother Isaac, Hershel nearly swooned. Boarding the first freight, this boy scout dashed home to use his ingenuity on his brother's five thousand. Well, Hershel got service. Isaac divided the money with him—that is, he gave him ten dollars—and then kicked Hershel out of the house when Hershel claimed he was too heavy for light work and too light for heavy work.
However, all this gave Hershel an idea. He was nobody's fool and he figured he was sitting pretty now. Not only did he look a great deal like his box-fighting brother, but he was also big and husky. There must be plenty states where Ike hadn't displayed his wares as yet, reasoned Hershel, and to those he gave his undivided attention.
According to Ike, it was Hershel's hobby to descend upon some medium-sized town where assault and battery was all the rage, sell himself as Kid Rose and get himself matched with a local expert at the art of breaking noses. His brother's reputation would enable Hersel to get big money for his appearance and his resemblance to the real Kid Rose was sufficiently close to befuddle what few had seen the latter perform. Once in the ring, Hershel was a pacifist of the first water and quickly claimed exemption, diving gracefully to the canvas the instant his vis-à-vis made a hostile move towards him. He would then collect his share of the purse and continue on his merry way.
What could be sweeter?
Honestly, for my part, after hearing all this I thought Hershel was a pretty smart boy, but brother Isaac was of a highly different opinion. Ike raved that Hershel was driving him to the poorhouse by using his name as a nom du ring. Hershel wins exactly never, whinnies Ike almost tearfully, and that detracts from his own earnings as the fight promoters get the boys mixed up. They will not believe Ike's story that his brother is using his name and every time Ike happens to be away from New York, and Hershel, as Kid Rose, gets smacked down in some other village, the boxing impresarios around Gotham tell Ike he must fight for less money as the proxy knock-out has damaged his value as a drawing card. Ike has begged, threatened and bribed Hershel to take his beatings under some other name than Kid Rose and Hershel's only answer is to tell Isaac to cut himself a slice of pie!
When Mr. Winter bows out, Hershel Rosenberg, now Kid Rose again, resigns from the cabinet at the St. Moe to take up his annual summer tour around the country, clicking off pennies on his brother's fame as a boxer. Hazel, who heard the whole story, thought this was a scream and pointed out that the money-mad Hershel at least had a sense of humor, because he'd send her a telegram every time Ike won a fight saying, "I win again, kid!" The fact that Hershel's wire might come from Chicago and the battle had taken place in New Orleans made no difference whatever to the jovial Hershel Rosenberg. He was just a nice boy.
Well, both Ike and Hershel were conspicuous by their absence from my ken for quite a few weeks. I guess I would have forgotten about them if Jerry Murphy and Pete Kift didn't keep them alive in my memory with anecdotes of the fox passes Hershel pulled while a bellhop at the dear old St. Moe. Then one day friend Isaac's bulky form suddenly looms up at the switchboard. Honestly, the boy is a photograph of gloom. He looked fearfully low!
"Greetings," I says pleasantly. "Long time no see—how come?"
"Maybe you seen that lowlife brother of mine, hey?" says Ike mournfully.
"No, I haven't seen Hershel either," I says, telling the truth, "But I read in the paper the other day where Kid Rose was knocked out in one round by somebody or other in Boston. Which one of you boys was that Kid Rose?"
"That vos Hershel," wails Ike. "I ain't vorked in a couple of months on account from that bum! I couldn't get no fights vile he keeps gettin' himself knocked stiff and the promoters think it's me. Honest, for vot I think about that feller they could send me back to Russia! Ven I tell 'em about my brother, they chuckle at me. I vould give a tousand dollars—vell, maybe five hundred dollars—for a idea to make Hershel quit bein' Kid Rose."
I thought this one over for a few minutes while I'm plugging in wrong numbers and Ike tells his troubles to Pete Kift, who happened to saunter along.
"Hello," says Pete to Isaac. "I see where you got slapped for a bath-house again the other night. They lay you like a carpet, don't they?"
"Shut up!" Ike howls, covering his scalloped ears with his hands. "That vos my brother, not me! Oy, should I get my hands on Hershel, I'll"
"Hold everything!" I interrupt. "Listen, are you really in earnest about paying five hundred dollars for a way to make your brother stop advertising himself as Kid Rose?"
"In earnest?" says Ike. "Say, I must of been insane! You got a idea?"
"Positively!" I says. I speak several languages.
"Vell, I'll give you a hundred dollars for it, should it be good," says Ike after a minute. "But I vouldn't pay another nickel if you cry all over the place!"
That burnt me up.
"Look here, young feller me lad," I says. "I simply cannot do any heavy thinking for such a piffling sum as a hundred dollars. Really, that thrills me about as much as it thrills a deep-sea diver to step into a bath tub. But for five hundred"
Ike pulls a roll of bills from his pocket.
"Here, take the three hundred," he says. "I ain't nice to argue vit a lady. Vot's your scheme?"
"Five hundred dollars or I don't turn a wheel!" I says firmly.
"Oy, vot a voman!" moans Ike, handing over the other two hundred on the verge of tears, "How vos everybody in Moscow ven you left 'em?"
Well, my suggestion to Isaac was simply that he and Hershel meet in the ring for the right to wear the much coveted title, "Kid Rose." Ike had told me that he and his brother were both the same weight, except that Hershel was a little heavier above the ears. The winner could continue to say it with uppercuts as Kid Rose, while the loser would have to bear up and be content with the label pasted on him by his fond parents. I pointed out to the skeptical Ike that this scheme had plenty to recommend it, apart from offering a permanent solution to his problem. For instance, with proper publicity, a fight between two brothers each claiming the same ring name would be sure to draw a record crowd, especially as the alias at stake was so well-known. I presented other arguments, equally strong if not stronger, but why take up your time with them? Let it be enough to say that I finally got Ike sold on the idea that my plan was a good thought and he departed to proposition Hershel.
So that you won't perish from curiosity, I'll come right out pointblank and tell you that the boys fought as per my recipe and Ike was returned the winner, with the right to call himself Kid Rose forever and a day. I say they fought, but really that's a rather reckless use of the verb. Before a howling mob that jammed the Manslaughter A. C. in Jersey City, Isaac put his affectionate brother down and out with one enthusiastic punch on the jaw about two seconds after the start of the first—and last—round. Honestly, I felt terrible about it and something more than sorry for Hershel, but Hazel laughed herself sick. Jerry and Pete, who escorted us over to the catastrophe, sneered that both Ike and Hershel were false alarms and Jerry declared he wouldn't be afraid to choose either of them. Pete remarked airily that he'd like to take them both on at once; but neither of these heroes yelled loud enough for the Rosenberg boys to hear.
The mere fact that his brother had knocked him from under his former cognomen didn't appear to disturb Hershel's activities as a boxer. As plain Hershel Rosenberg now he continued to browse around the country, collecting various and sundry amounts for giving an uncannily correct imitation of a punching bag. I kept in touch with him by scanning the sport pages, Thus:
Milwaukee, July 6. 28-Punch McWagon knocked out Hershel Rosenberg in the second round of a scheduled twelve-round bout here last night. The men are middleweights.
The reports were always the same, except for the name of the town where the crime took place and the pugilist who assaulted our boy friend. Really, Hershel didn't seem able to cope with any of them!
A couple of months came and went before I had the extreme pleasure of gazing upon Hershel's battered features again. However, he strolled into the lobby one day, swapped a few lies with Pete and Jerry and then roamed over to me.
"Vell, how's all the telephone numbaires today, eh?" is his greeting.
"Busy," I says. "How's our champion?"
"Not so good!" says Hershel. "Ven I lost that name Kid Rose I lost plenty! I couldn't fight no more vitout it. Y'know, all this time I been used to bein' introduced to the customaires as Kid Rose. Vell, now the announcer says, 'Over here, ve have Hersel Rosenberg, the Divin' Venus!' and that kind of upsets my, now, stomach, I ain't used my real name for so long that I couldn't even get knocked out properly vit it."
"How's Ike?" I asked him.
"I should care!" growls Hershel. "There's a brother! You seen vot he done in that fight we had in Joisey City. He's afraid to take a chance, vit me in a long fight, so he goes to vork and knocks me out in the, now, foist round. Honest, he vos scared stiff!"
"But you were knocked stiff!" I gently reminded him, "Hershel, why don't you give up boxing and stick to bellhopping? It's less wearing on the features and it certainly don't look like you're ever going to get anywhere in the ring, now does it?"
"Vell, maybe you're right," sighs Hershel. "I got to fight One-Feint Heehaw, middleveight champeen of Baffin's Bay, in Madison Square next veek. If I lose, I'm through! No more boxin' in the summaire time for me, I"
"It'll be the last summer of Rose, eh?" I couldn't resist butting in.
"Absolutely!" says Hershel. "I'm commencin' to get sick and tired of dustin' off the canvas vit my, now, shoulder-blades. But vit proper handlin' I could positively beat this One-Feint Heehaw. Up to date I ain't had nothin' in my cornaire but a bunch of lowlife kidders, which all the advice they could give me between rounds is to tell me how rotten I am. Vot do I need seconds to tell me that for—don't I know it?"
"Why don't you get your brother to be your second in this bout with One-Feint Heehaw?" I asked him, struck by a sudden thought. "Ike knows a lot about boxing and being your brother you'd have confidence in him. If"
"Say—you're a vondaire!" Hershel cuts me off excitedly, "That's just vot I'll do. I'll get Ike he should go behind me and I'll knock this feller Heehaw for a ghoul! I nevaire seen nobody like you for, now, schemes. You got more ideas than Edison!"
Honestly, if Mons. Hershel Rosenberg had had the faintest ideas as to what would be the result of that clever suggestion, I'm satisfied Hershel would have murdered me right then and there in hot blood!
Hershel managed to talk his brother into seconding him and then the fighting bellhop went in training for his petting party with One-Feint Heehaw. Hershel's idea of getting in shape for this bout was to have his nails manicured and I think he got shaved—I'm not sure about that. Anyhow, when the night of the big fight rolled around, Hershel got his first setback. He was just one pound overweight and the laughing manager of One-Feint Heehaw collected his five-hundreddollar forfeit. Gnashing his pearly teeth, Hershel remarked that all the Shylocks are not Jewish. Really, that untoward pay-off was poison to Hershel, who was so tight he wouldn't even harbor a fear.
Our party at the shambles consisted of Hazel, Pete, Jerry and your correspondent and we had to wade through a crowd that would make you think there was nobody at the Dempsey-Firpo scuffle but the reporters. Hershel was the first to enter the ring—his body cocoa-buttered, face vaselined to prevent cuts, as Jerry explained it, and a grim look on his slightly irregular profile. He was greeted with mingled cheers and jeers and politely acknowledged both. Hazel, the money addict, had bet heavily on Hershel for some reason known only to herself and she cheered him loud and lustily. Hershel immediately arose and bowed solemnly to the opposite side of the ling from where Hazel was sitting.
"At's the tip-off!" says Jerry disgustedly. "'At big tomato don't know what it's all about. He won't last a round with this guy Heehaw. I seen 'at baby go—he's as tough as a year in the pen."
"Leave my fighter alone, stupid!" says Hazel irritably. "What do you know about boxing?"
"I know enough not to do it," says Jerry. "'At's more than 'at maniac does!"
Further discussion and possibly violence was prevented by the entrance of One-Feint Heehaw, a villainous-looking, bullet-headed facsimile of a gorilla. He was welcomed with riotous applause and tried out a smile on the admiring mob. Honestly, the result was so horrifying that Hazel and me shuddered and hid behind Jerry's broad back. The crowd breaks into an excited buzz of incoherent conversation as the men are called to the center of the ring for the referee's instructions. One-Feint Heehaw looks Hershel up and down sneeringly and then turns to the referee.
"Do I walk to the ropes and wait for the count every time I knock this chump down?" he asks the grinning official.
"Oy!" gasps Hershel to Ike. "Vot a rough von I picked for myself tonight!"
"Sssh!" says Ike. "Don't let him kid you. They ain't none of 'em rough ven they're on the floor."
"Maybe," agrees Hershel. "But the thing is—how d'ye get 'em there?"
"Are you guys gonna fight or do a act?" asks the referee. "This is a ring, not no theayter!"
The next minute the panic was on!
The instant the bell rang, One-Feint Heehaw sprang from his corner and hit Hershel with a terrible blow right on the nose. The only witty retort Hershel could think of was to sink slowly to the canvas with a rather reproachful expression on his face. "Knock him dead, Heehaw!" howls the mob and a patron in back of us, slightly under the influence of Volstead antidote, added sleepily, "Go on, you tramps, knock each other out!" Hershel arose as the referee reached "seven" and his brother Ike immediately yelled, "Bore in, Hershel, bore in!" One-Feint Heehaw had other plans for Hershel, however, and drove him across the ring with a volley of punches that kept poor Hershel plenty busy trying to keep from being exterminated. In the midst of this furious mix-up, some comedian in the gallery convulsed the crowd by bawling. "Hey, Hershel, you're wanted on the phone!"
So far it was just a case of guffaws with nobody hurt—except Hershel. Above the roar of the mob Ike's voice rose hysterically in what soon became a chant, "Bore in, you sap, bore in!" Hershel tried manfully to follow his brother's instructions, but really, it wasn't Hershel's night. One-Feint Heehaw, who figured it was more blessed to give than to receive, was simply making a chopping block out of him. Honestly, it was pitiful. Hazel was on the verge of tears. For Hershel? Be yourself. For the dimes she was losing on him!
Suddenly Hershel, with a despairing effort, woke up and began to take an active interest in his assassination. For a full minute these cavemen stood toe to toe and exchanged blows that would have killed anybody else but them. The crowd was now just twenty thousand lunatics and the noise awoke our friend behind us, Mr. Intoxicated. This hard-boiled young man blinked his eyes, looked up at the two panting, wildly punching warriors whose efforts had the mob in a frenzy and remarked loudly: "They're just a couple of stallin' bums, Make 'em fight or throw 'em out!"
"My Gawd!" gasps Hazel. "You'd find fault with a lynching!"
But our critical friend was asleep again.
When Hershel came staggering to his corner at the end of the first round, honestly, he was as weak as a cup of boarding-house tea. He had hit the floor either five or thirty-six times and looked every inch of it. Ike disgustedly waved a towel in front of his brother's bruised face while the other seconds sponged off his reddened and heaving body.
"If you'd bore in there like I tell you, you'd put this feller avay!" says Ike to Hershel. "Vot's the matter from you—couldn't you hear me? This tremp don't like it—bore in there and stay close vit him!"
"Huh?" says Hershel, rolling his eyes glassily.
The bell cut off Ike's peevish oath.
Hershel gamely got to his feet and rushed to the center of the ring just in time to keep an engagement with One-Feint Heehaw's left glove. After carelessly ejecting a couple of teeth that were of no further use to him, Hershel looked wildly to his corner at Ike. "Bore in!" howls Ike. Instead, Hershel led with his chin to the point of Heehaw's right glove and then sat down quickly on the floor to think things over. He reached some sort of a hasty decision with regard to his future and was up at "nine," about as steady as a flagpole in a hurricane. One-Feint Heehaw sprayed him with punches and Hershel ran frantically backwards all around the ring. Ike seemed to be on the verge of a fit. "Oy!" he hollers. "Vot a fightaire—bore in, I tell you, bore in!"
For the first time that evening the good-natured Hershel got irritated.
"Say, leave me alone!" he pants. "How could I bore in vit a human buzz-saw like this feller? You should bore in vit him!"
This innocent answer seemed to get Ike red-headed. Before anybody had the faintest idea of what was in his mind, Ike jumps into the ring and caught Hershel with a terrible uppercut right on the jaw. Hershel went down as cold as a glance from a glass eye!
"That's the vay to bore in!" yells Ike hoarsely; and while the dumfounded crowd is still crazy at this amazing turn of affairs, a punch that One-Feint Heehaw had started for the inert Hershel caught Ike flush on the chin. Isaac flopped almost on top of his brother, a total loss. Mr. Pandemonium immediately took charge, Jerry and Pete hustled Hazel and me out with the aid of some hysterical coppers and that's the last I saw of the two Roses from that day to this!