What Nate and Kayo Kelly never could understand is that this studying I wear tearing off at nights when I wasn't doing my stuff in a ring was conditioning me for a bigger battle than any I ever had at a fight club—a battle to boost myself out of the ash heap I was born to and make myself mean something! Say, if I ever get elected President, not that nobody has nominated me or nothing like that, but if I ever do, why, my first presidential act will be to draw up a law making ignorance a crime. D'ye think I'll punish the ignorant guys themselves for it? No, sir! I'll send the rich babies to jail which allows ignorance to be committed in their neighborhoods for want of the money to prevent it. The money which would feed and clothe the kids while they're going to school and getting a chance to use their little heads for something else besides hatracks. Then they won't be no more eight-year-old kids with forty-eight-year-old faces selling papers, working in coal mines, in cotton mills and canneries, when they ought to be in school!
Don't get the idea that while I was giving my brains these workouts I neglected my boxing tuition. Nate always followed me around with sarcastic remarks,
