Nate's worried a lot about the champ refusing to de business with us, because honest I was growing like New York. I'm having a terrible time keeping down to the middleweight limit and Nate's crazy to have me fight the champion while I can still make the weight for him, because he knows I'll win the title as sure as salmon comes under the head of fish. But the champ turns a deaf ear to all our pitiful pleadings to come and get his pasting and be done with it. Even when the newspapers puts him on the pan and Nate says he can have all the money and we'll just take our expenses, why, the safe-playing, money-grabbing middleweight king just laughs at us and then jumps out to some slab like Gazunk, Ia., and flattens some sap which couldn't win a fight if he had the only ticket on one in a raffle.
"If I can't toss you in a ring with this hothouse champeen in a couple of months, you won't be able to make 158 any more than I can make a clock!" moans Nate to me one day. "Here I baby you along, rate your fights till you've flattened everything but the Catskill Mountains and now when you're a cinch for a title this big boloney won't mingle with us!" He walks up and down the room, wringing his hands.
"I'll pick a fight with him on the street, hey?" I says, hoping to cheer him up.
"You do and I'll help him clout you!" hollers Nate. "How many times do I have to tell you never fight nobody for nothin'? Never raise your hands unless they's pennies in it for both of us—don't ever forget 'at part of it. I'm goin' to take you around to every fight club where 'at synthetic champ starts and we'll chal-
