A telephone book, a bank book and The Police Gazette, about makes up Nate's library. But it was different here. Lama reading fool! I wade through everything I can get my hands on, from newspapers to encyclopedias, making all stops in between. I gulp 'em all down raw, with a dictionary as a chaser. If it wasn't for that dictionary most of these books could be in code, for all I could read 'em. But with Mr. Webster's famous novel by my side, I'm all set. When I stumble across words which I have never been intimate with, like "obsolete" and "exchequer," for example, why, all I got to do is open up my dictionary and form what I hope will be a lifelong acquaintance with 'em. I met twenty or thirty new words a night in that way alone. Especially "triapsidal," which is anything having three apsis and of course everybody knows what a apsis.
Maybe you think it's funny for a young fellow who was going to be a prize fighter to spend as much time studying bright books as he did studying right hooks. Well, the answer to that one is that I was only going to be in the ring till I'd enough jack to get two things—a schooling and a line on what my trick was, to the viz, what was the game I was born to win at? Fellows has fought for girls, for money, for revengeance, for notoriety, and for fun. I fought for a education!
In the eighteen years I'd been trying to discover what it's all about, I'd tried my hand at nearly everything but selling palm-leaf fans at the North Pole. I couldn't pick my jobs—I had bid teacher good-by too soon. So I took 'em as they come along, hating 'em all, quitting whenever I got a chance to think too long about 'em
