For instance, there was the handsome, well educated, well
mannered young prize-fighter, Ned Ballou, who was Estelle's
"friend." Ballou, big and gentle and as incapable of bad humor
as of constancy or of honesty about money matters, fought under
the name of Joe Geary and was known as Upper Cut Joe because
usually, in the third round, never later than the fifth, he
gave the knockout to his opponent by a cruelly swift and savage
uppercut. He had educated himself marvelously well. But he
had been brought up among thieves and had by some curious freak
never learned to know what a moral sense was, which is one--and
a not unattractive--step deeper down than those who know what
a moral sense is but never use it. At supper in Gaffney's he
related to Susan and Estelle how he had won his greatest
victory--the victory of Terry the Cyclone, that had lifted him
up into the class of secure money-makers. He told how he
always tried to "rattle" his opponent by talking to him, by
pouring out in an undertone a stream of gibes, jeers, insults.
The afternoon of the fight Terry's first-born had died, but the
money for the funeral expenses and to save the wife from the
horrors and dangers of the free wards had to be earned. Joe
Geary knew that he must win this fight or drop into the working
or the criminal class. Terry was a "hard one"; so
circumstances compelled, those desperate measures which great
men, from financiers and generals down to prize-fighters, do
not shrink from else they would not be great, but small.
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