I did not catch the name of his universal language, but I judged
the one at which he would excel would be a language with few if
any h's in it. After this disappointment I lost heart and came
away.
Another phase, though a very different one, of the British spirit
of fair play and tolerance, was shown to me at the National Sporting
Club, which is the British shrine of boxing, where I saw a fight
for one of the championship belts that Lord Lonsdale is forever
bestowing on this or that worshipful fisticuffer. Instead of being
inside the ring prying the fighters apart by main force as he would
have been doing in America, the referee, dressed in evening clothes,
was outside the ropes. At a snapped word from him the fighters
broke apart from clinches on the instant. The audience--a very
mixed one, ranging in garb from broadcloths to shoddies--was as
quick to approve a telling blow by the less popular fighter as to
hiss any suggestion of trickiness or fouling on the part of the
favorite. When a contestant in one of the preliminary goes, having
been adjudged a loser on points, objected to the decision and
insisted on being heard in his own behalf, the crowd, though plainly
not in sympathy with his contention, listened to what he had to
say. Nobody jeered him down.
Had he been a foreigner and especially had he been an American I
am inclined to think the situation might have been different.
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