Page:The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (IA autobiographyofs00davirich).djvu/25

after day, and the maidservant had to lead me as a prisoner to school. Although small of figure I was a good athlete, and so often fighting that some of my relatives thought that prize fighting was of a certainty to be my future vocation. Mother's father and brothers all took great interest in pugilism, and they knew the game well from much practice of their own. They were never so much delighted as when I visited them with a black eye or a bloody nose, at which time they would be at the trouble to give cunning points as to how to meet an opponent according to his weight and height. "He certainly has the one thing essential," they affirmed, one to the other, "and that is the heart. Without that experience would be of no account, but with that it will be the making of him." If I took off my coat to battle in the streets, the shirt itself came off in the lanes and fields. When attending school I would accompany a dozen or more boys "following the leader". Needless to say, I was the leader; and, being a good jumper, would leap over ditches that would try every nerve in my body. Two or three would follow a little less successfully, and then we would bully and threaten the less active to make the attempt. Often we had to drag them out by the hair of the head, and it was in this condition that they were led back to school late―always late. The dirtiest boy, who had had the most pressure put upon him, and was truly the most gentle and least guilty of us all―would be punished the most severely for these escapades, owing to his dirtier condition; and most likely receive more punishment afterwards at home. Strange that I was not a bad scholar, and that I passed all my standards with ease. In the last year of my school days I