feeling his way. I have also noticed a little
shyness on the part of certain distinguished
spectators of the battle, who gave the Ring the
sanction of their presence, but not the sanction
of their names. A few more of these exceptional
events may dispel all such mock modesty.

From the first moment when the late
exceptional event—the international prize-fight—
began to assume the aspect of a great and
coming fact, there was the shallowest possible
attempt on all sides to keep up appearances.
People remarked very mildly that such
disgraceful spectacles ought to be stopped, and
immediately staked two to one that the Englishman
would beat the American. A member or
two in the House of Commons tamely asked the
Home Secretary what he intended to do, and his
reply was generally to the effect that he would
try to keep up appearances. The powers of the
metropolitan police were put in force, and they
kept up appearances by pushing the training
combatants into the country. Local constabulary
forces, finding that they also were expected
to behave with superficial decency, hunted the
American (not very chivalrously, seeing that
they might have hunted the Englishman), until
he was bound over to keep the peace, with two
sureties, to the extent of a hundred pounds.
That extremely useful end attained, they retired,
like good men who had thoroughly done their
duty in keeping up appearances.

After conference with my friend the Conductor
of this Journal, I received his encouragement
personally to let down these same appearances,
and to go to the fight, and to avow in
these pages that I had done so. This was my
commission.

When I went out into the frosty air, instead
of going comfortably to bed, about one o'clock
A.M. on Tuesday morning, the seventeenth of
April, I held a railway-ticket in my hand, that
was printed to keep up appearances. A journey
from London-bridge to nowhere and back, by
a special four o'clock train, was all that I was
guaranteed by this slip of cardboard, in
return for the sum of three pounds sterling. For
all this seeming mystery, the railway company
knew that I knew I was going to the great
prize-fight; the policeman who saw me close my
street door at that unseemly hour knew that I
was going to the great prize-fight; the cabman
who drove me to my destination was bursting
with intelligence of the great prize-fight; and
the crowd who assembled round the railway
station were either going with me to the great
prize-fight, or had come to see me go to the
great prize-fight. There was an affectation
of secrecy about the movements of some of
the travellers, a reflexion of the many eye-
winkings they must have seen for the last few
days; and there was an affectation of
caution on the part of the railway company in
dividing the passengers, and admitting them
simultaneously at different entrances. These
passengers moved silently along the passages,
and across the platforms, as if they were
trespassers upon the company's property, who had
stolen in while the directors were asleep, and
were about to run away with the rolling stock,
with the connivance of a small number of the
railway officers. The anxious, threatening glances
that were cast upon unknown people, and the
many whispered inquiries as to who was, or who
was not, a detective policeman, gave a very pretty
burglarious tone to the whole station for at least
an hour before daybreak. The farce was
extremely well-acted, and appearances were
carefully kept up to the last. The favoured railway
had been known for months (it was the first that
was ever mentioned in connexion with the fight);
the very spot upon which the battle was to take
place had been confided to hundreds for days;
and the morning, the hour, and the point of departure,
had been openly sold like any commodity in
the market. It was all a preposterous keeping up
of appearances. The fact is, there was no public
desire ever manifested to stop the contest, but
a very strong desire to hear that it had been
fairly fought out. In the face of such a feeling
the law was paralysed; its function not being to
make a whole people more virtuous than they
really are. The nation has no logical complaint
against the law for standing still on this
occasion, but only for its ridiculous pretence of
being constantly on the alert.

There were never, perhaps, so many passengers
assembled on a railway platform, who knew and
addressed each other by familiar Christian names.
The whole train might have been taken for a
grand village excursion, but for those
unmistakable faces that rested in the folds of the
carriage cushions, under the dim light of the
carriage lamps. The small eyes and heads, the
heavy jaws, and the high cheek-bones, were hung
out, like candid signboards, to mark the
members of the fighting-trade. The two or three
hundred Americans, and the small sprinkling of
aristocracy and visitors, were not sufficient to
modify, in any perceptible degree, the thoroughly
animal character of the train.

I obtained a seat in a rather overloaded
double compartment of a second-class carriage.
Behind me were a live lord, a live baronet, a
member of Parliament, the very gentlemanly
editor of a distinguished sporting paper which
has always done its utmost in the cause of
fair-play and honest dealing, an aristocratic
Scotchman, a clergyman of the Church of
England, and a renowned poet of the tender
passions. By the side of me was a young,
cheerful, round-faced Australian settler, who
had travelled fifteen thousand miles to see
the fight, and to transact a little business of
minor importance. His dress was light, his
manner self-reliant, and he looked the kind of
man to go round the world unencumbered with
luggage, with a cigar in his mouth, and his
hands in his pockets. Opposite this passenger
was a mild, long-faced, blinking gentleman, of
Jewish aspect, who talked very fluently, and
seemed to know all the minor deities of the ring.
By his side was a drowsy and ragged member
of the fighting craft, whose prospects seemed
blighted, and whose scalp had been taken by