Cashel Byron's Profession

He had just finished his pipe when a youth stopped to read the card

on the doorpost. This youth was attired in a coarse sailor's jersey

and a pair of gray tweed trousers, which he had considerably

outgrown.

"Looking for a job?" inquired the ex-champion of England and the

colonies.

The youth blushed and replied, "Yes. I should like to get something

to do."

Mr. Skene stared at him with stern curiosity. His piofessional

pursuits had familiarized him with the manners and speech of English

gentlemen, and he immediately recognized the shabby sailor lad as

one of that class.

"Perhaps you're a scholar," said the prize-fighter, after a moment's

reflection.

"I have been at school; but I didn't learn much there," replied the

youth. "I think I could bookkeep by double entry," he added,

glancing at the card.

"Double entry! What's that?"

"It's the way merchants' books are kept. It is called so because

everything is entered twice over."

"Ah!" said Skene, unfavorably impressed by the system; "once is

enough for me. What's your weight?"

"I don't know," said the lad, with a grin.

"Not know your own weight!" exclaimed Skene. "That ain't the way to

get on in life."

"I haven't been weighed since I was in England," said the other,

beginning to get the better of his shyness. "I was eight stone four

then; so you see I am only a light-weight."

"And what do you know about light-weights? Perhaps, being so well

educated, you know how to fight. Eh?"

"I don't think I could fight you," said the youth, with another

grin.

Skene chuckled; and the stranger, with boyish communicativeness,

gave him an account of a real fight (meaning, apparently, one

between professional pugilists) which he had seen in England. He

went on to describe how he had himself knocked down a master with

one blow when running away from school. Skene received this

sceptically, and cross-examined the narrator as to the manner and

effect of the blow, with the result of convincing himself that the

story was true. At the end of a quarter of an hour the lad had

commended himself so favorably by his conversation that the champion

took him into the gymnasium, weighed him, measured him, and finally

handed him a pair of boxing gloves and invited him to show what he

was made of. The youth, though impressed by the prize-fighter's

attitude with a hopeless sense of the impossibility of reaching him,

rushed boldly at him several times, knocking his face on each

occasion against Skene's left fist, which seemed to be ubiquitous,

and to have the property of imparting the consistency of iron to

padded leather. At last the novice directed a frantic assault at the

champion's nose, rising on his toes in his excitement as he did so.

Skene struck up the blow with his right arm, and the impetuous youth

spun and stumbled away until he fell supine in a corner, rapping his

head smartly on the floor at the same time. He rose with unabated

cheerfulness and offered to continue the combat; but Skene declined

any further exercise just then, and, much pleased with his novice's

game, promised to give him a scientific education and make a man of

him.