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SANDBURRS

By Alfred Henry Lewis

Author of “Wolfville,” etc.

Illustrated by Horace Taylor and George B. Luks

Second Edition

New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company

1898

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TO

JAMES ROBERT KEENE




PREFACE

A SANDBURR is a foolish, small vegetable, irritating and grievously
useless. Therefore this volume of sketches is named Sandburrs. Some folk
there be who apologize for the birth of a book. There's scant propriety
of it. A book is but a legless, dormant creature. The public has but to
let it alone to be safe. And a book, withal! is its own punishment. Is
it a bad book? the author loses. Is it very bad? the publisher loses.
In any case the public is preserved. For all of which there will be no
apology for SAND-BURRS. Nor will I tell what I think of it. No; this
volume may make its own running, without the handicap of my apology, or
the hamstringing of my criticism. There should be more than one to
do the latter with the least of luck. The Bowery dialect--if it be
a dialect--employed in sundry of these sketches is not an exalted
literature. The stories told are true, however; so much may they have
defence.

A. H. L.

New York, Nov. 15, 1899.




SANDBURRS




SPOT AND PINCHER.

Martin is the barkeeper of an East Side hotel--not a good hotel at
all--and flourishes as a sporting person of much emphasis. Martin, in
passing, is at the head of the dog-fighting brotherhood. I often talk
with Martin and love him very much.

Last week I visited Martin's bar. There was “nothin' doin',” to quote
from Martin. We talked of fighting men, a subject near to Martin, he
having fought three prize-fights himself. Martin boasted himself as
still being “an even break wit' any rough-and-tumble scrapper in d'
bunch.”

“Come here,” said Martin, in course of converse; “come here; I'll show
you a bute.”

Martin opened a door to the room back of the bar. As we entered a
pink-white bull terrier, with black spots about the eyes, raced across
to fawn on Martin. The terrier's black toe-nails, bright and hard as
agate, made a vast clatter on the ash floor.

“This is Spot,” said Martin. “Weighs thirty-three pounds, and he's a
hully terror! I'm goin' to fight him to-night for five hundred dollars.”

I stooped to express with a pat on his smooth white head my approbation
of Spot.

“Pick him up, and heft him,” said Martin. “He won't nip you,” 'he
continued, as I hesitated; “bulls is; d' most manful dogs there bees.
Bulls won't bite nobody.”

Thereupon I picked up Spot “to heft him.” Spot smiled widely, wagged
his stumpy tail, tried to lick my face, and felt like a bundle of live
steel.

“Spot's goin' to fight McDermott's Pincher,” said Martin. “And,”
 addressing this to Spot, “you want to watch out, old boy! Pincher is
as hard as a hod of brick. And you want to look out for your Trilbys;
Pincher'll fight for your feet and legs. He's d' limit, Spot, Pincher
is! and you must tend to business when you're in d' pit wit' Pincher, or
he'll do you. Then McDermott would win me money, an' you an' me, Spot,
would look like a couple of suckers.”

Spot listened with a pleased air, as if drinking in every word, and
wagged his stump reassuringly. He would remember Pincher's genius for
crunching feet and legs, and see to it fully in a general way that
Pincher did not “do” him.

“Spot knows he's goin' to fight to-night as well as you and me,” said
Martin, as we returned to the bar. “Be d' way! don't you want to go?”

* * * * *

It was nine o'clock that evening. The pit, sixteen feet square, with
board walls three feet high, was built in the centre of an empty loft on
Bleecker street. Directly over the pit was a bunch of electric lights.
All about, raised six inches one above the other, were a dozen rows of
board seats like a circus. These were crowded with perhaps two hundred
sports. They sat close, and in the vague, smoky atmosphere, their faces,
row on row, tier above tier, put me in mind of potatoes in a bin.

Fincher was a bull terrier, the counterpart of Spot, save for the
markings about the face which gave Spot his name. Pincher seemed very
sanguine and full of eager hope; and as he and Spot, held in the arms of
their handlers, lolled at each other across the pit, it was plain they
languished to begin. Neither, however, made yelp or cry or bark. Bull
terriers of true worth on the battle-field were, I learned, a tacit,
wordless brood, making no sound.

Martin “handled” Spot and McDermott did kindly office for Pincher in
the same behalf. Martin and McDermott “tasted” Spot and Pincher
respectively; smelled and mouthed them for snuffs and poisons. Spot and
Pincher submitted to these examinations in a gentlemanly way, but were
glad when they ended.

At the word of the referee, Spot and Pincher were loosed, each in his
corner. They went straight at each other's throats. They met in the
exact centre of the pit like two milk-white thunderbolts, and the battle
began.

Spot and Pincher moiled and toiled bloodily for forty-five minutes
without halt or pause or space to breathe. Their handlers, who were
confined to their corners by quarter circles drawn in chalk so as to hem
them in, leaned forward toward the fray and breathed encouragement.

What struck me as wonderful, withal, was a lack of angry ferocity on
the parts of Spot and Pincher. There was naught of growl, naught of
rage-born cry or comment. They simply blazed with a zeal for blood;
burned with