22 Tom Swing's Back Parlour, 



exposure in their columns of any blackguardism committed 

 by a man who aspired to be a pugilist soon brought him to 

 his senses. 



The ring now is dead, sto7ie dead, but boxing and good 

 boxing, perhaps never was better. Young Reed, though he 

 must be well middle-aged, I will be bound to say makes 

 twice as much as three-fourths of the clergy of England do, 

 and is as much surrounded by Peers and men of position 

 as Gentleman Jackson ever was, though his rooms are only 

 designed for pure business, and are not a lounge ; and many 

 more ''professors" are doing well. I very much doubt if 

 people would stomach a regular prize-fight now. The halo 

 y\-hich surrounded it is gone. The quaint language and 

 oddities which marked it are things of the past. 



It would never have done to have talked about fists, 

 noses, mouths, blood, teeth, and eyes in describing a fight, 

 or to have recorded, in cold blood, how one man knocked 

 out another's teeth and cut his knuckles to the bone. It 

 would read nasty, so it was necessary to say *' that the 

 Nobbier dashed in his left mawley and landed on the British 

 Oak's kissing-trap, drawing the claret freely, knocking out 

 two of his front rails ; though we doubt if the move was 

 advantageous in the long run, as the Nobbier was evidently 

 in pam with the force of the blow, which cut his knuckles 

 badly, and he was inclined to use his ' right duke ' the most 

 till the finish." Strange it was to see the delight which the 

 British rough showed in having this kind of thieves' Latin 

 read to him, and the gravity with which he accepted the 

 account ; and if he happened to know a friend who was on 

 duty at a fight, how his dignity rose ; and an engagement 

 to go down and to help to guard the commissariat — what Jem 

 Burn called " the belly-timber" — was looked on as some- 

 thing equal to a field-marshal's post. 



I firmly believe that in its time the Bing did a great deal 



