And sometimes I think that even Time must be
sated with loveliness; that he will not crumble them or mar their
gallant childishness; that he will leave them, their bright dresses
fluttering, as I have seem them in the subway many a summer day.
[Illustration]
DEMPSEY vs. CARPENTIER
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but as
Frank Adams once remarked, the betting is best that way. The event
at Boyle's Thirty Acres in Jersey City was the conclusive triumph of
Reality over Romance, of Prose over Poetry. To almost all the
newspaper-reading world--except the canny fellows who study these
matters with care and knowledge--Carpentier had taken on something
of the lustre and divinity of myth. He was the white Greek god, he
was Mercury and Apollo. The dope was against him; but there were
many who felt, obscurely, that in some pregnant way a miracle would
happen. His limbs were ivory, his eyes were fire; surely the gods
would intervene! Perhaps they would have but for the definite
pronouncement of the mystagogue G.B. Shaw. Even the gods could not
resist the chance of catching Shaw off his base.
We are not a turncoat; we had hoped that Carpentier would win. It
would have been pleasant if he had, quite like a fairy tale. But we
must tell things as we see them. Dempsey, in a very difficult
situation, bore himself as a champion, and (more than that) as a man
of spirit puzzled and angered by the feeling that has been rumoured
against him.
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