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SHOWMAN
inquiring when Corbett would arrive, because he wanted a crack at that $100. By the time we got there, MacVeagh would be firmly established as the idol of the local sporting element, and business would be grand. Our first town, for instance, was Hartford. And, when we got off the train, what should we see but MacVeagh, known locally as Knockout Miller— the first time, I think, that "Knockout" was ever used as part of a fighter's nom de guerre— riding down the main street with the mayor and receiving the plaudits of an admiring crowd. He never missed. He wasn't always Knockout Miller, of course— we gave him as many aliases as a confidence man. We met him in Washington State as the Walla Walla Giant, in El Paso as the Texas Terror, and any number of places under the chaste appellation of The Man-Killer, which always got over great anywhere which didn't offer other inspiration. Still, it took even him two or three weeks to worm his way into a plausible position in a new town, and, to make our stake, we had to show two or three times a week. You couldn't make enough out of straight exhibitions in small towns, so we had to take an uncomfortable number of flyers into meeting local contenders, with all the risks that implied. Sometimes they'd take $25 to behave prettily, other times they'd be in dead earnest. But we usually took care of that by a technique of working on the challenger's nerves until Corbett had only to get into the ring with him, fool round a while, pull his man off balance with a feint
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