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SHOWMAN
son Square Garden, New York, the week after the fight. Every barn, fence and chicken-house going south displayed one of those; unless Sullivan traveled in a blindfold, he would see nothing else for two days in advance of defending his title. When he got to New Orleans, the place was stiff with them. And we didn't let it go at that —we kept right on persecuting him clear into the fight itself.
Sullivan was even more superstitious than most sporting figures and luckily, the Olympic A. C. in New Orleans, where the fight was to take place, had a convenient superstition of its own, which claimed that almost every boxer who sat in a certain corner of the ring came out winner. When Charlie Johnson, Sullivan's backer, came to our dressing-room the night of the fight to toss for corners, I said I'd rather toss in Sullivan's presence, so he could have no possible kick. He and I went to Sullivan's dressing-room together. The old man-killer was lying on a couch, looking worried, saying nothing— just glared at me and grunted. But he looked just as big and brawny as he ever had when I'd seen him in New York in his palmiest days. Being an actor comes in handy lots of places. Whatever I was feeling, I looked him in the eye and grinned as confidently as you please.
Johnson tossed the coin and I called heads. Heads it was.
"Which corner do you take?" Johnson asked.
"Which corner?" I shouted, suddenly raucously ex
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