“They would call you a coward,” I retorted. “If you showed a yellow streak, you’d be through.” Anger blazed in Packey’s eyes, but he controlled himself and spoke in his ordinary quiet and cultivated tones. “Yellow, eh?” he replied. “I know as well as you that no man in the boxing game has a right to be there if he has a faint heart. It takes a fellow with a lot of nerve to stand up and absorb punishment, but it requires even more courage for a man to know when he has had enough and to call a halt. “That’s not a yellow streak in a fighter. I say that’s ordinary common sense. When the going is good, keep firing. That’s my motto. But when you find the odds are against you, then quit.” This was the philosophy of one of America’s greatest boxers in a period which surpassed all other eras in lightweights and welterweights. Nobody ever doubted Packey’s courage, but that is how he had worked things out for himself. It was the logic of brain against the unreasoning instincts of brawn. I admired Packey for the stand he took, and in later years, when he became sponsor of the Catholic Youth Movement in the United States, he carried the same philosophy into his classes. [Illustration: 19] RINGSIDE THRILLS The walls of my office are covered with photographs of my heroes—sturdy Jim Jeffries, lanky Bob Fitzsimmons, debonair Jim Corbett, happy-go-lucky Jack Johnson, ponderous Jess Willard, the tiger of the roped square, Jack Dempsey, cultured Gene Tunney, fiery Jack Sharkey, smiling Max Schmeling, poker-faced Joe Louis and hard-hitting Rocky Marciano—a great array of heavyweight champions. I find pleasure in discussing their careers. The thrills I got watching these ringmen perform, come back to me as I sit at my desk and study the faces on my walls. I have seen seconds lead men into the morning glory of fame and fortune, and plunge others into the midnight of a defeat from which they never came back. Those pictures tell a story. Among the thrilling contests listed in my diary, three in which the great Benny Leonard was a contestant, stand out. Out of Chicago came a left-hook artist, Charley White, whose high, intellectual brow hid a slow-thinking brain. He was within four seconds of winning the lightweight championship from Leonard on a hot afternoon, July 5, 1920, at Benton Harbor, Michigan, but couldn’t make it. For four rounds Leonard had out-punched and out-generalled Charley, the Chicago left-hook phenom, skillfully posing him for the knockout. Then Benny got careless. In the fifth, the left hook landed on Benny’s jaw with lightning rapidity and the champion went flying through the ropes. The spectators howled like Indians. White had shaken off the fog that usually enveloped his brain, and from all appearances the title was within his grasp. But Leonard got back into the ring at the count of six, and so flabbergasted was his opponent that his brain seemed to go numb. It ceased to function and Charley became just another fighter.