If Johnson’s demeanour had always been insolent, it is unnecessary to look for another word to describe the conduct of Tommy Burns. For all I know, at heart Burns may have been a modest man, though I don’t think so. But to hear him talk you would think that no other boxer had ever existed. There are two ways of getting a hearing and of making people think well of you: one is to talk as though the person spoken to was the most important and interesting and delightful man or woman alive, to talk with such conviction in that way that the person in question believes himself to be just that. The other way is to shout aloud that you are the most important person (and all the other things) alive, and upon my soul, if you shout loud enough you will find believers. Naturally or deliberately, Burns did this, and quite a large number of people believed in him. And it must always be remembered that they had something to believe in. Burns was a decidedly good boxer. His manner in the ring was unorthodox. He had no settled attitude or position to take up at the beginning or return to between rallies. He kept his hands and his feet in the positions which suited the demands of the moment. His style was loose and easy, and he could hit hard. Also he went in for glaring balefully at his opponents, stamping on the floor to inspire terror, and worst, “mouth-fighting,” pouring vituperation upon his man and telling him exactly what he was going to do to him. All this sort of thing makes modern professional boxing a sorry business, though no peculiarly bad instances have occurred lately. Indeed, boxers have begun to understand that it does not pay. The men entered the ring on the appointed day, and Johnson’s natural advantages were at once evident. He was taller, heavier, and stronger than Burns. They were both well trained, but Burns always scorned the conventional abstinences and smoked cigars right up to and including the day of a fight. He never looked really hard all over. And now directly the fight started Johnson began by going straight for his opponent and knocking him down. Burns rose in eight seconds, obviously shaken. He crouched with his right hand forward and his left back, and attacked the black man’s body. Johnson kept away from him and sent his right across to Burns’s chin, rather too high to bring him down again, but enough to make him stagger. Then Burns sent home a blow on the jaw, but not a good one, and a hard opening round came to an end. No one supposed then that Burns stood the faintest chance of winning. But Burns was going to do his best. He was acutely conscious of his position as the white champion. He was filled with passionate antagonism to the black man because he was black. Right or wrong, this antagonism is one of the strongest prejudices that moves men. And there was nothing about Johnson, as there certainly was about Peter Jackson, to mitigate the accident of his birth. Rather the contrary.