On the afternoon of June 16, 1904, there was sold in King Street, Covent Garden, the belt presented to J. C. Heenan (who was called the Benicia Boy from the San Francisco workshops, where he was employed) after the great fight was over. It was a duplicate of the championship belt, and it bore the same title as that presented at the same time to Sayers: “Champion of England.” The price it fetched in 1904 was, I fear, a true reflection of the interest now taken in its original owner and his pugilistic surroundings; and it is difficult to recall the celebrity of both from those past years when Tom Sayers seemed to share with the Duke of Wellington the proud title of Britain’s greatest hero. But it is not really so astonishing when we remember that the plucky little Hoxton bricklayer stood to the youth of his era as the gamest representative of almost the only form of sport the larger public knew or cared about. In days when golf, lawn-tennis, cricket, football, and the rest not only multiply our sporting stars almost indefinitely, but attract crowds numbered by scores of thousands to applaud them, we do not seem to pitch upon the boxer as our especially typical representative of national sporting skill. There may be other reasons for that, too. English boxers seem to have only retained their characteristic style long enough to hand it on to others; they then proceeded to forget it. When Jem Mace left off boxing in England he went to Australia, and in Sydney he taught Larry Foley, who in turn educated Peter Jackson, Fitzsimmons, Hall, Creedon, and Young Griffo. The first two handed on the lighted torch to the United States. The result was soon obvious. When the Americans came over they beat us at all weights from Peter Jackson downwards, and they beat us because they had learnt from us what one of the best exponents of the art has called “velocity and power of hitting combined with quickness and ease of movement on the feet”; I should like to add to that, “the straight left,” or as it is more classically known, “Long Melford.”