The immediate conjunction of Ikey Zingbaum and two-and-a-half dollars appeals to the crowd’s sense of humour. When they have recovered, Buck Stamper proceeds: “On my left”—he thrusts forward a smooth-chinned, pink-cheeked, lusty, country lad—“Miss Sissy Smithers, what has got in among the boys by mistake!” Amid yells of delight the blushing Sissy shakes hands with his tallow-faced opponent, and falls promptly upon his neck. The pair, locked in a complicated embrace, circle slowly round the ring, feebly patting one another on the back. At the urgent suggestion of the spectators the referee separates them, caustically observing that this is a fight and not a fox-trot. For a short time they stand uneasily apart; then Ikey Zingbaum, stimulated possibly by his supporters’ constant references to the ten-shilling certificate, leans suddenly forward and boxes his opponent’s ears. Miss Sissy, stung into indignant activity, lunges out with all his strength and counters fairly and squarely in the pit of Ikey’s stomach. Mr. Zingbaum shuts up like a footrule, and shoots stern-foremost into the thick of the audience. He is extracted amid shouts of laughter, groaning horribly, and receives first aid from a dozen willing but inexperienced hands. Presently he recovers sufficiently far to be informed that he has been awarded the match—on a foul. Miss Sissy, not ill-pleased with himself, modestly disappears. “Yes,” continued Al Thompson, “you seen something. Was you there when Eddie Gillette fit that duck what we call Coca-Kola? No? I’m sorry. Coca-Kola’s a Turk. Comes from Turkey, I mean. Las’ winter, when he was fighting around the Bowery, he would eat raw meat whenever he could get it. Said it kept him kinder fit. Anyway, he was put up las’ night against Eddie Gillette. We picked on Ed because he was the best man in the Trench Mortar Section, and Coca-Kola had been winning out all the time for the Machine Gunners, where he belonged, and they was blowing some. Ed was giving away more than seventeen pounds of weight, besides which the Turk was the sort of guy that if he was short of money he would go up to a person an’ say: ‘You give me two bits and I’ll let you hit me on the jaw any place you like!’ That was the kind of lobster Coca-Kola was, and gives you some sort of an idea what Ed was up against!