Making Fortunes

"The offer of au athletij club ef a purse of SSO,000 for a braee of prizefights between popular bruisers is a sad commentary on modera civilizatiou." said Professor Felix Howard to a reporter. "In tlie satne paper in which I read this offer I saw a statement that the savings of Samuel J. Randa 11, the great coinmoner, d uring nis long public life, scarce aggregaten B300. 'After paying his funeral expenses and setting aside $300 there was nothing left,' said the widow simply in making her report as exeoutrix to the court. "Men make large fortunes in a single night by catering to a depraved pubiic taste - by deseending below the level of the brute - while those who devote their lives to the public service and scorn its doubtful perquisitss die n poverty. "America boasts that she is the most anlightened and progressive nation on the giobe - that she is 'heir of all the ages aud foremost in the files of time' - yet nowhere is the professional stugger so well rewarded. It is the parause of the brute. "Patrons of the prize-fight deLight to compare these exhibitions with those of ancient Greece and Rome, forjetting that the cestus was most in pogue in Greece before the i-ise of Eellenic civilization, the gladiator' s Jword in Rome when the empire was tottering to its fall. It was when the proletarian rabble raled the mistress af the world, when it raged through her streets shrieking for blood and bread; when Greek ideáis were transtormed y the Circe of atheisminto brutish beasts; wlien learning had yielded place to lust, which gnawed like a ravenous cáncer at the imperial lieart - that professional thugs %vere rewarded as they are in America toïay.