ENTER EVE


This memoir is not so much the history of a boy or of a man as of an
experiment. Therefore I will not longer delay in bringing Jerry to the
point where my philosophy and John Benham's was to be put to the test.
I have tried to indicate in as few phrases as possible Jerry Benham's
essential characteristics, the moral attributes that were his and the
shapeliness and strength of his body. I have never set great value on
mere physical beauty, which too often reacts unpleasantly upon the
character of its owner. But looks meant nothing to Jerry and he was as
unconscious of his striking beauty as the scarlet poppy that nods in
the meadow.

At the age of twenty, to which point this narrative has arrived, Jerry
Benham was six feet two inches in height and weighed, stripped, one
hundred and eighty-two pounds. His hair was brown, his eyes gray and
his features those of the Hermes of Praxiteles. His skin, naturally
fair, was tanned by exposure to a ruddy brown, and his body, except
for the few white scars upon his shoulder, relics of his encounter
with the lynx, was without blemish. He was always in training, and his
muscles were long and closely knit. I can hardly believe that there
was a man on the Olympian fields of ancient Greece who could have
been prettier to see than Jerry when he sparred with Flynn. He was as
agile as a cat, never off his balance or his guard, and slipped in and
out, circling and striking with a speed that was surprising in one of
his height and weight. "Foot-work," Flynn called it, and there were
times, I think, when the hard-breathing Irishman was glad enough at
the call of "time."