us are likely to forget.

It was strange to see Jim with his uncle and his aunt, for he seemed
to be of another race and breed to them. Often I have watched them
come up the aisle upon a Sunday, first the square, thick-set man,
and then the little, worn, anxious-eyed woman, and last this
glorious lad with his clear-cut face, his black curls, and his step
so springy and light that it seemed as if he were bound to earth by
some lesser tie than the heavy-footed villagers round him. He had
not yet attained his full six foot of stature, but no judge of a man
(and every woman, at least, is one) could look at his perfect
shoulders, his narrow loins, and his proud head that sat upon his
neck like an eagle upon its perch, without feeling that sober joy
which all that is beautiful in Nature gives to us--a vague self-
content, as though in some way we also had a hand in the making of
it.

But we are used to associate beauty with softness in a man. I do
not know why they should be so coupled, and they never were with
Jim. Of all men that I have known, he was the most iron-hard in
body and in mind. Who was there among us who could walk with him,
or run with him, or swim with him? Who on all the country side,
save only Boy Jim, would have swung himself over Wolstonbury Cliff,
and clambered down a hundred feet with the mother hawk flapping at
his ears in the vain struggle to hold him from her nest? He was but
sixteen, with his gristle not yet all set into bone, when he fought
and beat Gipsy Lee, of Burgess Hill, who called himself the "Cock of
the South Downs." It was after this that Champion Harrison took his
training as a boxer in hand.