In class recitation or spelling match his father's millions did not
aid him in competing with Patsy Halloran, the mathematical prodigy
whose father was a hod-carrier, nor with Mona Sanguinetti who was a
wizard at spelling and whose widowed mother ran a vegetable store. Nor
were his father's millions and the Nob Hill palace of the slightest
assistance to Young Dick when he peeled his jacket and, bareknuckled,
without rounds, licking or being licked, milled it to a finish with
Jimmy Botts, Jean Choyinsky, and the rest of the lads that went out
over the world to glory and cash a few years later, a generation of
prizefighters that only San Francisco, raw and virile and yeasty and
young, could have produced.

The wisest thing Lucky Richard did for his boy was to give him this
democratic tutelage. In his secret heart, Young Dick never forgot that
he lived in a palace of many servants and that his father was a man of
power and honor. On the other hand, Young Dick learned two-legged,
two-fisted democracy. He learned it when Mona Sanguinetti spelled him
down in class. He learned it when Berney Miller out-dodged and out-ran
him when running across in Black Man.

And when Tim Hagan, with straight left for the hundredth time to
bleeding nose and mangled mouth, and with ever reiterant right hook to
stomach, had him dazed and reeling, the breath whistling and sobbing
through his lacerated lips--was no time for succor from palaces and
bank accounts. On his two legs, with his two fists, it was either he
or Tim. And it was right there, in sweat and blood and iron of soul,
that Young Dick learned how not to lose a losing fight. It had been
uphill from the first blow, but he stuck it out until in the end it
was agreed that neither could best the other, although this agreement
was not reached until they had first lain on the ground in nausea and