Newspaper Page Text
tyreen matches the young hopefuls
of the prize ring are giving them box
ing lessons at $25 an hour!
In Paris, of course, women have
been going to prize fights quite open
ly for years. Their husband and
brothers take them. They wear full
opera dress, and the ring is banked
with palms and tropical plants and
there are rare Turkish rugs about
the stage.
Boxing has not reached that state
of luxury in New York as yet.
Brown's gymnasium, where I met the
cream of the local prize ring, is a
bare, dimly-lighted place, and the
men and women who composed the
invited audience and sat about the
ring on chairs or benches wore their
every-day clothes. Most of the wom
en were veiled, moreover, and wore
a furtive air.
Caroline Bauman is the woman
boxer I saw. She is now a profes
sional, but is said to have been a
Washington (D. C.) debutante a few
years ago. She looks like Annette
Kellerman.
At the end of a three-minute go
.vith Eddie Toy, Referee Jack Adler
walked to Miss Bauman's corner and
lifted her right hand high in the air
as a token that she had won the bout.
You should have heard the women
present applaud and the men cheer!
Maybe that bout in which the woman
won was-a "frame-up." I don't know
about that. But I do know that the
three rounds which followed between
Jack Britton and Johnny Reise were
painfully real.
Knowing nothing of the fine points
of the manly art I did not realize at
once that this poor young chap was
hopelessly overmatched with Britton,
who, the man alongside me said, is
one of the most scientific lightweights
now alive.
I DID notice that Johnny Reise
fought head down like a valorous but
unscientific small boy, with much
arm-waving and plunging and that he
never landed a blow. And I did ob
serve that Jack Britton Beemedtol
float about him and away from him
with the airy grace of a Pavlowa and
that he landed where, when and as
hard as he pleased on his poor, bewil
dered, bull-headed opponent.
What impressed me most was the
amazing swiftness, the startling phys
ical grace of these, young fellows.
I had spent the afternoon before at
a private dance In Isadora Duncan's ty
school, and the flash of white flesh
was everywhere as her bare-armed,
bare-legged young students surren
dered themselves to the silent, visible
music of motion.
Yet the girl dancers, as I recalled
them, were heavy, cumbersome, al-
most awkward, when compared with
these slender boxers in their sketchy
red, green and purple sweaters as
they flashed in lightning rapidity
about the ring.
After the fights were over I talked
with Dan Morgan, manager of K. O.
Brown, Levinsky and several other
fighters.
"You , wouldn't believe how many
application these boys have from
young girls here in New York who
want to take boxing lessons," he said.
"Some of them have been paid $25
an hour."
Mrs. Harriet Edwards Fayes, who
sent out the invitations to the bouts
I attended, is one of the New York
women who have taken up boxing.
"It beats dancing as a reducer,"
she told me, "and it's the most splen
did exercise for increasing the circu
lation of the blood. I feel 20 years
younger since I learned to box. You
have no idea how many women in
society are learning to box."
At the sport carnival, which will b&
held under the auspices of the Mar- A)
shall "Stillman association for the
benefit of the unemployed in New
York city, two young woman
amateurs who have taken les
sons from Jack Britton have
promised to box three rounds if they
are allowed to appear on the stage
masked. I have promised them that
I will not give out their names.
