Well, Mr. Burke, you don’t know me, but I was to the Garden last night with my daddy and set right near you and noticed you when I first come in, but didn’t dast look at you and didn’t know who you was till you was introduced from the ring. And then when you was returning to your seat I thought you smiled at me and I smiled back. Oh, Mr. Burke, was it me you was smiling at? If not I will feel very foolish for smiling at you and hope you won’t think the worse of me for doing so.
Well, anyway, it’s too late to mend and this a.m. I had my secretary get where you are staying from Mr. Rickard and am writing you this letter and suppose you will say it’s just another fool girl writing mash notes, but I flatter myself that I am a little higher class than most girls as I am a society girl and don’t write these kind of letters as a rule. So please don’t think I am a fool and tear this up. Am just a girl that sometimes lets their feelings run away with them.
Am going to make pa take me to see the bout between you and Willie Kemp, but am afraid you are going to be beaten that night, Mr. Burke, as have seen Mr. Kemp fight and believe he is going to be the champion. I admire him very much and up to last night, admired him more than any other man, but now am not so sure. There I am afraid I have been too bold and you will think I am a perfect fool.
Well, Mr. Burke, will not take up no more of your time though I don’t suppose you have read this far, but hope you don’t think I am a fool, but know you do. Pa don’t approve of me writing to men to who I am not engaged and would be very angry was he to find out I had wrote to you, so can’t let you answer this letter or call me up for fear he would find it out and be very angry. But maybe will write you again and certainly will see you fight Mr. Kemp and if you see me that night, please smile at me again so will not think you consider me a fool. But maybe you will not feel like smiling after you have boxed Mr. Kemp, as I think he is a wonder.
Well, Mr. Burke, goodbye for this time and please don’t think I am a fool.
Well, Jack Grace had guessed right. Burkey swallowed it whole. He begin reading it down in the lobby, but when he looked back and seen the name signed to it, he took it up to the room to finish it. And if he read it once, he read it twenty times—and looked sillier every time he read it. He surprised us one way, though. We was expecting he would show it to everybody. But he kept it to himself. Of course, we’d read it before it got to him. Jack had wrote it and had one of the phone gals copy it off.
Nate ast the kid at supper how he felt.
“Great!” he says.
“You want to keep working to improve your wind,” says Nate. “This is your first fifteen-round bout and you may get tired.”
“I won’t have time to get tired,” he says. “I’ll knock him dead in a round!”
It was the first time he’d ever made a speech like that.
“Looks like you was right,” says Nate to Jack, afterwards. “He’s eat it up. The only thing now is to be sure and not overplay it. Just give him a couple more short notes between now and the bout.”
“What shall I say in them?” says Jack.
“You don’t need my advice,” said Nate. “I think you wrote that one from memory. You must of got a few mash notes yourself.”
“No,” says Jack. “All the time I was boxing, I only got letters from one gal. And she always said the same thing: ‘If you’re a man, you’ll pay me back that eight dollars and sixty cents you stole.’ ”
Well, Burke pestered the clerks to death asking if they was sure no mail had came for him; and he went for the phone every time it rung, and was scared to go out for fear a call would come w’ile he wasn’t there. Finally it got so that Nate couldn’t hardly drag him to Daley’s for his workout, and they seen they’d have to spill another note or he’d worry himself out of shape. The second one was short and said:
Dear Mr. Burke: It has been all as I could do to keep from writing you before this, but was afraid if I wrote too often you would think I was a fool.
Well, Mr. Burke, it’s only five days now till your bout with Mr. Kemp and suppose you are excited. I know I am and can’t hardly wait for the big event, though to be perfectly honest am in a funny position as I don’t know if I want you or he to win. You see I am an admirer of the both of you. Suppose you will say to yourself I must be a funny girl to not know her own mind, but you see I have admired Mr. Kemp a long time and only seen you the
