CCORDING to Marcus Borealis, younger brother of Aurora, one of the literati who roamed about Rome a year or so before the Eagles became sea gulls, “Twice blest is he who can forever retain what is his own.” Marcus might have been a shark or a bust as the Shakespeare of his day but upon that one remark alone he deserves everlasting credit and a prominent place in the textbooks. It's a fact that any bim who has nerve and gets a lucky break can collect the sugar, but it takes one who is smarter than smart to hang onto it once he's leveled off and has it.
I'm right, am I not?
In this age of dashing yachtsmen who make frequent trips to the West Indies on business, yeggs, eggs, race tracks, bobbed-hair bandits, to say nothing of all the strangers from out of town who take Broadway and make themselves eligible for doing time by lifting watches, head waiters, waiters with no heads, the tin-can pirates with crooked meters, chorus girls, cloakroom burglars and—finish it yourself—any one who can retain what good fortune, gray matter or Mistress Luck has bequeathed him deserves all the medals. Shylock, himself, would have been looking for space on the bread line had he ever dropped off at the port of New York to stretch at the tall buildings.
This zippy narrative hasn't a thing in the world to do with Shylock although it does concern a certain blockhead who undoubtedly traces directly back to the famous money lender. The name, as you probably suspect, reads Ottie Scandrel.
Friend Ottie, a Manhattan hick who'd believe that Adam smashed baggage in the Garden of Eden if you looked him in the eye when you told him so, was one of the kind the Borealis boy must have been thinking about when he dipped his fountain pen in the ink to pen his wise crack. Scandrel, with more ups and downs than a second-hand roadster on a tough detour, had knocked out an eye-widening fortune aided and abetted by luck and pluck, had clowned around on the dough, loafing like bread until the Stock Exchange shook him like a cocktail, cleaned him like a carpet and dried him like a bath towel before removing his last nickel and showing him the nearest exit.
It was pence to shillings that any one else slapped over the jumps in this manner would have called it a day and gotten a job as a bookkeeper or a bootlegger but not so with the former pride of the Broadway farm. Ottie had staged a comeback by a climb into the prize ring and, riding in on the long end of the purse, had copped a piece of important money. Right here is where the sense of Marcus gets in its fine work with the cents of Scandrel and proves without a doubt that what was good a few centuries ago can get across to-day without difficulty.
Just for fun let me tell you about it.
Scandrel with a fresh bankroll turned overnight into the well-dressed boulevardier he had been before the bulls and the bears had given him the crash. He began dining three times a day, ate between meals, bought another car whose wheels were all present and then began running up to my gym in the Bronx to snicker at the tomato-catchup sockers who were working their heads and hands off around the premises in order to get edged for some notorious prelim that was to start them off on the road to fame. Ottie had a laugh for the lightweights, the welters and the top heavies, a giggle for all his old pals and a sneer for Looie Pitz, the little fight manager, who, like the brook, went on forever.
Pitz and Ottie were always as friendly as a couple of Airedales in a strange kennel but for once Looie had the bulge on him. Somewhere in the great wide world the little Scandinavian had dug up a two-fisted welterweight who was the real case goods. The puncher answered to the name of “Right Hook” Lane and made the same kind of an impression on the Manhattan fight fans as a “Follies” queen would on a hick village. Pitz's boy had everything including a disposition like a tormented hornet and a love for taking and giving it. He fought in the ring, in his dressing room, in the street, up alleys and on corners and he fought his way up the ladder like an Irish bricklayer working with a half dozen Italians. It looked like the welter crown sure, and Pitz, who had formerly traded in nothing but champion floppers, was so tickled that he bought himself a silk dicer and two clean shirts.
Really, Right Hook Lane had the stuff that would make a butterfly talk back to a vulture!
Every one around the Bronnix gym thought so too except Ottie who rolled up a couple of days after he first began spending real jack again to look things over and cast an optic at Lane, who was tearing up a couple of his sparring partners and getting a lot of amusement out of it.