“So now he’s got a sort of class down in an empty loft at Jim Neal’s and a lot of the boys go there twice a week. Mis’ Dawes says their Jim’s plumb crazy about it.”
Jimmy wasn’t the only boy who was crazy about the class in the barn loft. One by one they came trooping in, shyly and awkwardly at first; but soon with glad confidence and unbounded enthusiasm. Lem Tollerton dropped in one evening to learn the knock-out that had laid him low, and, in his wake, the young men of the Valley found their way to the loft. Archibald added gloves and foils to his equipment; and within a few weeks, wrestling, boxing, fencing and jiu-jitsu were epidemic.
“It beats all,” Martin Nelson, the father of four husky lads, confided to Mr. Colby. “My boys are poking and pounding each other all over the place, the minute they ain’t at work; but I don’t know as I ever saw them so good-natured. Seems as if they thought being knocked endways was a treat and they’re always and everlastingly talking about playing fair and not taking advantage and not losing temper and not poking here or punching there. I don’t know but what teaching them to fight’s going to take the fighting out of them. Anyway they ain’t hanging around the stores every evening cooking up trouble. They do say Lem Tollerton and his crowd are cutting out booze, because it gets at them and spoils their fighting.”
Now and again, one of the older men, drawn by curiosity, came to the class to look on. He seldom went away without having a bout with the gloves or a wrestling lesson and he usually came again. The crowd soon outgrew its quarters and Archibald went to Dr. Fullerton with a plan.
“The Valley needs a men’s and boys’ club,” he said. “Where can we have it and how will we run it? You know this community better than I do.”
“I’m not so popular with it, when it’s healthy,” the doctor said dryly. “You’re working as hard to make yourself solid as if you were running for office. Pity not to stand for something, with the pull you’ve got.” He dropped his banter and laid a friendly hand on the younger man’s shoulder.
“It’s a bully work, man. You’re doing more to humanize the Valley than the doves of peace could if they came in flocks. Nothing like beating an idea of honest sport into a fellow’s head for making a decent citizen of him. When he’s grasped the idea that there are some things no fellow can do, he’s got something to work on. I’m inclined to think that boxing will grip a boy’s soul when Sunday school fails. Now about this club, How much money will it take?”