[Illustration: ONE OF HEENAN’S MEMENTOES.]
After searching some time to discover the blacksmith shop where the pugilist used to work, I learned that it was long since torn down and a church now occupied the site. But an old gentleman who kept a small boarding house, conducted me to an ancient pump, at which he said the “Boy” on several occasions bathed his nose after having a bout with some person who didn’t let him have things all his own way, and there I wept my tears of tribute.
A large iron-bound boot-jack, set in a glass case, was shown to me by a saloon-keeper. He assured me, with this weapon the “Boy” had killed several cats belonging to the neighbors which had disturbed his slumbers. This boot-jack had also caused the death of a mule, for on one occasion the pugilist hurled it with such violence at a cat that was scampering across the roof of a shed that the heavy missile went through the boards. A farmer’s mule that was standing inside received the weapon behind the ear, and immediately went to gravel as though he had been felled with a sledge-hammer. The farmer instituted a suit against the “Boy” to recover damages, but the friends of the pugilist made up a purse to satisfy the demand of the farmer, and the matter was hushed.
I was also shown a jagged hole in a high board fence, which, it is said, the “Boy” made one night while going home from a neighboring saloon.
It seems he had some trouble with a companion before leaving the saloon, and seeing his shadow dogging his steps, mistook it for the substance of his late antagonist; very naturally presuming that his intentions were anything but friendly, he turned hastily around and dissipated the obnoxious shadow by knocking it about fifteen feet into the garden.
The fence rattled and shook around the whole lot under the terrible blow. He made a hole in the boards through which a large goat could readily jump without sacrificing any of its hair by the performance, and permanently injured a good-sized pear tree that stood inside the enclosure, about three feet distant. The concussion was terrible. A couple of turkeys that happened to be roosting in the tree at the time dropped from their limb as though shot through the head with a needle-gun. Never afterwards could they be induced to roost upon anything further from the ground than the cross-bar of a saw-horse or the handles of a wheelbarrow.