Sporting Sprints.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 87, 15 November 1912, Page 6

Sporting Sprints.

OUTCAST WIFE OF BLACK CHAMPION. LIVED ALONE AMID DEAD POETS. (By E. Julius.) "Are the pots to blame Because the band that made them chanced to shake!-'" Blunt, emphatic Kipling once said that the East is the F.a-.-t. Ho added that the \W. i i:; th. West. And Li .on he clinched the whole matter by remarking that- nary a man can bring the two together. Jack Johnson is one of a million who tried to prove this wasn't so. Johnson tried to bind tho East to the West— and failed His wife killed herself. And if appearances count for anything, Johnson's heart isn't broken. It's all over. The last chapter has been written. But there will bo tens of thousands to-day who will commence writing the first chapter, just as an army of others are now writing the last. She was known as "The Outcast." She came from an environment of refinement and culture to one of sport and game and dissipation. Those of tho old days renounced her; those of the new days looked on her with suspicion and refused to accept hor. So she was an outcast. She was a. well-educated woman—this Mrs. Johnson. I walked through her library this morning, and there saw volumes of poetry by Keats, Shelley, Whitman, Gray and Burns. They wore marked in a thousand places. They wero not there for effect, but to be read. Doubtless it was the one means she. had of enduring the awful, killing loneliness that was her lot. For, as is generally known. Jack was not what is commonly called "an ideal husband." He has even been known to say that it was "all a fluke." Ho kept her about the house just as you or I keep a piece of bric-a-brac —because it's there nnd we've been in the habit of kcnr'ue: it there.

Once, as is now generilly known, Jack even beat his "outcast." He beat her so severely that she was forced to spend considerable time in a hospital. Then, to "souare things." he bought her an expensive bit of jewellery. • DEAD POETS ONLY FRIENDS. No one ever accused Johnson of loving his wife. He had his women and bis friends, black and white, it is openly said. But the "outcast" was alone—she had no one except the dead poets.

There she was—an intelligent, sensitive woman—married to a big, ugly, gorilla-like prize-fighter—the champion of the world, tho vanquisher of the mighty Jeffries

! This immense gorilla was her Husband—this brute whose philosophy was the Queenshury rules, whose passion was the knock-out punch, whose goal was at< the end of a road lined with bleeding, pummelled, unconscious brutes, whose sole joy in life was the music of the thud that followed a solar plexus. That was the "outcast's" mate — that was the man who was intended to balm her hurts, soothe her, love her and make her glory in the ecstasy of life! And when lovo failed to come, the "outcast" sent a bullet through her head. The poet Keats, who idealised the beautiful, whose philosophy was that what is beautiful is good because it is beautiful, and what is ugly is bad bocause it is ugly—this poet, this tender sensitive Keats, was tho favorite of this tender, sensitive woman. The world rarely saw the "outcast" —she could not well join those in the cafe downstairs —in Johnson's cafe, where his friends —black and white, men and women —gathered of a night. She remained upstairs in her room— alone with her poets. In a hidden corner was found a plush-covered, limp-backed copy of the Rubaiyat. It appeared to have been thrown aside, as though it bad not been touched for months. A thick coat of dust covered it. I opened the tiny book and found that it, like the others, was marked in scores of places. On the fly-leaf was a date—July 15, 1908. Doubtless at that time she had tried to use the Persian poet's philosophy of abandon and glorification of the senses of the flesh in an effort to fit herself to her environment. That she had failed is proved by the suicide yesterday. LIFE TOLD IN LINES. One passage was heavily underscored. It read: "Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears To-day of past Regrets and future Fears— To-morrow —why. To-morrow I may ho Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years." Another, marked with a weak, uncertain line, follows: — "The Moving Finger writes; and having writ > Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a W r ord of it."

At that time, if Johnson's memory serves him right, she made an effort to become a part of her husband's life. She, the "outcast," tried to "get the swing" of it all, as though she were trying to live the Persian's philosophy, but she failed.

"Yes," said Johnson, "Ah always thought a whole lot of my wife. She

certainly did treat mc most lady-like, ' an' Ah always liked her most highly. I Tho only thing J didn't like about her iwas she'd get so d d nervous and I upset mc altogether."—Chicago "Evenling World."