CHAPTER I.THE HOME-MADE SUIT OF CLOTHES.
A fight in the first chapter made a book interesting to me when I was a boy.

I said to myself, "The man who writes several chapters before the fighting begins is like the man who sells peanuts in which a lot of the shells haven't any goodies." I made up my mind then that if I ever wrote a book I would have a fight in the first chapter.
So I will tell right here how I whipped the town bully in Sharon, Pennsylvania.

I'll call him Babe Durgon.

I've forgotten his real name, and it might be better not to mention it anyhow.

For though I whipped him thirty years ago, he might come back now in a return match and reverse the verdict, so that my first chapter would serve better as my last one.