In the old days--as also in prize-fights to-day--it was quite usual to assail your adversary with insults as well as with blows.
This was done now.

The young man, with a torrent of imprecations, demanded who Frank thought he was, asked where he was coming to, required of society in general an explanation of a stranger's interfering between a son and a qualified father.

There was a murmur of applause and dissent, and Frank answered, with a few harmless expletives such as he had now learned to employ as a sort of verbal disguise, that he did not care how many sons or fathers were in question, that he did not propose to see a certain kind of bully abuse an old man, and that he would be happy to take the old man's place....
Then the battle was set.
Frank had learned to box in a certain small saloon in Market Street, Cambridge, and knew perfectly well how to take care of himself.

He received about half the force of one extremely hard blow just on his left cheek-bone before he got warmed to his work; but after that he did the giving and the loose-limbed young man the receiving, Frank was even scientific; he boxed in the American manner, crouching, with both arms half extended (and this seems to have entirely bewildered his adversary) and he made no effort to reach the face.

He just thumped away steadily below the spot where the ribs part, and where--a doctor informs me--a nerve-center, known as the _solar plexus_, is situated.