I was out-of-doors, eating snowballs for dinner & sleeping by Lake Michigan. Nights so cold even the Chicago police weren't up for rousting me. The soles of my shoes so thin I could step on a dime & tell whether it was heads or tails. If I had a dime. Sparring with Frank Childs was my first bit of Chicago luck. They called Frank "The Crafty Texan," but I have yet to meet a colored Texan who isn't crafty. In the ring, Frank followed me like I was the one who ran off with his wife. He'd grab my shoulder with his left, then hook my ribs with his right until his corner- man pulled him off. I was smaller then & couldn't defense like I can now, & Frank was a big man—grappling gloves & red eyes. But when somebody told him I needed a place to stay, he let me sleep on the floor. I had to leave when his no-good wife decided to come back. In the middle of the night, the snow coming down so furiously even the bricks in the buildings wanted shelter. I spent that night seething underneath a statue of General John A. Logan. It was so cold, it seemed as if the bronze horse the general sat on turned his head away from the wind.