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Show j BEFORE F it p WjfTjp fill ill ieno Was a Town of ! Aany Strange Sights f Reno. New, July 4. When the sun ' that today lifted its brlrn above the , sagebrush hills enclosing this green i find ordinarily peaceful valley, sets over the wblte-capped Sierras, there i will hae passed into comparative ob-I ob-I llvion, one of tho two mluhty men James J. Jeffries or John Arthur I Johnson. j Its first rays shot into barrack-liko pieces where men of home and family were sleeping in rows upon rows. It glinted through abutters Into strange bedrooms where men were sleeping two and three In a bed and on the l.'oors. It rent aside curtains of smoke and saw red-eyed men grouped at green tables and standing around spinning wheels. And on each of these tables it met Its rival, the gold of the earth in heaps. It saw a gTeat bare structure of pine boards, with a white-roped ring In the center wait i ing. It saw the streets already stir-ling stir-ling w ith restless life and automobiles automo-biles already whirling along the country coun-try roads. Out of the southeast came h cool wind and the clear sky gave promise prom-ise of a perfect day for what promises to be the la.it great prize ring battle of heavyweights In the United States. Here between the fire of eastern - II reformers and the deep j.ea of Pa-clflc Pa-clflc coast politics, the pugilists are i pothered In their Inst stand. Never ; before In the history of the prize ring have so many fighting celebrities and J sporting characters met iu one nar-' nar-' row street. If Announcer Billy Jor-j Jor-j Can has to Introduce all these men this afternoon he will lose his voice long before Jeffries aud Johnson make their bows to the public. J The morning of the fight brings.no j change In any of the details that will i . go, to make up the setting of the stage. To down the rumor that ho, would not act as leferee of the light Tex Rlckard offered this morning a bet of $1,000 that he would officiate. ' The night passed peacefully at both ; camps and early this morning the trainers and handlers and managers i were busy in completing their ar-i ar-i rangements to appear at the ringside I promptly and to get out of town to ' morrow. ! The men are scheduled to start to : fit;ht at 1:20 o'clock Pacific coast time, but what with introductions and the fuss of the moving picture game ; it probably will be a half hour later ; betore time is called. The prospects j are that tlie arena. Heating I'iOu, j will be comfortably filled. Early this t morning a long line of purchasers lined up at the ticket office. There i has been no difficulty so far over the seating arrangements and no scalping . lias been carried on openly. The main struggle this morning was : 1o get j-ornethlng to eat before going go-ing to the arena. The restaurants last night almost gave up the Job of trying to feed the multitude. rMony place were sold out of every scrap of i eatcbleg before morning. The do.ira of the main restaurants were guarded guard-ed by husky waiters who let u few hungry patron flft in at intervals. Once Inside it was, a waiter who told i the guests what they could gel to eat. ' Menu cards were mere ornaments. Hundreds of men came in on toe laf specials last night walked until they j were weary hunting a place to- eat jf and sleep. Some gave it up as a j bad job an dremained up all night. bad Job and remlaued up all night. And so it wus a weird throng that started on I'.r way to the arena as tho morning sped toward noon. In tho crowd were the puulllsts mentioned aboie. the sports who follow the pugilists pug-ilists and bet on them, the men who write of the doirp'S of the fighter more writers thau ever reported a ' tight before women and boys, thieves I i and ramblers, beggar and detective and all the casual riffraff that follow fol-low the big sport events. They were I burned by one desire, sped by one , fever, made one by a common drslre. During the morning many automo-t automo-t blip parties passed the time by spinning spin-ning out to the two camps on the edjo I of the city, seeking once more to get & tlli from the wife ones. The pool-I pool-I rooms were buey taking bets. During the early hours the odds remained lb'; hamo ns on the night before Jeflrles the faTorlte at odds of 10 to 6 1-. Tbey were pushed down to at one t!m by p bt of $10,000 on Jc-Iri mad by 1 1 IJ. FYs zee of Chicago, who ( ill manage Jeffries' round-the-world tour IF. . Oeorgf Considiue of New York, bet .".foo n Jeffries at odd r.f 10 to'S J-2 n1 announced that be hod more at the same pricr. Iircr betting fs looked for at the ) nglde Mitf, a possible churif? of I Mds hi favor of Johnson. '.. E. jT Smataora or New York. sMd hi b? ; vould be $20.o.io on JefiYi-s i.fer. The latent new fnm the camns lJ ; tiiat both men will wait until the Ht minute beroro niotcrir. to the ring-hide. ring-hide. - , Thr-v jll drei at (heir cuinps, even j 10 rutting the bandages on their I ufl nd ft. I'ki'li men aro.-e early and went out lor short gr,ins on the road to limber U'i. Johnson had not made bH fir' . r.lans. but Jeffrie decided to how all j his trainers etept Red Cornell and . 'iCootlnucd od I'asc Scun.) -who -will act aa timekeeper for Johnson John-son It Is appalling to think about the number of words that will be written about this fight before another sunrise. sun-rise. Not; only Tevery move, but almost al-most every thought of tho men in the ring will be chronicled. In the cold figures of th"e estimates of tho telegraph tele-graph company . managers, ' 750,000 words of press matter will go out over the wires if Johnson wins. If Jeffries wins it Will be much less, they estimate, around 200,000 words. Added to what has been written during dur-ing the last year and the. history of the two men who will face each other this afternoon would fill as many volumes vol-umes as that of any king or president that ever lived. A force of 100 expert telegraph operators op-erators has been gathered In this little lit-tle desert city. They have been brought from as far east as Chicago. A carload of modern equipment was 6ent on from the east and set up. Tourist sleepers were parked for the accommodation of these men. Extra precautions have been taken alon? the lino to safeguard the wires and the company has Increased its roster in all prominent offlces and repeater stations from coast to coast. One wire official said that outside of the San Francisco disaster of 19uC. no greater volume of matter hos been handled for a single event In the history his-tory of telegraphy. And yet the half has not been told. There are a thousand incidents that go to make up the real llfo of a gath-ing gath-ing of this sort that no eye can seo and no pen est n .tell. On the eve of the biggest thing in hla Uf-'. Ja.k Johnson sat with a party par-ty of friends yesterday afternoon and talked Jokingly of bU career. "Toni$ht," ho said, "I am thinking of the- hard road that I have traveled nlnce I left home when I wax 12 years old. I ran away as a kid and stowaway stow-away on a cotton steamer and land ed In New York, "I didn't have a nickel. As the ship docked I went up on deck and. standing stand-ing In the center of a crowd of passengers pas-sengers with my longest face and no' saddest eye, I announced that a worthless colored boy. without friends, family or money, was about to Jump overboard. "I walked to tho rail and told everybody every-body to keep away from me. My old cap I had allowod to fall on the deck. Ah I turned around, about to try my bluff at 'the fatal plunge, a woman threw a dollar Into my cap. A show, er of money followed and my first meal In the big city was chicken. "Since that time, during the twenty years. I have traveled over nmst ot' the world and have had tnv ups ami downs. But my ambition has been realized. 1 have taken mv old mother out of that Galveston shanty where I was raised from a haby, and I've put her In the bc?t hous? I could find in Chicago. She's got everything she wants, and I'm happy." The women of Jeffries' household have been finding four-leaf clovfM and the men have bet-n bringing In old horseshoes, but the fighter's mind is the best indication cf good luck that has com to hlin was in the shape of a yellow dog. Wh.le the members of the family ' were at the dining table last eenln waiting for Jewries and Frank Couh to come in, a vagabond do? wandered wander-ed in and crawled under Jffris" vacant va-cant chair. Attempts to drive thv visitor out were unless. JefTries returned at dark. A lmn steak had bfen prepared for him. As he entered the room he saw the doi; He laughed and said: "Well. herc'H a yellow dn' with good hick to me. We'll just roaku him tho mascot. He's welcome to stay." And cuttinc the Kteak in two. Jeffries Jef-fries tossed half ot It Jo his new friend. BEFORE THE FIGHT. (Continued From Page One.) Farmer Burns precede him to his quarters at the arena. Cornell and Burns will remain at the camp to give him a final rub. On the way to the arena Jeffries will take his wife to a newspaper office, of-fice, where she will wait until th fato of her husband has been decided, get-tln-; the returns round bv round. Mm. Jeffries hates prize flghta. She is sure, however, that "her Jim" will win. When the fight starts It will bo more than a battle between tho two principals. Jeffries' chief second will be James J. Corbett, who was champion cham-pion until whipped by Fltzslmmons. Johnson's chief second and sole ad-vixer ad-vixer during the flgm will be Billy 1 DeUner. Delaney trained and fathered fath-ered both COTbett and Jeffries when thy wcto young fighter with aspirations aspir-ations only. He la Jeffrie' enemy now and Johnson depends upon him to tell him Of the weak points in hla opponent's methods and to advise him just when to sail in and win. To fight expert his situation presents pre-sents ono of the ru:st dramilc touches that could be Imagined. It will br test cf the best jin? generalship tiut this age has prr-duced. TIpsM IHilanty ii Johnsons corner cor-ner will be SIR Hart, Al Kaufman. Kauf-man. Doc Fvi-y. VTJrV!0' Burns . ard Stanley Ketcbel. f-jAjLi-.j.-at chamnloA tf the worm. 1 |