Soon Mr. Corbett met Mr. Fitzsimmons, but the less said about that the better. It facilitated his way to the stage which is where he really belonged. He deserted it now and then to take on a fighter and finally met Jeffries, who stopped him plentifully and permanently. That permitted him to devote himself to his café and to his lines.

The most amazing chapter of this biographical narrative is entitled “My Actor Friends.” Here Mr. Corbett poses as a diagnostician in the field of psychiatry. “Come to think of it, I have had the misfortune to be present when six famous stars have lost their reason.” Men lose their reason as they do their purses or their umbrellas. They drop through holes in the pocket or they are left in street cars. Dr. Corbett’s procedure was original, but I find it difficult to believe he used his head as much in diagnosticating as in fighting. “What’s all this talk about your going crazy?” said he to a great comedian already advanced in general paresis who instantly countered with protestation of complete sanity. The slang comedian with whom he played pool at the Lambs during his last rational hour “laughed and kidded” in his familiar way, but Mr. Corbett distinguished the psychic output from that of irrationality.

A friend and admirer of Mr. Corbett, a journalist, author and literary promoter says, in a foreword to the book, that the ex-champion did the book himself. Few will ask Mr. Anderson to prove it. “Jim said he wanted it as it is, faults and all.” Jim is the man who got what he wanted. Did he want a biography, that is the question?