The story
“Jack never would have believed it of Mabel! He could not make himself realize that such a sweet, adorable girl had transferred her affections from him to Tom Preston—and merely because Preston was the bigger and stronger. To challenge his rival to a fight was out of the question. Yet physical prowess was the only ground on which, he felt, there was now a chance of winning Mabel. If he wasn’t equal to knocking out Preston himself, then he must have it done by proxy. One evening Rawlings called upon Mabel and introduced to her ‘an old friend, Professor Snaith.’ Snaith was a little man with a bad squint. On subsequent meetings, Preston was disposed to ridicule him, but the professor bore his jests meekly. At last things came to a crisis. Snaith, apparently at the end of his temper, pitched into the unbearable Preston and gave him a severe trouncing. The professor dragged his opponent off the field, badly beaten up. And the terrified Mabel, clinging to Rawlings, repented to tears. Rawlings relished the joke in private afterwards. But he never let on to Mabel that ‘the professor’ was really a small, but prodigiously muscular, bartender who agreed to help him out of his lover’s quandary.”
Summary from Reel Life · 27 June 1914
