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- ' lt;• ' - I1 y . t • f“Kid’* Wedge Sticcurabs To Great Strain of OverworkAnd Exposure \■ * . *v «, BT CiEOU.SB S1NOK !Rev. F. IL' Wedge, former!/ “Kid Wpdge, welterweight pugilist of Oina ha, who has been waglnga fight against vice, single handed, ou tltc Barbary Coast, Is now having anoilier kind of a tattle. At Hahnemann hospital, with tiie lielp of. nurses and doctors lie Is fighting against a nerrous breakdown and the cold on his lungs which keeps film gasping for breath. '• “But, I’ll get out of lids, allright,” lie says with the same optimism with which lie cheers the joung m^n that he finds In tenderlion dives. - . i The story of Wedge’s illness cannot be learned from the sick man,* wttom pride makes silent. After comming out of the slura3 himself, working his way through Nebraska university - by teaching boxing during tlie week and preaching as a student pastor on Sundays, hi lias decided to give his whole lire to helping men threatened by the same dangers which threatened him All that lie lias had is his salary, not QTer-Iarge in these days.of expensive living, with which to feed and clothe himself and those he has taken-in He lias not been “out with the hat,” ids charity lias not been prefaced by expensive vaudevilte pro*iuctIons*or bazars. When he has given, It has been of liis own life. - !His tendency to dropinto the Bowery slang of Ids boyhood, his preaching of the Gospel of good health as - much asqrthodoi sermonizing on street corners has closed the purses of several hypercritical wealthy people who promised to aid him. He lias made no complaint, but when the money was hard to get lie confined himself to one meal a day so that tic would have more to share niththe stranger.;A cheap room within hearing of j Pacific St. hurdy-gurdies has been his home. After the hours of exposure when he stood at the beginning of the tenderloin and warned back Iheyoang people who would “see the' sights” the unheated room was his only refuge. Many clergymen who have been approached on thesubject have advised tint the best way todoisto throw off the Impressions received in the district of vice. Each man who lias given sucli advice lias a tiny home circle of some sort as a counterbalance for Ids work. Advice will not pay the hospital bills of the young clup who says:“I will preach to these boys even If I carry a lioe during the day and have to do it at nfghf”There is a secret, sacred to F.-R. Wedge. He lias been planning to marry and establish a. home. The girl Is waiting. As fast as his salary comes it goes again to clothe one of the men lie lias succeeded In transforming from common drunks to honest laborers. The wedding day, comradeship, which would mean much to him must always lie kept in the future. The expense of his illness precipitated by lack of food and warni enough clothing looks now like % yawning hole between himself and Jiappl-ness and his work, which will swallow up liis earnings-Ilis visitors now arc cleanly looking men who tiptoe into the sickroom. A month ago some of tnem unkempt objects, reeled into the open room of the “Fighting Pastor,’- who seemed to have no time for sleepingand eating.— SanFrancisco Baily News
Newspaper Details
Rhinelander New North
Rhinelander, Wisconsin, US
Thu, Dec 01, 1910
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
John H.
IL, USA 30 Apr 2017
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