Billiards

“ Billiards is a game that lends itself to betting. While this may be permissible in a public billiard place, it is not good form in a private home where the hostess invites a few friends to enjoy the game with her. She should not invite many people unless she has several tables to place at their disposal. ”

“ The bad play so often seen in amateur billiards is not usually to be attributed to any want of power of execution.
I have never known a professional do a stroke which most amateurs could not copy, though I have known one instance of an amateur being able to do that which probably no professional living could do. The feat deserves to be recorded. The gentleman was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and it was said that he could from baulk screw back off the red on the spot into baulk again. ”

“ It is comparatively easy to perform in an ordinary tournament or match, where the least noise or interruption to the player is instantly checked; ... but billiards at the Albert Club is a different thing altogether. Betting on the game, and often on individual strokes, is carried on without let or hindrance, and that a stranger to London should have displayed consistently good form under such trying circumstances was conclusive evidence that he had plenty of nerve and self-possession. ”

“ A few words may be permitted on billiards as a game for ladies. With their superior delicacy of touch and at least 440equality in all other respects, save perhaps in brute force, there would seem to be no reason why they should not greatly excel at the game. As a fact some, a very few, do play almost as well as good club players; they can make from twenty to forty points in a break, and, this being so, work is all that is required to raise their standard. The game is a healthy one, calling into play not merely the muscles but the mind ”

“ Almost every American boy wants to play billiards. When I was fourteen one of my schoolmates found a man who wished to sell a small table—it had rubber tubes for cushions—but the price was prohibitive, twenty dollars. ”

“ All he cares for is to make money. But I'm coming, for all that. I've bought a lottery ticket, as you advised, and just as soon as I get hold of the prize, I shall come and make you a visit. I should like very much to learn billiards. I wish there was a billiard table in Stapleton, though it wouldn't do me much good if there were, the old man keeps me so close. I shall be glad when I am twenty-one. I don't see why he can't let me have a few thousand dollars then, and set me up in business in the city. ”

“ And now, as a last word, it is proper to explain that, though endeavour has been made in the preceding pages to put amateurs in the way of improving their game and of understanding its general principles, yet it is not for a moment advocated that young men should devote to billiards the time which might be more profitably employed in serious work. Except for professional players and a very few specially circumstanced enthusiasts, it is, after all, but a game and relaxation. ”

“ A ball is the centre, the focus, the indispensable feature of cricket, football, golf, tennis, racquets, croquet, fives, lawn tennis, and billiards. If figures could be given on this subject it would be interesting. What is the annual cost of all these games? how much is spent in materials and rent? and finally, most astounding of all, how many human beings play in all these games, and how many go and look on at others?—if all this were known, humanity indeed would be staggered. To take first-class cricket alone, each year in England and Australia millions of spectators crowd to matches ”

“ There wasn’t a single easy stroke in it!’ The real billiard-player would have described it as a series of well-made strokes, but as a break, never.
SHELL-OUT This game is practically the same as pyramids, but more than two take part in it. A stake, so much a ball, is agreed upon. The balls are set up as at pyramids, but under no circumstances is a ball ever put up after a miss, or when a ball has been forced off the table, or when the white has run in. If any of these things has happened, a point is added to every one’s score except the offender’s, who thus pays the stake to the other players. ”

“ The red faded from the face in front of him, the pale lips parted in silence, and one hand caught the counter.
“If you would, come to my place, The Star Pool and Billiard Palace, four blocks above the Bridge, and I’ll start you at twelve and a half a week. One of my men skipped with forty dollars’ worth of billiard balls yesterday—I am looking for them now. You can have his job. A man who will pawn his coat a night like this for his wife and baby and don’t get drunk won’t steal billiard balls. It’s a business proposition.” ”

“ It must be a hard life. Yet if I thought I could pick up six stone of salmon and plaice and throw it about I should sign on at Billingsgate at once. It is true they start work about five; but they stop work, it seems, about ten, and they earn a pound and over for that. Then they can go home. Most of them, I imagine, are stockbrokers during the rest of the day.
And they are a refined and gentlemanly body of men. I hope the old legend that the fish-porter of Billingsgate expresses himself in terms too forcible for the ordinary man is now exploded ”

“ Everybody who has discounted a bill knows that he has to pay more than the six per cent fixed by law; for a small percentage appears under the humble title of "charges," representing a premium on the financial genius and skill with which the capitalist puts his money out to interest. The more money he makes out of you, the more he asks. Wherefore it would be undoubtedly cheaper to discount a bill with a fool, if fools there be in the profession of bill-discounting.
The law requires the banker to obtain a stock-broker's certificate for the rate of exchange. ”

“ Again, it is true that Major Clutterbuck was much addicted to whist, with guinea points, and to billiard matches for substantial sums, but these stimulating recreations are also habitual to many men who have led eventful lives and require a strong seasoning to make ordinary existence endurable. Perhaps one reason may have been that the major's billiard play in public varied to an extraordinary degree, so that on different occasions he had appeared to be aiming at the process termed by the initiated "getting on the money." ”

“ The banker then convokes the traders: ‘My friends, let us go to work: write a prospectus! Down with humbug!’ On that they get out the hunting-horns and shout and clamor,—‘One hundred thousand francs for five sous! or five sous for a hundred thousand francs! gold mines! coal mines!’ In short, all the clap-trap of commerce. We buy up men of arts and sciences; the show begins, the public enters; it gets its money’s worth, and we get the profits. The pig is penned up with his potatoes, and the rest of us wallow in banknotes. ”

“ You always gamble; and when you're in good-luck you gambol, and when you aren't, you don't. What makes me sickest about you all is that you're so nauseatingly conceited and self-important. You all think that your beastly old Stock Exchange is the axle about which the wheel of the world revolves, and each of you thinks, privately, that he's the particular grease that makes it revolve smoothly."
"Well," said Billoo, "you know that the presence on the floor of one steady, conservative man may often avert a panic." ”

“ Our firm history was the usual one of broker firms in that tumultuous arena—the Wall street of those days—commissions in plenty, a large income, but one's bank account never growing, for what was made by day in the wild excitement of shifting values was thrown away amid wilder scenes at night. Those, too, were, indeed, the flush times for the professional gambler; for men were not content unless they burned the candle at both ends. Day faro banks were open everywhere around the Exchange, and enormous sums were nightly staked in the uptown games. ”

“ One thing only remains, not to be said, but to be sent round—I mean the hat. Ignominious to relate, this glorious foundation stands in need of money. Shade of Sir Thomas Bodley, I invoke thy aid to loosen the purse-strings of the wealthy! The age of learned and curious merchants, of high-spirited and learning-loving nobles, of book-collecting bishops, of antiquaries, is over. The Bodleian cannot condescend to beg. It is too majestical. But I, an unauthorized stranger, have no need to be ashamed.
Especially rich is this great library in Americana, and America suggests multi-millionaires. ”

“ Jordan of the Cattleman’s National Bank mentioned this shipment to your father that morning. Mr. Cullison was trying to raise money from him, but 188 he couldn’t let him have it. Every bank in the city refused him a loan. Yet next morning he paid off two thousand dollars he owed from a poker game.”
“He must have borrowed the money from some one,” she said weakly.
“That money he paid in twenty-dollar bills. The stolen express package was in twenties. You know yourself that this is a gold country. Bills ain’t so plentiful.” ”

“ The women who sell oysters in the street, and whose dealings are limited, buy either of the costermongers or at the coal-sheds. But nearly all the men buy at Billingsgate, where as small a quantity as a peck can be had. ”

“ They were standing just outside the store where their last purchases had been made when Billie, looking down the street, gave a cry of delight.
“Look who’s coming!” she exclaimed.
“It’s the boys!” cried Vi. “Mercy, girls, we might just as well have spent the rest of our money, the boys will treat us to the ice cream.”
“Goodness, Vi! do you want to spend your money whether you get anything you really need or wish for or not?” inquired Billie, with a little gasp.
“What in the world is money for if not to spend?” asked Vi, making big and innocent eyes at Billie. ”

“ By the term Bullion, remotely derived from the Low Latin bulla, a seal, and, more directly, from the Old French bullione, the Mint, is meant the stock of the precious metals formed into bars and stored in the strong rooms of the Bank of England in readiness for coinage. Money vested in Government securities is [256] known as Stock, or Government Stock, in allusion to the origin of the term, viz., the Anglo-Saxon stocc, a trunk, a stick ”

“ The Billingsgate people are all rich, and they do love to decorate their homes with pictures of fishermen, out of whom they make their money. They grind us poor mariners dreadfully, and that's why we won't sell 'em our fish. ”

“ Planks and woodwork were plentiful everywhere in the new world, and iron and ironworkers at first equally scarce; so stocks soon were seen in every town, and the bilboes were disused, sold perhaps for old iron, wherein they again did good service. In Virginia the bilboes had a short term of use in the earliest years of the settlement; the Provost-marshal had a fee of ten shillings for “laying by the heels;” and he was [Pg 10] frequently employed; but there, also, stocks and pillory proved easier of construction and attainment. ”

“ Every branch of trade, every conceivable species of amusement, is forced upon the public eye in this way. Bill-posting is one of the fine arts. Its professors are among the most notable characters in Virginia. They have a specific interest in certain corners, boards, boxes, and banks of earth and rock, which, with the brush and pot of paste, yield them a handsome revenue. To one who witnesses this bill-mania for the first time the effect is rather peculiar. He naturally imagines that the whole place is turned inside out. ”

“ Quickly a peon steps forward and lays a $10 bill on one card. The "tosser" shuffles again, the man wins and puts many silver dollars in his pocket. This excites the watching crowd, which presses forward, and many women and men lay down their money on certain cards, only to see it go into the pile of the "tosser." One failure does not discourage them, but they try as long as their money lasts, for it is impossible to win. ”

“ Any single bill of exchange is seldom drawn for more than £1,000, rarely for £2,000, and one of £6,000 is almost unheard of. If a party in Bombay wanted exchange on London for £100,000, his broker would probably furnish him with one hundred bills for £1,000 each. But George had made up his mind that as a test, and to make an impression upon the bank manager, I should go to Paris and get a bill on London from Rothschilds drawn to the order of F. A. Warren direct. ”

“ In answer to the remark of the man that he played for big stakes, Buffalo Bill asked in his quiet way:
“What do you call big stakes, pard?”
“What does I call big stakes?”
“Yes, that is the question I asked.”
“Waal, I call a game without a limit big money.”
“Are you able to stand a game without a limit?”
“Is I? Ask my pards if I can’t call yer at a thousand and pay if I loses.” ”

“ It’s too sad and funny to go with the rattling of billiard balls. I’ve just come from my late uncle’s firm of legal corsairs. He leaves me an even thousand dollars. Now, what can a man possibly do with a thousand dollars?”
“I thought,” said Old Bryson, showing as much interest as a bee shows in a vinegar cruet, “that the late Septimus Gillian was worth something like half a million.” ”