Having seen the Youthful Phenomenon (and grown very tired) I went to refresh my eyes and recapture my youth by a sight of the Old Master, who had just returned to London. It was worth doing, for age has not withered his infinite variety. He is still the most alluring and commanding personality that ivory has ever called forth to subjugate it. He is still the one and only John Roberts.
The younger men keep you waiting: they rarely enter the room until two or more minutes past the hour. The Old Master, eager for his art, is there a minute before the time. He bows and settles to work at once, resuming the weaving of his subtle yet simple pattern of cannons, winners and losers, with an assurance and rapidity that seem almost magic, and lull the eye into a fascinated dream. He never, or almost never, hesitates, but when he does you know that something peculiarly worth watching will result.
When he breaks down he is visibly chagrined; none of the dull apathy of the ordinary exhibition player is his. I like that. I fancy that he was not always given thus to express his feelings. Perhaps he is keener as his wonderful day draws nearer the close. I have seen all the best players this season, again and again (such is the hold that billiards can exert), and John Roberts is, to my mind, not only the best, but by far the most entertaining. I do not except Stevenson, who is, of course, the only other Olympian. It is possible that in a long match Stevenson might beat him; youth would perhaps tell, and Roberts has become too disdainful of caution (a golden fault of which Stevenson is also honourably guilty); but, whatever the final aggregate, Roberts would en route perform the more remarkable feats and make the more remarkable recoveries and give the greater pleasure.
He and Stevenson alone have genius; the rest are sufficiently gifted to strike despair as well as admiration into one's soul; but Roberts is a planet and Stevenson his nearest star. And both play the open game careless of self-protection, and both believe in what is fast becoming, I grieve to say, the old heresy of three balls. That is why a match between Roberts and Stevenson is the one spectacle that all enthusiastic amateurs of billiards should really desire, above any meeting between Stevenson and Gray—not necessarily for a heavy prize, but merely for the joy of the thing.