I propose to turn to a pressing need, to the proverbial long-felt want in the world of billiards. I allude to something likely to counteract the competition of golf. There car be no doubt that both golf and motoring have hit billiards some hefty blows, and, having thought the matter over, I have decided that clothes must have something to do with it. What we want is an appropriate costume for billiards, something suitable for both ladies and gentlemen.
Then we should be able to hold our own against the little white ball men chase with sticks, and there may be possibilities about the billiardist loading himself up with cues of assorted sizes and weights even as the golfer burdens himself, like unto an ammunition mule, with clubs of all sorts and shapes. But I do not think this would help us very much. It's the clothes that count—I'm sure of it—and the crying need of the hour in billiards is for some sartorial genius who will clothe us in fitting garments when we say with the Bard, "Let us to billiards."
I have passed the stage when a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of togs, and must confess to a deplorable lack of ideas calculated to inspire the genius billiards demands to rescue it from the demon golf. Somewhere in the back of my mind I have a dim notion—just an adumbration— of what I want, but something far too elusive to fall obediently into words and phrases. The nearest I can get to it is to ask the reader to envisage something very tasty in waistcoats with long sleeves, not unlike the thing jockeys wear when they ride our losers for us. For the life of me I cannot get more close to my ideal. I am like the writer who said that a man with his coat off had "Too little off or not enough," and I cannot come to grips with my subject.
I wish I could, for it is of real import. What little I know about golf conjures up a mental vision of a man topped with an enormous tam-o'-shanter, surrounded by a flaming red jacket, nethered in fearful and wonderful unmentionables of the knicker breed, and finished off with stockings that swear at you, and boots heavy enough for a buck navvy. Thus attired, no wonder a man takes an interest in what he is doing, and gets quite crazy about it.
We must have something on our side in this matter, and the only promising signs I have seen take the form of a wide variety of fancy waistcoats and coloured shirts. I suppose I must have beheld as much of this sort of thing a; most men outside an outfitter's shop, and candour drags from me the admission that those who wear the loudest waistcoats and whose shirts remind me of sunsets mixed with Brock's benefits play the worst billiards.