Just below the Equator, where it cuts the Western Pacific Ocean, is a group of islands known collectively as Micronesia; tiny atolls built of coral, fringed with cocoanut palms; delectable lands where it-is always afternoon.
The natives of these islands are a branch of the Polynesian race, poor Indians whose untutored minds know nothing of the glories of the higher life and civilization and all that sort of thing.
But now all that is done with. Civilization, whose other name is commerce, has taken in hand the primitive child of nature with the result that the gentle savage now swaggers abroad in a top hat and spats.
From the romantic balance-sheet of the Pacific Phosphate Co. just issued, The Times gleans the glorious news that the islands possess electric power for driving machinery and supplying light and ice.
There is on the islands a good telephone service, there are recreation rooms, libraries, and a billiard room. "In fact, in a small way. all the bustling activities of civilization."
The happy islander strolls along to the club, to play snooker with a friend and drink highly civilized drinks; or to the library to improve his mind with Polynesian edition of Samuel Smiles.
It is a beautiful picture, and still more beautiful when one remembers that it is all due to civilization and mineralized guano.—Star.
An Irish paper some time ago talked about a "massey" stroke. Now we have The Daily Express with "brasse" in one of its billiard (not golf) reports.
There are only two certainties in billiards. One is that when the spot is clear the red goes on to it after being potted, and the other is that the cue ball, after finding a pocket, is next playable from baulk. Sometimes both of these things happen at the same time.
There is a misunderstanding at Dolgelly in connection with the Carnegie Free Library there. The building contains a room very suitable for billiards, but it seems that Mr. Carnegie specified that no games were to be played in the building.