The average billiard-fixer I have found a much more interesting individual than the average billiard-professional.
He is skilled in billiard lore, and can deliver a tale, varnished or unvarnished, as readily as he can deliver a table— and with much the same success. Sitting on the sunny side of life—with nothing to do but fill up their work-tickets —the fixers of last generation had unique opportunities for observation; and most of those worthies made good use of every occasion that offered. Opportunity was never bald behind to a billiard-fixer of the old school. There never was a peg invented that old Jack Pitt, for instance, could not hang a tale on. But men of the Pitt regime have declined, like Othello, into the vale of years, and the tales of the times of old are unsung by their successors. The modern fixer has learned a tune of his own. And his own peculiar experience is filling his mouth with wisdom of another taste. A better taste, too. Many of the old fellows' tales smacked too much of over-reaching the employers or the customers. Most of the new fellows' tales tell of ingenuity and enterprise on behalf of the customers and the employers. And some are interesting for other reasons.
Like this tale from Ireland:
A fixer of Burroughes & Watts had been sent to fit up two tables in an inland Irish town for a public institute, and meeting a reporter who had been assigned the task of writing up a description of the new building for the county newspaper, he "chummed" the journalist with a view to getting his firm's manufactures specially mentioned. It was in the days when Burroughes & Watts first introduced the "Patent Invisible Pocket Plates," and our friend filled up that newsman with information about the special qualities of those invisible pocket plates until there was scarcely room for the cups of kindness that also flowed freely and generously into the journalist. But who ever heard of an Irish pressman who would sacrifice good fellowship for the sake of mere information!... Late at night the reporter reached his office, and discovered he had lost his notebook.
Later still, he discovered he had lost his head. He also discovered he had lost a good deal of his memory, but, praise the saints, his heart was still about his person somewhere, warm yet with tender feelings towards the cause of his somewhat bewildering happiness; and prompted more by his throbbing heart than by his recording memory, or his missing notebook, he religiously wrote up his report and handed it in. Next day an interested public might have learned from The Blankshire Times that "two of the finest billiard tables that ever were made had been fitted up in the Dunnowhere Hall by that well-known firm of billiard table makers, Burroughes & Welcome"; and that "each table had been fitted with their latest and most wonderful patent, namely, six invisible pockets."
Another fixer, sent to the Highlands of Scotland to fit up a table in a shooting lodge, found himself, after travelling by rail, coach, and steamer, stranded in the end at a lonely ferry many miles from his job, and with no prospects of being conveyed to it for two days by the ordinary methods.
Local means of conveyance?—there was none; people, there was none. But scouting around he found a horse in a field, as lonely as himself. This animal he commandeered, leaving an explanation pinned to a gate-post, and, mounting the charger, with his tool-bag in front, he rode gaily towards his destination, wondering, doubtless, whether 'twas nobler in the main to risk being arrested for horse stealing and so save the firm's time, or waste the firm's time on an estimated job and so risk being discharged.
Suddenly, in sight of the house our friend was making for, his gallant steed bolted, cleared the lodge gate at a flying leap, tore up the avenue, with tools of all kinds dropping by the way from a trailing kit-bag, and brought up trembling and steaming at the door of the mansion in the midst of a crowd of assembled guests—the fixer, like John Gilpin, "grasping the mane with both his hands and eke with all his might." "Who the devil are you? and what do you want with my horse?" shouted the astounded owner of the horse and house. "If you please, sir, I'm from Burroughes & Watts, and I've come to fix the billiard table," was the humble explanation. Our amateur horse-stealer always modestly ends his tale here, except to add that the gentleman tipped him heavily in gold and in venison and made him ride the horse back on the return journey to the field where he found him. But the billiard man, who, like young Lochinvar, had come out of the West, on the back of a favourite hunter to fix their host's billiard table, was a source of considerable interest to the ladies of the house, and many were the peeps they took into the billiard room while the table was being built. "I've often wondered," adds the adventurer, "what the gentleman's thoughts were when he saw me charging up that avenue on his thoroughbred, holding on to the mane with both hands, and scattering my screw-drivers and chisels all over his paths."
LAURENCE KIRK.