HOWEVER light or trifling be the subject upon which we write, we cannot but feel that "ever 'gainst that season comes wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated," it is our duty to try if possible to connect Christmas with some act of charity, some slight action that helps to lighten another man's burden. Apart from all religious or sentimental feeling, which would here be out of place, still, so gracious and so hallowed is the time, our very instinct impels us to consider that surely the game which during the past year has afforded us so much amusement, must have some one connected with it that deserves a Christmas box more than the dustman, the lamplighter, the scavenger, the butcher's boy, the grocer's boy, the awful waits, and the thousand others. Now, not one of these we even know by sight, yet they swarm around us, and act perhaps as a merciful bitter tonic that prevents us getting too bilious over the superfluity of good things with which the season abounds.
Compared, however, with any one of the individuals we have mentioned, our billiard-marker is simply a bosom friend, and yet how often do we, from mere habit, make a point of freely giving to those we know nothing about, and yet tighten our purse-strings where one is concerned who richly deserves our notice.
There is, perhaps, not a class of men through out the world to whom a small annual douceur in the shape of a Christmas box is more appropriate than to the class known as billiard-markers. A good billiard-marker often differs from a bad one simply in the fact that the former does a hundred little civil services of his own free will, none of which he is absolutely called upon by duty to perform. All billiard-players know the really good marker, who, so to speak, "fields" for us round the table, who invariably puts the balls ready in the bottom pockets when put in previously at pool, who is always at hand with a lighted spill directly we have filled our pipes or opened our cigar-case, whose friendly hand assists us at leaving in that awful struggle with our great coat. By-the-by, why do we sometimes quarrel with our great coat when our last life at pool has been taken by a fluke? Yes, we all know this marker, civil, obliging, witty. Who deserves a Christmas box half so well? The waits! the parish beadle! Imagine the latter giving us a light or a lift with our coat.
Yes, Christmas boxes have been carried too far. A great many people get them who do not deserve them; but, on the other hand, many who deserve them do not get them, and the billiard-marker of all others is one whom we should be glad of having an annual opportunity of rewarding for many services performed. Now, these little services mount up. None, perhaps, deserve notice by themselves, yet they add up at the end of the year, and the billiard-marker has a lawful claim upon us.
Of course, players must judge for themselves how far the marker really deserves a tip. Markers, like all other people, vary in character, and occasionally men.may be found who look upon the world at large as their lawful prey; their sole religious maxim is, he was a stranger, so we took him in." Happily, however, this sort of thing is in the present day only now and then the exception that proves the rule, that billiardmarkers as a class are generally civil, obliging, and good-tempered, but too often underpaid. At the present season* theatre* at the close of another year, we will wish a merry Christmas to all billiard players, but, at the same time, we trust none of them will forget the marker's Christmas box.