Billiard Incident and Humour

• Teacher (to class):"What are elephants' tusks made of?"
  Smart Scholar:"Bonzoline, sir."—Punch
• "The novice plays at pot the red and strikes with all his might; then sometimes, 'just by accident,' puts down the other white. The expert tries the skilful style of doubling from baulk, but the 'mouchard' plays the safer game of pocketing the chalk."
• When Willie Hoppe, the American billiard champion, married (in 1911) a lady whom he had rescued from drowning, Punch remarked:—"We are so glad that this pretty custom is not falling into disuse. Personally, we always do it."
• The marker has to suffer many fools gladly. He has to keep a smiling face while two men are plodding through a hundred-up that will take them the best part of an hour, whilst waiting twenty-minutes-a-hundred men leave the room and go elsewhere.— Answers.
• The late Duke of Edinburgh once induced Queen Victoria to visit the billiard room and explained the game with some enthusiasm. He then went out for a spectacular shot and missed everything. Said Her Majesty:"And what do you score, Alfred, when you do not touch a ball at all?"
• Mr. Edward Roper has just related to the sporting editor of The Liverpool Daily Courier how he once played a Mr. Alexander Young at Richmond, in Yorkshire, a series off hundreds up at billiards, which ran into three days—from 10 p.m. on the first day to 2 a.m. on the third. The contest began with an allegation of swollen head on the part of one player, and ended in swollen feet for both.
• The late William Hughes, a professional well known in his day, had the following rhyme, or something near thereto, suspended in his public room:— William Hughes hopes his friends will excuse The making of this observation:— When you lead in a game, mind you keep on the same—
• To say more there is hardly occasion. Diggle is good at draughts and other games of skill as well as billiards, and he is known to have also a dry turn of humour. Once, whilst playing in a billiard match, he had a card handed in to him inscribed "Amateur Champion of Thanet." He exclaimed "I know draughts, and ping-pong, and jigsaw, but what on earth is Thanet?"
• It is recalled in The Sportsman how Mr. J. G. Taylor, when battling last season with Mr. G. Heginbottom for the right to reach the semi-final, won by two points in the last three hundred after being two hundred behind."Then came the remarkable 'cup of tea' incident, when, awaiting his turn, he indulged in the beverage which he assured all and sundry, including his opponent, was a wonderful reviver. He went to the table immediately afterwards to prove his statement by piling up a break of 180."
• A marker noticed during a game that the two gentlemen at the table were bald, except that one had a small patch of hair. During the game another gentleman came to the door and said to the marker: "Will you please tell the gentleman with the bald head that I wish to speak to him?"The marker, in the irreverent way that some markers have, replied: "Which one, sir, spot or plain?"
• Punch once gave its definition of the Gray stroke. "It is merely going in off the red into one or other of the middle pockets, and then doing it again until you do it oftener than anyone else and your father kisses you to pulp. And think of. Diggle seated there with his chin on his knees for four long hours; and people in the hall, too, who have paid to see him play-"
• The spot boy in a match that Roberts was playing in the provinces against Dawson returned the balls from the pockets in a great variety of styles. Describing this Roberts once said:"Sometimes he made the ball spin so tremendously that I had to wait whilst it stopped, but his best effort was the swinging of the ball back in a long curve. At last I was obliged to say to him: "Young fellow, do you think that you are assisting in a circus?"
• Mickey Doolan thus described in The Edinburgh Evening News a Gray red ball break:"The audience was as solemn as a collection av boiled owls in a could storage chamber. If anyone had sneezed the police would av tuk charge av him. The marrker had used up the multiplication table long before and was chanting away up in the region av the higher mathematics, while the scorin' boord had a line of figgers far wurrse than the National Debt."
• The story is told that in the Piccadilly days, when fourteen players were taking part in short games under John Roberts's management, the rumour got about that, owing to the success of the experiment, the fees to the players were to be increased, and the courtly Harverson was deputed to interview Roberts on the point. Roberts was writing and did not look up.
• "Mr. Roberts,"said Harverson,"there is an impression amongst the players that our fee for winning a heat is to be increased from two to three guineas." "Harverson, that impression will soon wear off,"was the reply.
• When Gray was making his thousands off the red ball in this country in 1911, Punch printed a humorous review of billiards in 1913, in which it was recorded that Gray occupied the table at Leicester for three successive weeks, and that his opponent felt justified in spending a good deal of time in the country. Gray's attack was principally on the right-hand middle pocket, and the Punch review mentioned that this had to be three times renewed by a local upholsterer. It added: "The stroke was repeated with such perfect precision that, after the first ten days, no objection was raised to the spectators putting their hats on the left-hand side of the table, and on one evening the umpire took his tea off it."