Billiard Incident and Humour

• Scene:—A hotel billiard-room. Two amateurs heavily and laboriously at work. "What's the game, marker?" "The score is two, four, sir, and the game's golf."
• "Billiards," says one of the best-known players, "is much more tiring than it appears." Yes, but after all it's about the only game in which you take a rest as a matter of course.—Globe.
• A professional had hardly taken his scat after making a great break when a friend of his who sat next to him exclaimed: '"When I watch you play, I wonder why you ever break down." "Don't you sometimes wonder," retorted the great player, "how I manage to keep on scoring as long as I do?"—Riso Levi.
• "It is funny, if you happen to be in a billiard-room, to hear two men, as they pick up their cues thus deliver themselves:—A.: ' I have not handled a cue for years.' B.: ' I never play now; no time, you see.' Then you know you are in the presence of two men who would rather see the roof fall than say that which is not strictly true."—Dawson in "Practical Billiards."
• It has been suggested, in opposition to the view entertained by Mr. S. H. Fry, that billiards is so scientific a pastime as to exact from its votaries who would excel in it "the eye of a lynx, the firm hand of the surgeon, the nerve of the hero, the brain of the logician, the judgment of a Solomon, the patience of Job, and the equable temper of an angel."
• In the "spot" days Joseph Bennett was engaged in a flying tournament of 100 up, and his opponent, screwing in off the red from baulk, finished the game. As Bennett passed out an old gentleman who knew him and wished to say something consolatory remarked in a sympathetic tone: "You do not seem to be playing your usual game this evening, Mr. Bennett."
• Mitchell, who played a great spot game, was once monopolizing the table in a match, and Richards, his opponent, who was feeling the draught in a double sense, put on his coat. Just then Kilkenny, who was anything in appearance rather than a professional billiard player, but who liked his joke, pointed to Mitchell as he took his seat and whispered to the gentleman next to him: "What game is this that he is playing?" "Billiards," was the reply. "Oh," said Kilkenny, "they play billiards with two players where I come from, but I suppose it is different in London."
• Mr. Richardson Cross, the well-known oculist, declared at the Bristol Rotary Club that expert golfers and billiard players did not use the higher faculties of the brain, but acted automatically through the sight. The brain was only used before becoming expert. The Bishop of Bristol, who was present, said he was comforted to learn this. Two years ago he ventured to teach his chaplain to play billiards. To-day his chaplain was unbeatable, and he felt nowhere. But he had learned that the lower faculties produced that result, and he was going back to the palace elated at the information that he had received.
• "The 200 breaks don't get much of a show in the newspapers, but five of those fellows make a thousand." — Diggle
• "Exchanges cannot be trusted. It is like playing billiards on an Atlantic liner in a storm."—The Premier.
• Not wanting to play the particular man who asked him, A. excused himself on the ground that he had a sore foot. "Oh," said B., "I don't suppose you will have much walking to do." A. promptly discovered that his foot was better than he had thought and good enough, in fact, to help him to win, which he presently did.
• Bennett was playing a match in the old days in Manchester in a room to which access was gained by way of a creaky wooden staircase, and as yet no spectator had appeared. After the lapse of nearly an hour a sound was heard from the staircase and Bennett exclaimed:—"Good heavens! There's someone lost his way."
• A collier in the North of England, who had won the billiard prize in a local tournament, was asked by the secretary what article he would like to choose to the value of 7s. 6d. "Can I have what I like?" he inquired. "Certainly," was the reply. "Then I'll have a dog licence" was the somewhat unexpected, but eminently business-like, rejoinder.
• "Can't help it, sir," said the marker to the landlord. "I knows the gents, what pockets the chalk, but you wouldn't like me to offend regular customers." "Certainly not," was the reply, "but perhaps you could give them a gentle hint." Which the marker did to the next peculator as follows:—"Excuse me, sir, but by the amount of chalk that you carry away from here I think you must be connected with the milk trade, and my guv'ner says he likes enterprise and that, as you are a regular customer, you can have a bucket of water as well at any time."
• Dawson, from whose "miscellaneous cuttings" in his excellent book on "Practical Billiards" some of the little incidents mentioned on this page have been drawn, tells of a boy being prosecuted for stealing a billiard cue from his employer (a table maker), who stated, in evidence, that the cue had a value beyond that at which it was put as "it was the identical cue used by Peall when he made the record break of over 3,000, and bore an ivory plate with an inscription to that effect." As there are many replicas of this historic cue, each of which bears an inscribed ivory plate, the editor of The Billiard Player (in whose possession one such cue has long been) wrote to the spot stroke champion on the subject, and was kindly favoured with the following reply:—"No. It was not the actual cue.
• The cue with which I made the 3,304 break is the cue I am now using. I have played with one cue only almost all my life. The cue stolen was one of the cues that are of my pattern and that bears a plate."