I WENT to spend a week in London at the beginning of July, 1866, and I was pleased to find several cafes possessing six or eight French billiard tables. It is well known in France how tenacious the English are in regard to their sports, their customs, and their traditions. I gave two entertainments, which were perfectly successful, one of which was at the Cafe Royal, in Regent Street.

It is about sixteen years ago since Vignaux visited England and played against Bennett. These two great players contested in a French game one day, and in an English game on the next day. In the course of a French game, Vignaux succeeded in placing the balls "along the rail," as the Americans term getting the balls close together on a cushion for nursery cannon play. "How many cannons did he make?" you will ask. 100 or 120 only.

While Vignaux was manipulating this series of close cannons, he heard an indistinct, dull sound, but he was too much absorbed in this operation to turn round and note the cause of it. Arriving at the top cushion—Vignaux had worked the balls from the baulk end of the table—he paused, and suddenly perceived that the saloon was nearly emptied of the spectators, who were so numerous at the beginning of the game. How explain this mysterious Dispersal? The reason was plain enough. The Englishmen, losing patience, wearied by this scientific, mathematical, but monotonous sequence of close cannons, had departed, in the English style, with as much inconsiderateness as lack of appreciation.

And when I skim over the list of the customers of the Maison Brunswick (the writer's own billiard manufacturing establishment in Paris), I am not sorry to find that French billiards has made itself Known and appreciated all over the world. It must not be forgotten that, hardly forty years ago, the Americans played with four balls, and the Spaniards with balls weighing 900 grammes.