"Billiards" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had surprised two young men drinking and playing billiards before noon in the Conservative Club, he would have been grimly pleased. He would have taken it for a further proof of the hollowness of the opposition to the great Home Rule Bill; but the spectacle of a couple of wastrels in the Liberal Club annoyed and shamed him. His vague notion ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the imputation of bragging, and certain that slang was vulgar, whatever billiards might be, bore herself still more loftily, and resolved to snub him explicitly if he addressed her again. But he did not; for they presently came to a narrow iron gate in the wall of the park, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... sad betting men were playing billiards, attended by a moist, consumptive marker; and for the moment Silas imagined that these were the only occupants of the apartment. But at the next glance his eye fell upon a person smoking in the farthest corner, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were exquisitely chiselled bronze Tritons, riding on dolphins. When I returned to Capetown I found the S.B. quite one of the Botha family, being addressed by everybody by his Christian name. He played lawn-tennis and billiards daily with the General, and should he prove refractory (a not infrequent occurrence) the General had only to threaten, "I shall have to make you smoke another of my black cigars, Billy," for the S.B. to capitulate instantly with a shudder, for he ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... contribution boxes, listening to sermons, reading the cheerful histories of the Old Testament, imagining the joys of heaven and the torments of hell. The church is opposed to the theatre, is the enemy of the opera, looks upon dancing as a crime, hates billiards, despises cards, opposes roller-skating, and even entertains a certain kind of prejudice ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Jane's fourth, and Lady Sophia's first, began and ended. Lady Sophia was piquant and witty, with a snub nose and a playful disposition. She was a first-rate horsewoman, an exquisite waltzer, good at croquet, archery, billiards, and all games requiring accuracy of eye and aim, and Lady Sophia brought down her bird in a single season. She went home to Heron's Nest a duchess in embryo. The Duke of Dovedale, a bulky, middle-aged nobleman, with a passion for fieldsports and high farming, had seen Lady Sophia riding a dangerous ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... close upon the hour of ten while Tansey was playing billiards with a number of his friends. On alternate evenings he was released from duty at the store after seven o'clock. Even among his fellow-men Tansey was timorous and constrained. In his imagination he ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... enjoyment afforded by chess), would have interested the chess public fully as much as the description of Lowenthal's shirt front, Rosenthal's grammar, Winawer's inodorous and unsavoury cigars, or the fact that the author had played billiards with M. Grevy, the President of the French Republic, and that he was in a position to contradict the statement that Zukertort came over in two ships. There are many old players and admirers, and perhaps some ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... burst of feeling from John, Mrs. Pitt came to the rescue, suggesting a game of billiards. John brightened very considerably after this, and the remainder of the day was pleasantly spent in writing letters, playing games, and reading aloud from Scott's "Kenilworth," in preparation for the morrow's visit to ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... brother had given him too much reason; hinting, at the same time, that he was addicted to some terrible vices; upon which several individuals repeated the interjection, ah! ah! "Yes (said Mons. L—y, with a rueful aspect) the boy has a pernicious turn for gaming: in one afternoon he lost, at billiards, such a sum as gives me horror to think of it." "Fifty sols in one afternoon," (cried the sister). "Fifty sols! (exclaimed the mother-in-law, with marks of astonishment) that's too much—that's too much!—he's to blame— he's to blame! but youth, you know, Mons. L—y—ah! vive ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... English, tug of war; blindman's bluff, hunt the slopper[obs3], hide and seek, kiss in the ring; snapdragon; cross questions and crooked answers.; crisscross, hopscotch; jacks, jackstones[obs3], marbles; mumblety-peg, mumble-the-peg, pushball, shinney, shinny, tag &c. billiards, pool, pingpong, pyramids, bagatelle; bowls, skittles, ninepins, kain[obs3], American bowls[obs3]; tenpins [U.S.], tivoli. cards, card games; whist, rubber; round game; loo, cribbage, besique[obs3], euchre, drole[obs3], ecarte[Fr], picquet[obs3], allfours[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... I have billiards at home, but it's no fun unless you have good players, so, as I'm fond of it, I come sometimes and have a game with Ned Moffat or ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... sumptuous lunch and chatted for a while, the Doctor surprised me again by asking if I would like a game of billiards. (Billiards in Greenland, as well as radishes!) "But first," said he, "let us try this sunny Burgundy. Ah! these red wines are the only truly generous wines. They monopolize all the sensuous glories ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... ring, pitching the quoit, playing at all games with great skill. And not only did he do these things well, but he thought he did them to perfection; hence he was often tricked about horses, which he pretended to know better than any jockey; was made to play at ball and billiards by sharpers who took his money, and came back from London wofully poorer each time than he went, as the state of his affairs testified when the sudden accident came by which his career was ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... your future career and less about billiards," Robin pointed out to him, "perhaps you'd get through your Little-go in the course of the next few years. If Pa only had sense—I mean if he wasn't so absurdly indulgent wherever you are concerned, he would not have a billiard-table ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... played as the object ball. A ball struck into a pocket, is a winning hazard; the player's ball falling into a pocket after contact with the white or red, is a losing hazard. Three principal games are played on the billiard table—the English game, or Billiards, Pyramids, and Pool. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Many forget and fail to do this. They do not fully realize that the sights are much easier to see when blackened, and that therefore the chances of hitting the bull's-eye are much greater. There's no more luck in shooting than there is in solving a problem in geometry, or in a game of billiards. It's all practice, ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... pleasant days with one another in harmless gayety and happy contentment. Come, my friends, let us forget these cares and these constraints; let us, despite all these things, be merry and glad. Duke de Coigny, you have been for a week my debtor in billiards, to-day you must make it up. Come, my friends, let us go into ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... one half of which contain the adventures of a young gentleman in the country, and the other volume and a half the adventures of the same young gentleman in the metropolis; a sort of writer, whose constant tattle about beer and billiards, and eating soup, and the horribility of "committing" puns, give truly an admirable and accurate idea of the conversation of the refined society of the refined metropolis of Great Britain. These two last gentlemen were ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... one thing in Munich, and that is the want of cafes like those in France and Italy, which have so brilliant an appearance. They make coffee here at the inns; and there are two or three dull places up one pair of stairs, where they play at billiards, and make as indifferent coffee as is made in England. The hour of dining at Munich is in general one o'clock. A slice of ham or sausage with beer form the gouter, usually taken at five or six o'clock; and at nine follows a supper as solid as the dinner. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... fellow, and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr. Ringwood at the Baron's, and they'd been to the play together; and the honorable gent, as Sam called him, had joked with him about being well to do IN A CERTAIN QUARTER; and he had had a game of billiards with the Baron, at the Estaminy, "a very distangy place, where you smoke," said Sam; "quite select, and frequented by the tip-top nobility;" and they were as thick as peas in a shell; and they were to dine that day at Ringwood's, and sup, the next ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we had out-of-door games, such as "Bowls," "Aunt Sally," and the like, Dickens leading off with great spirit and fun. Billiards came after dinner, and during the evening we had charades and dancing. There was no end to the new divertisements our kind host was in the habit of proposing, so that constant cheerfulness reigned at Gad's Hill. He went into his work-room, as he called it, soon after breakfast, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... sometimes I have a glass of brandy with an egg in it, sometimes a run 'round the duck-pond, sometimes a game of checkers—that's for exercise, and perhaps a game of billiards. ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... yellow sand,—the whole Hill of Radewitz made into a flower-garden in that way. Nay, in the Army LAGER too, many of the Captains have made little improvised flower-gardens in that Camp of theirs, up and down. For other Captains not of a poetical turn, there are billiards, coffee-houses, and plenty of excellent beer and other liquor. But the mountains of cavalry hay, that stand guarded by patrols in the rearward places, and the granaries of cavalry oats, are not to be told. Eastward, from their open porticos ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... was regulated with mathematical accuracy. There was something almost death-like in his self-control, and yet at times that also had to give way. If he had lived otherwise his case would have grown continually worse. The only recreation he had was working in his garden, and an occasional game of billiards. Four or five times a year he would go to a symphony concert, to hear Matthew Arnold lecture, or to see a distinguished actor. People who blamed him for not recovering his health knew not what they did. A Philadelphia doctor has made himself quite famous by ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... fellow," was the smiling greeting of this worthy. "I'll shoot you a game of pool. Billiards is too intricate a game for my limited intellect ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... I was not like others. In my marriages, I had an eye to the main chance; and you see how some unlucky blow would come and throw them over. In the army I was just as prudent, and just as unfortunate. What with judicious betting, and horse-swapping, good-luck at billiards, and economy, I do believe I put by my pay every year,—and that is what few can say who have but an allowance ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... your politeness are thrown away; your apology avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your recreations, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise, you ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... stay too long, Mr. Ducaine," she said, as I held the door open for her. "I want a lesson at billiards." ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the army, was a member of "The Canteen," a military club, played billiards in Winter and cricket in Summer, and if at long intervals he got plain drunk, it was a matter of patriotism done by way of celebrating a victory of English arms in the Congo, and therefore in the line of duty. Captain O'Shea never beat his wife, even in his cups, and the marriage ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Besides this, there's billiards and gambling for the gentlemen, a little dancing for the gals, and scandle for the dowygers. In none of these amusements did we partake. We were a LITTLE too good to play crown pints at cards, and never get paid ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made a suggestion the other day which may be worth consideration. "Why not," he said, "add to the theatre a comfortable kind of club-room, where a fellow might see the papers, and perhaps have a game of bridge, or even billiards, when the curtain was up, whilst he could keep his wife in good humour by paying her a call during the intervals?" There is something rather touching in the idea of a little crowd trooping in instead of bustling out when ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... at the Murree Convalescent Depot, and rejoined in March of the following year. Nothing occurred for the next two months to break the monotony of life in an Indian cantonment. Parade in the early morning, rackets and billiards during the day, a drive or ride along the Mall in the cool of the evening, and the usual mess dinner—these constituted the routine ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... o'clock before his Majesty and the gentlemen returned from their billiards and cigars. The Queen got up, bade us good night, and left the room ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... "Thet's it! I see it all now, boys. That's how ragged Pat Rafferty went down to San Francisco yesterday in store-clothes, and his wife and four children went off in a kerridge to Sacramento. Thet's why them ten workmen of his, ez hadn't a cent to bless themselves with, was playin' billiards last night, and eatin' isters. Thet's whar that money kum frum,—one hundred dollars to pay for the long advertisement of the new issue of ditch stock in the 'Times' yesterday. Thet's why them six strangers were booked at the Magnolia hotel yesterday. Don't ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... go in yet, or knock the balls about for a bit?" said Gus. "This fellow Tom's a regular swell at billiards. Do you remember thrashing me last time we met, Tom—the ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... shook his head and replied impressively: "The billiard player was a pawn in the game. He became troublesome and was sacrificed. He is of no importance, but there's a greater game than billiards here with a master player and—I'm going ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... obey Mrs. Murray's command, and did not return immediately; but, after the party seated themselves at the table, she noticed that the master seemed in unusually high spirits; and when the meal was concluded, he challenged his cousins to a game of billiards. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... row of any consequence occurred within the forty-eight hours of their arrival. Three of the Colorado volunteers playing billiards in a prominent resort were deliberately annoyed and insulted by some merchant sailors who had been drinking heavily at the expense of a short, thick-set, burly fellow in a loud check suit and flaming necktie, a stranger to the police, who knew of him only that he had landed from the Doric and was ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... strong on me, I went to stay with my mother to be nearer my game, and passed my time in playing billiards at the public-house, and nightly I hunted the girl; so that at length under promise to take her to Vauxhall she agreed to come and dine with me, or as she said, have supper at eight o'clock with me. I usually then went to Vauxhall ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... After the wedding breakfast, which takes place directly after you come from the church, all the guests go home, even the maids of honor and the ushers. The married couple remain at home and dine with their parents or relatives. In the evening they play billiards or cards, just as on an ordinary night; the newly married couple entertain each other. [Gilberte and Jean rise, and hand in hand slowly retire C.] ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... detail. Ever after 1835 Landseer was called upon to paint pictures of the pets of the royal family, and these works became very numerous. While he was thus favored as an artist he was also a friend of the queen and her immediate family; he was often summoned to play billiards with Prince Albert. The queen's Journal of Life in the Highlands frequently mentions him, and we are sure that if we could read Landseer's diary it would tell us many interesting things of the queen and her ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... going into 'The Blue Harp,' and playing billiards with Jack!" she remonstrated. "You were there hours yesterday. Doesn't it ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... for myself; for though I shall always acknowledge that I got more by one year's sitting in the house than by my three years' travels, it was not of that kind. But I hate that this same Spy, for pretending to have played at billiards with the most serene Commonwealth of Venice, should make such fools of us here, when I know that he must have had his intelligence from some corn-cutter upon the Rialto; for a noble Venetian would be hanged if he should keep such a fellow company. And yet if I do not think he ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... billiard-room I was struck by the number of men who had come together. Usually only some twenty or thirty were present, half of whom sat smoking and chewing about the bar, while the rest watched a game of billiards or took a "life" in pool. This evening, however, the billiard-tables were covered with their slate-coloured "wraps," while at least a hundred and fifty men were gathered about the open space of glaring light near the bar. ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... likely to furnish him subsistence. Almost all these pursuits of chance produce something useful to society. But there are some which produce nothing, and endanger the well-being of the individuals engaged in them, or of others depending on them. Such are games with cards, dice, billiards, &c. And although the pursuit of them is a matter of natural right, yet society, perceiving the irresistible bent of some of its members to pursue them, and the ruin produced by them to the families depending on these individuals, consider it as a case of insanity, quoad hoc, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Pinckney. "He drops his practice entirely during his vacation; wouldn't treat an Emperor then, I've heard him say. He's a good deal of a crank on that—and billiards." ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... o'clock. He had made up his mind not to return to Wimbledon, but to make use of a certain pied-a-terre which he had in Pimlico. His day's work ended in Westminster, he dined at a restaurant with a friend. Afterwards billiards were proposed. They entered a house which Rodman did not know, and were passing before the bar to go to the billiard-room, when a man who stood there taking refreshment called out, 'Hollo, Rodman!' To announce a man's name in this way is a decided ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... cross word about Boulogne. He would assure her that Boulogne itself would be a heaven to him if she were with him,—and he thought that she would believe him. When he reached the house he was asked into a room in which a lot of people were playing billiards or crowded round a billiard-table. The Chilterns were gone, and he was at first ill at ease, finding no friend. Madame Goesler, who had met him at Harrington, came up to him, and told him that the Duchess would be there directly, and then Phineas, who had been playing at the moment of his entrance, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... himself quietly in the Palazzo Lanfranchi for ten months, interrupted only by a sojourn of six weeks in the neighbourhood of Leghorn. His life in the old feudal building followed in the main the tenour of his life at Ravenna. He rose late, received visitors in the afternoons, played billiards, rode or practised with his pistols, in concert with Shelley, whom he refers to at this time as "the most companionable man under thirty" he had ever met. Both poets were good shots, but Byron the safest; for, though his ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... to be lonely," she said. "There's the excitement of work, of mingling with crowds, of going when and where one pleases. A woman is hemmed in by a thousand petty must-nots. She can't go out after dark; she can't play whist or billiards, or sit at a table in the open and drink and smoke and spin yarns. Woman's lot is wondering and waiting at home. When I marry I suppose that I shall learn ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... called out to his comrade that he had caught a Tartar. 'Bring him along then,' said he. 'He won't come,' answered Paddy. 'Then come along yourself,' replied his comrade. 'Arrah,' cried he, 'but he won't let me.'—A Tartar is also an adept at any feat, or game: he is quite a Tartar at cricket, or billiards. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... the manner of the entire population, and it was a trait which I soon realized in everybody, from highest to lowest, that they kept the habitual garb of an incurious reticence, neither asking nor giving information. We found, as if carelessly loitering around the hotel, or playing billiards in it, several young men who spoke excellent French, and we laid cautious traps for conversation, but no one could tell us any news or give us any information about the fighting, or answer any questions other than evasively. And it was ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... ascribe the increased accuracy of my stroke at billiards to my increased nerve force, now I have made Pableine my staple article of diet in ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... you rush about in this temperature!" the poor lady exclaimed while I reflected that it was perhaps his billiard-balls I had heard ten minutes before. I was sure he was fond of billiards. ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... to himself, as he also retired to bed, after another and more private conversation with Lady Barnes, and half an hour's billiards with a very absent-minded host. By Jove, Laura wanted a change! He rejoiced that he was to escort her on the morrow to the London house of some cheerful and hospitable relations. Dollars, it seemed, were not everything, and he wished to heaven that Roger had been content ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... travellers had, during this time, alighted at the inn kept by the Sieur Champeaux, where they drank some wine; while the landlord himself accompanied the traveller and his unshod horse to the farrier's, the Sieur Motteau. This finished, the four met at Madame Chtelain's, where they played at billiards. At half-past seven, after a parting cup with the Sieur Champeaux, whither they returned to re-saddle their horses, they set off again in the direction ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... while the town was seething with gossip concerning the coming trial, Frank Stilwell stole into Tombstone with a half-breed and slew Morgan Earp, who was playing billiards at the time. The murder accomplished, Stilwell took a fast horse and rode to Tucson. The half-breed fled ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... a fad. One will tell you he sees nothing in billiards or pool or golf or tennis, but will grow enthusiastic over the scientific possibilities of mumble-peg; you agree with him, only ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... handwriting, but in these days of the typewriter such a thing makes little difference. His abstention from bowling (to the playing of which Brassfield had been devoted), and his absolute failure at billiards, were discussed in sporting circles, and accounted for on the theory that he had "gone stale" since this love-affair had become the absorbing business of his life. No one understood, however, his sudden interest in photography, and his marvelous skill in it. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... his heart's content. Another source of pleasure and healthful exercise he found in long solitary pulls up and down the lake in a tiny skiff which had been set apart for his service. In the evening came dinner and conversation with his host, with perhaps a game or two of billiards ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... to gambling as such is a purely commercial objection of a commercial nation; and the reason so much importance is attached to it in certain places is because at that particular vice men are likely to lose their money. It is largely a fetish, like the sinfulness of cards, of dice, of billiards. Moreover, the objection is only to the kind of gambling. There is another kind, less open, at which you stand a better chance to win yourself, while other parties stand a better chance to lose; and that kind, which is played in great gambling-houses known as the Stock Exchange and the ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... women awake, like danger, or storm at sea, and such things, Dick says don't faze her. She can sleep like a baby, he says, when the town she's in is being bombarded or when the ship she's in is trying to claw off a lee shore. She's a wonder, and no mistake. You ought to play billiards with her—the English ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... fashion in England, has never fairly taken root among us, and seems almost hopeless: the clubs formed for its promotion die out almost as speedily as cricket-clubs, and leave no trace behind; though this may not always be. Bowling and billiards are, however, practised by lady amateurs, just so far as they find opportunity, which is not very far; desirable public or private facilities being obtainable by few only, except at the summer watering-places. Battledoor-and-shuttlecock seems ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... over-driven young man did contrive to get his dinner eaten, and his glass of brandy sipped, and his cigar smoked, and perhaps his game of billiards played, so as to present himself in his mother's drawing-room not long after half-past ten. Madame Melmotte and her daughter were already there,—and many others, of whom the majority were devoted to literature. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... you know it really hurts me to see you like this, alone, in a cafe, and on Christmas eve, too. It makes me feel as I did one time when I saw a bridal party in a Paris restaurant, and the bride sat reading a comic paper, while the groom played billiards with the witnesses. Huh, thought I, with such a beginning, what will follow, and what will be the end? He played billiards on his wedding eve! [Mlle. Y. starts to speak]. And she read a comic paper, you mean? Well, they are not altogether ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... hastily, and in the hall was enveloped in his fur coat by Charles, who also closed the carriage door. Then the faithful fellow went off to the cafe which he frequented, Rue de Miromesnil, where he had promised to meet the coachman of the baroness who lived opposite, to play a game of billiards, ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... to try to keep straight any more? Bereft of her love, Robert had sunk steadily. Gambling, drink, morphia, billiards and cigars—he had taken to them all; until now in the wretched figure of the outcast on the Embankment you would never have recognized the once spruce figure ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... years. The Roman princesses were not a little talked of up to the end of the thirteenth century. Under the French rule their gallantry assumed a military complexion. They used to go and see their admirers play billiards at the Cafe Nuovo. But hypocrisy and morality have made immense progress since the restoration. The few who have afforded matter for the scandalous chronicles of Rome are sexagenarians, and their adventures are inscribed on the tablets of history, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... Then Mrs. Houghton found herself able to insinuate that perhaps, after all, Mary was not a good creature, even in her own way. But the Marquis's chief friend was Jack De Baron. He talked to Jack about races and billiards, and women; but though he did not refrain from abusing the Dean, he said no word to Jack against Mary. If it might be that the Dean should receive his punishment in that direction he would do nothing to prevent it. "They tell ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... wardrobe to find the wrong sort of clothes, and the only thing that seemed to satisfy me was to wear odd ones. Whatever you do, don't lose sight of me. In a few hours' time I shouldn't want to take a bean at all. I should be inviting you to lunch at the Golden Lion, playing billiards in the afternoon, and having a night out at a ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... married Constance Weber, herself a celebrated person. She was never tired of speaking and writing of her husband. It was she who told of his small, beautifully formed hands, and of his favourite amusements—playing at bowls and billiards. The latter sport, by the way, has been among the favoured amusements of many famous musicians; Paderewski is a ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... and as the skipper, Burr, and Otway paced the quarter-deck before going ashore to play a game or two of billiards and meet some friends, a boat came alongside, and a man stepped on deck and inquired for the captain. As he followed Robertson down the companion, Otway saw that he was a well-dressed, rather gentlemanly-looking young man ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... would recommend to you, should your wife happen to have some literary or artistic tastes, not to ignore them entirely because they do not pay so well as your counting-room accounts do, and are not so entertaining to you as billiards. I would even indulge her by sacrificing a whole evening to her, once in a while, even to the detriment of your own business or pleasure. Depend upon it, it will pay in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... disposed to pump him, Harry Warrington had thought fit to keep his own counsel regarding his own affairs, and in all games of chance or matters of sport was quite a match for the three gentlemen into whose company he had fallen. Even in the noble game of billiards he could hold his own after a few days' play with his cousins and their revered pastor. His grandfather loved the game, and had over from Europe one of the very few tables which existed in his Majesty's province ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Adam or Eve," said the Comte de Kergarouet. "Trusting to that crazy child's tact, I got him here by a method of my own. I know that the boy shoots with a pistol to admiration, hunts well, plays wonderfully at billiards, at chess, and at backgammon; he handles the foils, and rides a horse like the late Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He has a thorough knowledge of all our vintages. He is as good an arithmetician as Bareme, draws, ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... your Billiards; whatever you do, do not apply to it slovenly, wish success In it, and be so good, for my sake, as to love reading; you may entertain me, if you do, with a thousand pretty stories of Hector and his wife, of Romulus and Remus, and at last we may come to talk together of M. de St. Simon. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... compelled to ask as a favour that which was his own by right, while Concini was himself daily risking thousands of pistoles at the gaming-table, all of which had been drawn from the royal treasury! How insolently the Marechal had, upon an occasion when he was engaged at billiards with his Majesty, requested the royal permission to resume his plumed cap, and had replaced it on his head before that permission was expressed; with a hundred other trifling but mortifying incidents which made the blood of Louis boil in his veins, and placed ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... be particular. Only last week a young man went off, owing me four weeks' board, and I don't suppose he'll ever show his face again. He got a good salary, too; but he spent most of it on cigars and billiards. Now, how can I be sure you will ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... were business-like and familiar:—"are ye, Jorrocks?" cried one, holding out both hands. "How are ye, my lad of wax? Do you still play billiards?—Give you nine, and play you for a Nap." "Come to my house this evening, old boy, and take a hand at whist for old acquaintance sake," urged the friend on his left; "got some rare cogniac, and a box of beautiful Havannahs." "No, Jorrocks,—dine with me," said a third, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... partners from the day the Petite Jeanne went down," he said at last. "But if your heart so wishes, then shall we become partners by the law. I have no work to do, yet are my expenses large. I drink and eat and smoke in plenty—it costs much, I know. I do not pay for the playing of billiards, for I play on your table; but still the money goes. Fishing on the reef is only a rich man's pleasure. It is shocking, the cost of hooks and cotton line. Yes; it is necessary that we be partners by the law. I need the money. I shall get it from ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... pen, she sends a note to the club where baccarat and billiards claim Villa Rocca's idle hours. He meets her in the Bois de Boulogne, now splendid in transplanted foliage. His coupe dismissed, they wander in the alleys so dear to lovers. There is triumph in her face as they ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... that Father Colin's windows on the first floor were open, and that some men in their shirt-sleeves were playing billiards. They were old soldiers with short hair, and mustaches like a brush. They went back and forth, without troubling themselves about the mayor, or the commandant, or Louis XVI., or the bourgeoisie. One of them, short, thick, with his whiskers cut as was the fashion ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... "I am a little so, my dear. Also, I have taken rather too much to billiards and that sort of thing. Now the murder's out; you despise ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... day were unoccupied by the soldier's duties. The men could amuse themselves during these hours by reading newspapers and books, as a very good library was at hand. Aside from reading were such amusements as billiards, cards and music. These became monotonous and disgusting to me, and in less than two months I would have gladly given up my position, but I was in for three years, and had to stay and ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... intercession of half of the crowned heads of Europe. A hollow reconciliation was effected; and the prince was permitted, at last, to retire to one of the royal palaces, where he amused himself with books, billiards, balls, and banquets. He opened a correspondence with Voltaire, and became an ardent admirer of ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... 'Chapel'," Skert said dryly. "They've surely got preachers, but they don't talk religion. Maybe that's sort of new to you, here. It isn't across the water where I come from. Guess you think those boys are racing out to get a game of checkers, or billiards, or cards, or some other fool play you reckoned to hand 'em to make 'em feel good." He shook his head. "They're not. They've turned their 'Chapel' into a sort of parliament. Every dinner hour there's a feller, different fellers most all the time, gets up and hands 'em out ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... important engagement that he could not possibly put off on any account. Late on the evening of the dinner I heard this same gentleman grumbling because no one had turned up at his club to play a game of billiards with him! Another had fallen asleep and did not wake in time, and a third had been unlucky with his speculations of late, which he attributed to having seen the new moon through glass, and therefore he declined to tempt ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... I played too much pool and billiards for a small boy; and got into too much city mischief, for I learned at the end of a delightful Newport summer that I was to finish my schooling, not at Mr. ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... it,' said Scremerston, 'I seem to remember him too. But I can't place him. What do you think of a game of billiards, father?' he asked, rising and addressing Lord Embleton. 'Rosamond—Miss Willoughby, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... I went. I resolved to adapt myself to the billiards and whiskey of the Commercial Club, and to the desk in the inner office behind the glass partitions. And I like to think that I satisfied my father those two years in the mills. After a time I achieved ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... take it. It'll be hard work getting fifty pounds out of you, then! In the meantime, come and play a game of billiards ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... good rooms at Parker's, and concluding to enjoy life, amused myself in the company of certain, I may say uncertain, young women who danced at some of the theaters. I played billiards, drank rather too much, drove fast horses, and at the end of a delightful year was shocked to find myself in debt, and with only seven dollars and fifty-three cents left—I like to be accurate. I had only one resource: I determined to visit my deaf aunt and Peninnah, and to see what ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... diamond studs, and he had such a vast admiration for this handsome, careless and somewhat rude young man that he would have been very glad had Mr. Trelyon dined with him every evening, and taken the trouble to win any reasonable amount of money of him at billiards afterward. Mr. Trelyon had not as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... does in a regiment. Bonnebault, like Tonsard and like Fourchon, desired to live well and do nothing; and he had his plans laid. Making the most of his gallant appearance with increasing success, and of his talents for billiards with alternate loss and gain, he flattered himself that the day would come when he could marry Mademoiselle Aglae Socquard, only daughter of the proprietor of the Cafe de la Paix, a resort which was to Soulanges what, relatively speaking, Ranelagh is to the Bois de Boulogne. To get into the business ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Light throughout (Bedrooms included). Boating, Fishing, and Shooting. Conveyances Daily for Local Tours at fixed rates for each Person, also for Private Hiring. Billiards, Tennis. ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... nevertheless, went on its way, like other clubs, and men dined and smoked and played billiards and pretended to read. Some few energetic members still hoped that a good day would come in which their grand ideas might be realised,—but as regarded the members generally, they were content to eat and drink and play billiards. It was a fairly good club,—with a ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... her friends. Things came to a point where, when he knew one of the gay evenings was on, he would stay in town, playing billiards at his club, or occasionally wandering into a theater, where he stood or sat at the back of the house and watched the play with ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of fashionable worldlings. From top to bottom of the castle was a constant rustling of silk dresses; groups of pretty women, coming downstairs with peals of merry laughter and singing snatches from the last opera. In the spacious hall they played billiards and other games, while one of the gentlemen performed on the large organ. There was a strange mixture of freedom and strictness. The smoke of Russian cigarettes mingled with the scent of opoponax. An elegant confusion which ended ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... resources—stood him in good stead, and long after the microcosm of the hotel lay fast asleep the cards were dealt and play ran high in the little building called the casino, ostensibly devoted to the milder delights of billiards ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Bungalow was revealed to him in a series of sights, sounds and smells. And should a fellow lunatic arrive, how was he to avoid him? At every meal there would be little exchanges of the banal, after dinner a game of billiards—even possibly, horror of horrors, potential excursions planned with zest and good fellowship. And all the time he would be saying "No," more and more ungraciously, or, worse still—and ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... as we have contrived to make it here. The only bearable time of one's life is the few hours after dinner, when one can sit in a chair in the veranda, and smoke and look at the sea. Some of the fellows play billiards and cards; but if you will take my advice, you won't go in for that sort of thing. It takes a lot out of one, and fellows that do it are, between you and me, in the bad books of the bigwigs. Besides, they lose money, get into debt, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... unsuited for studies of this kind, he did not fail to manifest a perfect genius in the acquisition of other more profitable arts. Over and above the accomplishments of address, for which he hath been already celebrated, he excelled all his fellows in his dexterity at fives and billiards; was altogether unrivalled in his skill at draughts and backgammon; began, even at these years, to understand the moves and schemes of chess; and made himself a mere adept in the mystery of cards, which he learned in the ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... shake the columns of society, by detracting from or burlesquing the elevating principles which have produced so many illustrious men, has recently attempted to reduce the labours of literature to a mere curious amusement: a finished composition is likened to a skilful game of billiards, or a piece of music finely executed; and curious researches, to charades and other insignificant puzzles. With such, an author is an idler who will not be idle, amusing or fatiguing others who are completely so. The result of a work of genius is contracted to the art of writing; but ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... defeat, and for the next few weeks the war of hospitality was fast and furious. We dined together nearly every day, sometimes at my expense, sometimes at theirs. We drove, rode, walked, played at billiards and made many a night of it; but youth and temperance (in drink) pulled me through without serious inroads on my health. We had early come to an understanding and a deadlock. Failing to get the slenderest clew to the location of the cotton I offered them one-fourth ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... example—a Georgian, tall, shapely and handsome, with the gray hairs of his thirtieth year shading his working temples; he had been the most envied man in Paris; no woman could resist the magnetism of his eye; he was almost a match for the great Berger at billiards; he rode like a centaur on the Boulevards, and counterfeited Apollo at the opera and the masque. His credit was good for fifty thousand francs any day in the year. He had travelled in far and contiguous regions, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... painting his surface with gray horizontal lines, as is done by nautically-disposed children; for no destruction of distance in the ocean is so serious a loss as that of its liquidity. It is better to feel a want of extent in the sea, than an extent which we might walk upon or play at billiards upon. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... not so grand as the rest of the chateau, but everybody loves it best of all. It is on the ground floor, and it has a writing-desk and two or three little work-tables and several sofas and heaps of easy-chairs, and here everybody came to read or write or sew or play billiards. And as to afternoon tea! Not one of us could have been hired to drink it in the salons up-stairs. In fact, so many of us insisted upon being in the billiard-room that there never was room for a free play of one's cue, for somebody was always in the ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... men had stopped opposite the window. Some chalk marks over the waistcoat pocket were the only signs of billiards which I could see in one of them. The other was a very small, dark fellow, with his hat pushed back and several packages under ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... lad admiringly. "There's 'Muggins' Watson over there," and he pointed to a man in his shirt sleeves, playing billiards with a young fellow whom Joe recognized, from having seen his picture in the papers, as 'Slim' Cooney, one of ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... you have some recent instances to support your theory," Dalton said, with a smile. They were lighting their cigars, preparatory to playing a fresh game of billiards, but Sydney was so much interested in the conversation, that, instead of taking up his cue, he stood with his back to ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... French envoy to Egypt was playing billiards when he heard of the purchase, and in his rage he broke his cue in half. His anger was natural, quite apart from financial considerations. In that respect the purchase has been a brilliant success; for the shares are now worth more than L30,000,000, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... greet him. Though a member of the tribe of Levi, he was anything but ecclesiastical in appearance, rather a representative of muscular Judaism. He had a pink and white complexion, and a tawny moustache, and bubbled over with energy and animal spirits. He could give most men thirty in a hundred in billiards, and fifty in anecdote. He was an advanced Radical in politics, and had a high opinion of the intelligence of his party. He paid Leah lip-fealty ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and asked General Ratoneau if he would play a game of billiards. Most of the men had already left the salon. The General grunted an assent, and rose stiffly to follow his host, with a grave bow to Madame de Sainfoy. The Comte walked with him half across the room, then suddenly turned back ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... pastime. At luncheon there was much merriment over the recollections of the morning's work, and after luncheon there was walking in the park, rowing or sailing on the lake, riding or driving in the adjacent country, archery in a spacious field; and in bad weather billiards, reading in the library, music in the drawing-rooms, battledore and shuttlecock in the hall; in short, all the methods of passing time agreeably which are available to good company, when there are ample means and space for their exercise; to say nothing of making love, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... absence the correspondence of the lovers passed, by their consent, through my hands. Every night I used to make one in a party at billiards, at which Hortense played very well. When I told her, in a whisper, that I had got a letter for her, she would immediately leave off playing and run to her chamber, where I followed and gave her Duroc's epistle. When ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to confidence—through a series of toilsome efforts. I picked him up again in the Village Room, where of a night I went to play billiards after my supper, and mitigate the extreme seclusion from my kind that was so helpful to work during the day. I contrived to play with him and afterwards to talk with him. I found the one subject to avoid was Fairyland. On everything else he was open and amiable in ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... fellow, Verdayne," explained Barclay in parentheses to his friends. "A bit abstracted sometimes, as you see. But he'll be all right after tiffin. We'll gather him in for billiards later." ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... in Surrey, an account of Snowdon must have appeared exciting. But we, or rather the steam-engine and the camera for us, have changed all that. The man who plays tennis every year at the foot of the Matterhorn, and billiards on the summit of the Rigi, does not thank you for an elaborate and painstaking description of the Grampian Hills. To the average man, who has seen a dozen oil paintings, a hundred photographs, a thousand pictures in the illustrated journals, and a couple of panoramas of Niagara, the ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... remained a whole month at Petit Trianon, and had established there all the ways of life in a chateau. She entered the sitting-room without driving the ladies from their pianoforte or embroidery. The gentlemen continued their billiards or backgammon without suffering her presence to interrupt them. There was but little room in the small Chateau of Trianon. Madame Elisabeth accompanied the Queen there, but the ladies of honour and ladies of the palace had ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... with the Princesse de Galitzin, I put on my cloak and went to the cafe. I found there the burgomaster's son, who was just beginning a game of billiards. He whispered to me that I might back him with advantage, and thinking he was sure of his stroke I thanked him and followed his advice. However, after losing three games one after the other, I took his measure and began to lay against him without his knowledge. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to the limit of endurance at times; but, like the amateur, they got into the game late, and have not had a life-time of practice, or they do not have the advantage of that pace gained only by competing incessantly with players of the very first rank. No one will contend that the amateur in billiards has a nervous organization less fitted to the game than the professional; it is admitted that the difference lies in the constant practice of the professional, the more exacting standards prevailing in the professional ranks, ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... Bansemer seemed like darkest treachery to Graydon, even though the son should not become aware of the situation. Later, in the afternoon, Bobby went, guiltily, into a telegraph office and sent away a carefully worded dispatch. The answer came to him at the club, that evening, while he played billiards with young Bansemer, who, even then was eager to be off to keep the promised appointment with ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... proposed that they should try a game of billiards in the Cafe Nuovo. After they had played a game or two, and drank several mezzo caldos, or rum punches, they walked up the Corso to the Via San Claudio, No. 48, and entered the palace gate. It was ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... meal, and nothing is left but to smoke moodily and look at the clock. Our heroes were not of that mettle. They meant to have some sort of fun, and the various amusements of Sydney were canvassed. It was unanimously voted too hot for the theatres, ditto for billiards. There were no supporters for a proposal to stop in the smoking-room and drink, and gambling in the card-rooms had no attractions on such a night. At last Gordon hit off a scent. "What do you say," he drawled, "if we ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... wandered into the club, turned over the magazines absently in the reading-room, and wandered out again without speaking ten words. The most careless eye would have remarked the great change that had come over Van Twiller. Now and then he would play a game of billiards with De Peyster or Haseltine, or stop to chat a moment in the vestibule with old Duane; but he was an altered man. When at the club, he was usually to be found in the small smoking-room up-stairs, seated on a fauteuil fast asleep, with the last ...
— Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... much as a sign. Decidedly, the Ethics of the Turf offer an odd study for the moralist; and, in passing, I may say that the national ethics are also a little queer. We ruin a tradesman who lets two men play a game at billiards for sixpence on licensed premises, and we allow a silly boy to be rooked of a quarter of a million in nine months, although the robbery is as well-known as if it were advertised over the whole front page of The Times ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... writes to his father, "that I am immersed in music, as it were, that I am occupied with it all day long, that I like to study, speculate, reflect." He was often absent-minded and even followed his thoughts while playing billiards or nine pins, or riding. Like Beethoven, he walked up and down the room, absorbed in thought, even while washing his hands; and his hair-dresser used to complain that Mozart would never sit still, but would jump up every now and then and walk across the room to jot down ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... "our army." Every bishop does not do so. It was pleasant, too, to hear him say, in speaking of other sects, "There are some things in which we all agree, thank goodness." The Young Men's Christian Association is in great vigor at Cincinnati. It provides a reading-room, billiards, a gymnasium, bowling-alleys, and many other nice things for young men, at the charge of one dollar per annum. The Association here is said to be free from that provincial bigotry which, at Chicago, refused to invite to the annual banquet Robert Collyer and the young men of his church, because ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... a minor till I was twenty-five," he said, "and I suppose I have known that if I married after the age of twenty-two, I became a major, or whatever you call it. But what then? Do let us go and play billiards, I'll give you twenty-five in a hundred, because I've been playing a lot lately, and I'll ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... the deep is immediately required, by the rules of ship's etiquette, to buy another from the sailors who make them, so an unaccustomed batsman may be landed in much expense. Everybody found it great fun, however, and when they had lost the day's supply of balls, would take to ring quoits and deck billiards instead. ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... I own I always have hated a needle worse—well, worse than the devil! And I can organise, and can speak fairly well, and manage business affairs tidily. And have I not even been known—low be it spoken—to beat you at lawn tennis, and Lord Shotover at billiards?" ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... The Tribune have not been famous, in the past twenty years, for an excess of good-nature toward each other. Mr. Bennett and Mr. Greeley are not supposed to partake habitually of the same dinners and wine, or to join in frequent games of billiards and poker. The compliments which the two great dailies occasionally exchange, are not calculated to promote an intimate friendship between the venerable gentlemen whose names are so well known to the public. No ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... home, for the very excellent reason that there was no other place to go. We hadn't any Clubs to begin with, so that on his way home from business there was no temptation for him to stop off anywhere and frivol away his time playing billiards, or squandering his limited means on rubbers of bridge or other ruinous games. The only Vaudeville shows we had at the time consisted of the somewhat too continuous performances of the monkeys and ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... that, by this arrangement, they have been happy from generation to generation. But, the only answer that the author vouchsafes to this is that he knows a great many respectable people who pass their lives in watching games of billiards. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... consigning your Manton to a corner, and the game keeper "to the dogs," you once more humanize your costume to take a canter with the daughters of the house; or, if the day look loweringly, a match of billiards with the men. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... Billiards is a graceful game, and affords, in some respects, admirable training, but is hardly to be classed among athletic exercises. Tenpins afford, perhaps, the most popular form of exercise among us, and have become almost a national game, and a good one, too, so far as it goes. The English game ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... to those qualities which please the softer sex, Legard was a good whist player, superb at billiards, famous as a shot, unrivalled as a horseman,—in fact, an accomplished man, "who did everything so devilish well!" These accomplishments did not stand him in much stead in Italy; and, though with reluctance and remorse, he took again to gambling,—he ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... people who appeared to live so much without amusement as the Cincinnatians. Billiards are forbidden by law, so are cards. To sell a pack of cards in Ohio subjects the seller to a penalty of fifty dollars. They have no public balls, excepting, I think, six, during the Christmas holidays. They have no concerts. They have ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... the estates, and it was agreeable to see that your very good folk could wink at things like other people in such a case. Then, when Ellen fairly drove her inquiries home, in her absolute trust of confuting all slanders, she was told that Griffith did, what she called 'all sorts of things—billiards and all that.' And even that he was always running after a horrid ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to find the skies leaden and a light, drizzling rain falling that promised to continue all day. It was the sort of weather that ordinarily left him quite helpless, because, not caring for either bridge or billiards, nothing remained but to pace the hotel piazza—an amusement that under the most favorable conditions has its limitations. But to-day—even though the rain had further interfered with his arrangements by making it necessary to cancel the trip ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the right explanation, or any explanation at all, of many gestures and expressions. As an illustration of what he calls symbolic movements, I will quote his remarks (p. 37), taken from M. Chevreul, on a man playing at billiards. "Si une bille devie legerement de la direction que le joueur pretend zlui imprimer, ne l'avez-vous pas vu cent fois la pousser du regard, de la tete et meme des epaules, comme si ces mouvements, purement symboliques, pouvaient rectifier son trajet? Des mouvements non moins ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin |
