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The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition. The billiard table, as a Sabbath-breaker can beat any coal-breaker
in Pennsylvania and give it 30 in the game. |
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
Mark Twain and Louise Paine
| I wonder why a man should prefer a good billiard-table to a poor one;
and why he should prefer straight cues to crooked ones; and why he should
prefer round balls to chipped ones; and why he should prefer a level table
to one that slants; and why he should prefer responsive cushions to the
dull and unresponsive kind. I wonder at these things, because when we examine
the matter we find that the essentials involved in billiards are as competently
and exhaustively furnished by a bad billiard outfit as they are by the best
one. One of the essentials is amusement. Very well, if there is any more
amusement to be gotten out of the one outfit than out of the other, the
facts are in favor of the bad outfit. The bad outfit will always furnish
thirty per cent. more fun for the players and for the spectators than will
the good outfit. Another essential of the game is that the outfit shall
give the players full opportunity to exercise their best skill, and display
it in a way to compel the admiration of the spectators. Very well, the bad
outfit is nothing behind the good one in this regard. It is a difficult
matter to estimate correctly the eccentricities of chipped balls and a slanting
table, and make the right allowance for them and secure a count; the finest
kind of skill is required to accomplish the satisfactory result. Another
essential of the game is that it shall add to the interest of the game by
furnishing opportunities to bet. Very well, in this regard no good outfit
can claim any advantage over a bad one. I know, by experience, that a bad
outfit is as valuable as the best one; that an outfit that couldn't be sold
at auction for seven dollars is just as valuable for all the essentials
of the game as an outfit that is worth a thousand. ... Last winter, here
in New York, I saw Hoppe and Schaefer and Sutton and the three or four other
billiard champions of world-wide fame contend against each other, and certainly
the art and science displayed were a wonder to see; yet I saw nothing there
in the way of science and art that was more wonderful than shots which I
had seen Texas Tom make on the wavy surface of that poor old wreck in the
perishing saloon at Jackass Gulch forty years before. - Mark Twain's Autobiography, Volume 2 (2013) |
AI image created by Barbara Schmidt
Glass windows
from Mark Twain's billiard room in his Hartford, CT mansion showing year 1874.
Photos from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division.
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(New York) Sun, Tuesday, March 6, 1883 VIGNAUX'S BALK-LINE PLAY. About 250 gentlemen met in response to this invitation:
Among those present were Judge Brady, Judge Roosevelt, Col. Fellows, Mark Twain, Commodore Brady, C. D. Keep, Daniel Strauss, William Sexton, Joseph Dion, Maurice Daly, the Dwyer brothers, James Kelly, L. O. Appleby, Henry Stedeker, C. Davis, and a host of other sporting men. When all were seated and Mr. Vignaux appeared ready for play Mark Twain, who had been chatting with a friend at the end of a row of seats back of the table, arose and said:
After the applause and laughter had subsided Mr.Vignaux and Mr. Sexton stepped to the table to play 300 points up at what is called the balk-line game of billiards ... _____ (Special thanks to Leslie Myrick of the Mark Twain Papers for recovering the text of this speech.) |
AI image created by Barbara Schmidt
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