oyed quite a reputation as a billiard expert in the land of sandflies
and mosquitoes, and he being in Philadelphia we came together at Nelms'
billiard room in a match game, 300 points up, at the old three-ball
style of billiards, for stakes of $100 a side, and I beat him by a score
of 300 to 252, no account of the averages or high runs being kept for
the reason, as I presume, that nobody thought them worth keeping, though
enough of the filthy lucre changed hands on the result to keep some of
my ball-playing friends in pocket money for some days.

That game was played on the fourth day of February, 1875, and it was not
until more than ten years afterwards that I again appeared in public as
a billiardist. Frank Parker, the ex-champion in the days of the old
four-ball game, now dead, was then a resident of Chicago, and his
friends thought so well of his abilities at the fourteen-inch balk line
game, which up to that time had never been played in public, that they
offered to match him against me for stakes of $250 a side, the game to
be 500 points up. After some talk back and forth this match was finally
made, and March 25th, 1885, we came together in Central Music Hall,
Chicago, before a fair-sized crowd, and I won by a score of 500 to 366,
averaging in the neighborhood of five, and astonishing both Parker and
his friends.

Slosson's billiard room on Monroe street, Chicago, was at that time and
for several years afterwards the scene of more billiard matches than any
similar resort in the United States, it being the headquarters of the
bookmaking fraternity as well as the billiardists from all sections of
the country, and it is more than probable that larger sums of money
changed hands over the result of the games that were played there during
the winter of 1885 and 1886 than changed hands in any other hall in the
country, the leading billiard rooms of Gotham not excepted. Among the
billiardists who were making Chicago their headquarters that winter were
Jacob Schaefer, George F. Slosson, Eugene Carter, Thomas F. Gallagher,
and William H. Catton, while among the bookmakers that made Slosson's
room their lounging place were such well-known knights of the chalk and
rubber as Dave Pulsifer, who afterwards owned the famous race horse,
Tenny; James H. Murphy, whose pacer, "Star Pointer," was in after years
the first horse in harness to beat the two-minute mark; William Riley,
who, under the sobriquet of "Silver Bill," is known f