grabs the angler's hook.
Talking does not win at billiards, nor at any other game,
When you come to count your buttons, then perhaps you'll think the same."

Went the buttons up together, one by one, upon the string,
Like two yachts that skim the waters, they were racing wing and wing.
Hushed was all the noisy clamor and the room was as still as death,
As they stood and watched the players chalk their cues with bated breath.

"Even up!" the marker shouted, and the buttons on the line
Counted up stood right together--each had stopped at forty-nine.
It was Anson's shot--a hard one--as the balls before him lay,
And he stopped to count the chances--then he chalked his cue to play.

"Call it off; I'll give you fifty," said George Wheelock, sitting near.
He had found the stakes for Carter and his voice was low and clear.
"Take your stakes down, Captain Anson, and take fifty 'plunks' of mine."
With a nod the Cap consented; Carter's backers bought the wine.

In that billiard-room of Slosson's, Carter argued half the night,
While the snowflakes drifted earthward like a mantle soft and white.
And he swore that he'd have won it if it wasn't for a miss
That he'd made up in the corner when he'd played to get a "kiss."

Now it may be that he would have, but I'm still inclined to believe
That he weakened o'er the billiards that he found up Anson's sleeve.
For I've noticed that the "sucker," or the chap you're thinking one,
Proves the "shark" that gets the money, "doing" 'stead of being "done."

The only match that I have engaged in since those days was one that I
played last fall with Conklin, a West Side amateur in Chicago, and was
at the eighteen-inch balk-line game, 400 points up for stakes of $50 a
side, 200 points to be played in my own room and 200 in Clark's resort.
The first night in my own room I obtained such a lead as to make the
result look like a foregone conclusion, but the next night he came back
at me like a cyclone and averaging over seven, a rattling good
performance at that style of billiards, he beat me out and did it in
such a handsome manner as to challenge my admiration and respect. Since
then he has beaten Morningstar, a Boston, Mass., professional in the
same easy fashion, and it would not be surprising were he yet to make
his mark in the billiard line.

I may say right here that I intend to devote more time to billiards in
the future tha