lively remarks: but Madame Duvivier would
not be aggravated: she saw through the
manœuvre.

We never took holiday again.

                THE MARKER.

I AM a billiard-marker in the Quadrant.
If a man can say a bitterer thing than that
of another, I shall be obliged to him if
he will mention it, as I shall then have a
higher opinion of my profession than before.
Everybody else seems to be making capital
of their experiences, and why should not I?
I see a great deal of what is called life, up in
this second storey, and why should I not
describe it? I am sure I have plenty of
spare time. I have been here long enough
to become unconscious of the roar of foot
and wheel that rises from the street below;
neither is there anything in the apartment
itself to distract my attention much; no
literature, save an illustrated edition of
Allsop's advertisements hung all round the
walls, and a statement—which I know to be
a lie—in seven colours, about the best cigars
in London; no pictures, besides a
representation of Mr. Kentfield, which I hope for
that gentleman's sake is not a correct one.
He has one or both of his hips out, and is
striking a ball in one direction while his
eyes are steadily fixed in another. Of furniture,
there is an immense oblong table with
a white sheet upon it, one rickety chair,
high-cushioned forms around the room, a
rack for the public cues, two painted boards
for marking at pool or billiards, a lucifer-
match box over the mantel-piece, and spittoons.
The atmosphere is at all times chalky. In
the evening, cigars and beer and gas make
continually their fresh and fresh exhalations,
but in the morning their combined aroma is
stale. I feel when I first come in as if I were
drinking the beer that has been left all night
in the glasses, and endeavouring to smoke
the scattered ends of the cigars. I sit upon
the rickety chair with the rest in my hand,
and my head beneath the marking board—
sometimes for hours—waiting for people to
come. I arrive about twelve o'clock, and
there is rarely any one to play before the
afternoon. Yes, there is one person—Mr.
Crimp I call him, and everybody calls him,
and he calls himself, Captain Crimp, but I
now exhibit him in plain deal, without that
varnish of his own applying. His step is not
a careless one, but he whistles a jovial tune
as he comes up-stairs, until he finds I am
alone, when he leaves off at once, ungracefully;
first, however, he looks in the cupboard
where the wash-hand stand is kept,
remarking, "O!" regularly any morning,
as though he did it by mistake; and, finding
nobody there, he proceeds to business.

Mr. Crimp assists me with his own scrupulously-
clean hands in removing the white
cloth, and immediately becomes my pupil. I
have taught him several skilful strokes at
different times, which his admiration for the
science of the game leads him to reward me
for, quite munificently. Curiously enough,
there is also an understood condition that I
should say nothing about this. Later in the
day, and when the company has arrived, it
often happens that he will get a little money
on, and accomplish those feats himself. A
certain winning hazard in a corner pocket,
which appears particularly simple, I am now
instructing him to miss—so that his ball
may go round all the cushions and perform
its original mission at last. It seems a round-
about method enough of accomplishing its
object, but it will have its uses for the
Captain, I have no doubt. His interest in the
game extends even to the condition of the
table itself. He knows how the elastic sides
are affected by a change of weather, and he
prefers the right hand middle pocket, for
choice, to play at—it draws. Our lesson
commonly lasts about an hour, unless we are
interrupted. I have another occasional
pupil in young Mr. Tavish. He learns billiards
as he would languages or dancing; but
he will never do much at it. His attitudes,
however, are after the very best models;
and, when he has made a fluke, he can look
as if he intended it better than any man—
a property in all situations of life not a
little useful. Mr. Tavish is the pink of
fashionable perfection; and, with every
garment which he takes off for convenience of
play, discloses some new wonder. Two
buckles, besides ribands and an India-rubber
band, are employed in fastening his waistcoat;
his worked suspenders have a hundred
loops; his miraculous collar has no visible
means of entrance; his tie appears to be a
thin strip of sticking-plaster; his new and
patent leather boots are patched at the toes
and punctured in little holes most
marvellously. I actually have observed him
trying to look at himself in the pool board.
Between two and four come our chance
customers, who are the most interesting to me,
and of a very various sort.

A couple of brothers who have not met
for years, and who are about to part, perhaps
for ever—one just returned from the Crimea
and the other on the point of starting for
India. They talk of their past adventures
as they play—of their future prospects, of
their respective sweethearts, of their home—
for nobody minds a billiard-marker—as
though they were quite alone.

A father with his grown-up son will knock
the balls about for half-an-hour, to see if he
retain his ancient skill, dilating all the while
on mortgages, on the necessity of a rich wife,
and on the young man's allowance, and
compressing the Chesterfield Letters into a fifty
game. Now and then comes a parson, who
looks into the cupboard, just as Mr. Crimp
did, for fear that his diocesan should be in
hiding there.