"He was talking to Sir Charles ten minutes ago in the
billiard room.
Towels, sheets, shirts, and slippers, along with toothbrushes, wisp-brooms, soap, the missing
billiard ball, and all the lost and forgotten trifles of many months, came to light.
From the
billiard room next door came the sound of balls knocking, of talk and laughter.
Here and there were new brick houses and shops, just set up by bustling, driving, and eager men of traffic from the Atlantic States; while, on the other hand, the old French mansions, with open casements, still retained the easy, indolent air of the original colonists; and now and then the scraping of a fiddle, a strain of an ancient French song, or the sound of
billiard balls, showed that the happy Gallic turn for gayety and amusement still lingered about the place.
What were you doing, sir, up in that
billiard saloon?"
One night as I was passing a tavern I saw through a lighted window some gentlemen fighting with
billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out of the window.
The meat is made into balls about the size of
billiard balls, and being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle-balls or veal balls.
Lydgate, who had the muscular aptitude for
billiards, and was fond of the game, had once or twice in the early days after his arrival in Middlemarch taken his turn with the cue at the Green Dragon; but afterwards he had no leisure for the game, and no inclination for the socialities there.
I have quite as great an interest in being careful of his house as you can have; and as to such alterations as I was suggesting just now, such as moving a bookcase, or unlocking a door, or even as using the billiard-room for the space of a week without playing at
billiards in it, you might just as well suppose he would object to our sitting more in this room, and less in the breakfast-room, than we did before he went away, or to my sister's pianoforte being moved from one side of the room to the other.
"Let's have a game at
billiards," one of his friends said--the tall one, with lacquered mustachios.
"Bridge or
billiards?" young Anselman asked, rising.
Some reading was done, and much smoking and sewing, though not by the same parties; there were the monsters of the deep to be looked after and wondered at; strange ships had to be scrutinized through opera-glasses, and sage decisions arrived at concerning them; and more than that, everybody took a personal interest in seeing that the flag was run up and politely dipped three times in response to the salutes of those strangers; in the smoking room there were always parties of gentlemen playing euchre, draughts and dominoes, especially dominoes, that delightfully harmless game; and down on the main deck, "for'rard"-- for'rard of the chicken-coops and the cattle--we had what was called "horse
billiards." Horse
billiards is a fine game.