University of Virginia Library

SKITTLE SHARPERS.

`I know a respectable tradesman,' says a writer in Cassell's Magazine — `I know him now, for he lives in the house he occupied at the time of my tale — who was sent for to see a French gentleman at a tavern, on business connected with the removal of this gentleman's property from one of the London docks. The business, as explained by the messenger, promising to be profitable, he of course promptly obeyed the summons, and during his walk found that his conductor had once been in service in France. This delighted Mr Chase — the name by which I signify the tradesman — for he, too, had once so lived in France; and by the time he reached the tavern he had talked himself into a very good opinion of his new patron. The French gentleman was very

urbane, gave Mr Chase his instructions, let him understand expense was not to be studied, and, as he was at lunch, would not be satisfied unless the tradesman sat down with him. This was a great honour for the latter, as he found his employer was a baron. Well, the foreigner was disposed to praise everything English; he was glad he had come to live in London — Paris was nothing to it; they had nothing in France like the English beer, with which, in the exuberance of his hospitality, he filled and refilled Mr Chase's glass; but that which delighted him above all that he had seen "vos de leetle game vid de ball — vot you call — de — de — aha! de skittel.'' Mr Chase assented that it was a very nice game certainly; and the French gentleman seeming by this time to have had quite enough beer, insisted, before they went to the docks — which was essential — that they should see just one game played.

`As he insisted on paying Mr Chase for all the time consumed with him, and as his servant, of course, could not object, the party adjourned to the "Select Subscription Ground'' at once. In the ground there was a quiet, insignificant-looking little man, smoking a cigar; and as they were

so few, he was asked to assist, which, after considerable hesitation and many apologies for his bad play, he did. The end is of course guessed. The French gentleman was a foolish victim, with more money than wits, who backed himself to do almost impossible feats, when it was evident he could not play at all, and laid sovereigns against the best player, who was the little stranger, doing the easiest. What with the excitement, and what with the beer, which was probably spiced with some unknown relish a little stronger than nutmeg, Mr Chase could not help joining in winning the foreign gentleman's money; it seemed no harm, he had so much of it.

`By a strange concurrence of events, it so happened that by random throws the Frenchman sometimes knocked all the pins down at a single swoop, though he clearly could not play — Mr Chase was sure of that — while the skilful player made every now and then one of the blunders to which the best players are liable. That the tradesman lost forty sovereigns will be easily understood; and did his tale end here it would have differed so little from a hundred others as scarcely to deserve telling; but it will surprise many, as

it did me, to learn that he then walked to and from his own house — a distance of precisely a mile each way — fetched a bill for thirty pounds, which a customer had recently paid him, got it discounted, went back to the skittle-ground, and, under the same malignant star, lost the whole.

`It was the only case in my experience of the work going on smoothly after such a break. I never could account for it, nor could Mr Chase. Great was the latter's disgust, on setting the police to work, to find that the French nobleman, his servant, and the quiet stranger, were all dwellers within half a mile or so of his own house, and slightly known to him — men who had trusted, and very successfully, to great audacity and well — arranged disguise.'

A vast deal of gambling still goes on with skittles all over the country. At a place not ten miles from London, I am told that as much as two thousand pounds has been seen upon the table in a single `alley,' or place of play. The bets were, accordingly, very high. The instances revealed by exposure at the police-courts give but a faint idea of the extent of skittle sharping.

Amidst such abuses of the game, it can scarcely

surprise us that the police have been recently directed to prohibit all playing at skittles and bowls. However much we may regret the interference with popular pastimes, in themselves unobjectionable, it is evident that their flagrant abuse warrants the most stringent measures in order to prevent their constantly repeated and dismal consequences. Even where money was not played for, pots of beer were the wager — leading, in many instances, to intoxication, or promoting this habit, which is the cause of so much misery among the lower orders.