THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
MARK TWAIN
Practising in Hi* Hume
THE last [uartei erf a century of my
life has been pretty constantly and
faithfully devoted to the study of
the human race; that is to say.
the study of myself, for in my
individual person I am the entire
human race compacted together.
I have found that there is no in
gredient of the race which I do not
possess in either a small way or a
large way When it is small, as
compared with the same ingredient in somebody
else, there is still enough of it for all the purposes
of examination. In my contacts with the species,!
I find no one who possesses a quality which I do
Dot ]><>ssess. The shades of difference between other
people and me serve to make variety and prevent
monotony; hut that is all.
Broadly sjieaking. we are all alike; and so by
stud\ ins myself carefully and comparing myself
with other people, and noting the divergences. 1 have
been enabled to acquire a knowledge of the human
raw which I perceive is more accurate and more
comprehensive than that which has been acquired
and revealed by any other members of our specie
As a result, my private and concealed opinion of
myself is not of ■ complimentary sort. It follows
that my estimate of the human race is the duplicate
of my estimate of myself.
I am not promising to discuss all of the peculian
ties of the human race, at this time; 1 only wish to
touch lightly upon one or two of them. To begin
*'ith i wonder why a man should prefer a good
billiar-3 table to a p<»or one; and why he should pre
fer straight cues to crooked ones; and why he should
prefer round balls to chipj>ed ones; and why he
shouH prefer a level table to one that slants; and
why he should prefer responsive cushions to the
dull and unresponsive kind? I wonder at these
things, l»ecause when we examine the matter we
Bad that the essentials involved in billiards are as
competently and exhaustively furnished by a bad
billiard outfit as they are by the best one.
One of the essentials is amusement. Very well,
[!™ t ' r( is any more amusement to be gotten out of
the oik- outfit than out of the other, the facts are
in favor of the bad outfit. The bad outfit will
?*»ys furnish thirty per cent, more fun for the
A Dissertation on Billiards
layers and foi the ;-■ lil ■■■ than will
>d outfit Another essential "t
te game is that the outfit shall give
le players full opportunity to exercise
t K-ir ix-st skill, and display it in :t way
• eomjiel the admiration of the spec
very well, the bad outfit is
othing behind the r I one in this
•^ard It is a difficult matter to eti
tate correctly the eccentricities "f
clipped balls and a slanting table, and
lake the n^'ht allowance for them, and
■cure a count, — th<- finest kin<l of skill
required to accomplish the satisfac
>rv result Another essential of the
. ;v that it shall add to the interest
• the game b> furnishing opportuni
es 1" bet. Very well, in this regard no
><•<] outfit can claim any advantage
ver a bad one I knew by experience
iat a bad outfit is as valuable as the
•st one: that an outfit that couldn't
•c gold at auction for seven dollars is
ist as valuable for all the essentials ol
• i<- game as an outfit that is worth a
t lousand
I ACQUIRED some of this learning in
lackass <iulch, <'alifornia, more than
orty wars ago. Jackass Gulch ha<l
nee l<ecn a rich and thriving surface
ming camp. By and by its gold
< cposits were exhausted . then the jjeople
■^an to go away, and thi- town began
. decay, and rapidly. — in my time it
id disappeared. When- the hank, and
ac <ity hall, and the church, and the
imbling dens, and the newspaper office.
id the streets of brick Mocks had l>een.
as nothing now hut a wide and beauti
ul expanse of green t,'rass. a peaceful
and charming solitude Half a dozen
scattered dwellings were still inhabited;
and there was still one saloon of a ruined
and rickety character stru^'linK for life,
hut doomed.
In its bar was a billiard outfit that was
the counterpart of the one in my father in
law's ganet The balls were < hip]>cd. the
doth was darned and patched, the table's
surface was undulating, and the cues were headless
and had the curve of a parenthesis; but the forlorn
remnant <>\ marooned miners played games there, and
those games were more entertaining to look at than
a emus and a prand opera combined Nothing but
a unite extraordinary skill could score a carom on
that table, — a skill that required the nicest estimate
ot force, distance, and how much to allow for the
various slants of the table and the other formidable
peculiarities and idiosyncrasies furnished by the
contradictions of the outfit.
Last winter, hens in New York. I saw Hoppe and
Schaefer and Sutton and the three or four other
billiard champions of worldwide fame contend
against each other, and certainly the art and science
displayed were a wonder to see: yet 1 saw nothing
there in the way < >f science and art that was m >re
wonderful than shots which 1 had seen Texas 7 .in
make on the wavy surface of that poor old wreck in
the perishing saloon at Jackass Galch forty years
before. Once 1 saw Texas Torn make a string i
seven punts on a single inning,— all calculated
shots, and not a fluke or a scratch among them! I
often saw him make runs of four; but when he
made his String of seven, the boys went wild
with enthusiasm and admiration The joy and the
noise exceeded that which the great gathering at
Madison Square produced when Sutton scored five
hundred points at the eighteen-inch game, on a
world famous ni^ht last winter With practi* c
that champion could score nineteen or twenty on
the Jackass Gulch table: but to start with, Texas
Tom* would show him miracles that would aston
ish him. Also it might have another handsome re
mit: it might persuade the K'reat experts to dis
card their own trifling game and brin^' the Jackass
Gulch outfit here and exhibit their skill in a game
worth a hundred of the discarded one. tor profound
and breathless interest and for displays of aim .-:
sujK-rh'.inan skill.
T\ my experience, games played with .1 fiendish
*■ outfit furnish ecstasies of delight which games
played with the other kind cannot match. Twenty
seven years ago my budding little family spent the
sumtntT at Batcmans Point, near Newport Rhode
Islan<l. It was a comfortable boarding place, well
stocked with sweet mothers and little children.
r
but the male se> was scarce Howevei there
another young allow besides m\ *-lt and he and I
had good times Higgins was his name but tha;
was not his fault He ■>■• :i a very pleasani
companionable person ' >ti the premises then- was
what had once Ik-cti a bowling alley. It was a
angle alley, an<l it was estimated that it had been
out of repair for sixt\ years. l>ut not tin- ball
the balls wen- in good condition: there were forty
one of them, and they ranged iii size from a grape
fruit up to a lignum vita- sphere that you could
hardly lift.
Higpins and I played on that alle> day after da)
At first, one •' us located himself at tin- bottom
end to set up the pins in case anything should hap
pen to them; but nothing happened. The surface
of that alley consisted of a rolling stretch of eleva
tions and depressions, and neither of us could, b\
any ari known to n persuade a ball to stay on the
alle\ until it should accomplish something. Little
balls and bi^. tin- same thing always happened
the ball left the alley before it was halfway homr.
and went thundering down alongside of it the rest
of the way. and made the gamekeeper climb oui
and take care of himself.
\o matter, we persevered, and were rewarded
We examined the alley, noted and located a lot of
its peculiarities, and little by little we learned how
to deliver a ball in such a way that it would travel
home and knock down a pin or two. By and by
we succeeded in improving our game t<> a point
where we were able to get all of the pins with thirt \
five balls. So we made it a thirty-five-ball game
If the player did not succeed with thirty-five, he
had lost the game. I suppose that all the balls,
taken together, weighed five hundred pounds, or
maybe a ton. or along there somewhere; but any
way it was hot weather, and by the time that a
player had sent thirty-five of them home he was in
a drench of perspiration, and physically exhausted
Next, we started cocked hat; that is to say, v
triangle of three pins, the other seven iK-intf dis
carded. In this game we used the three smallest
balls, and kept on delivering them until we got the
three pins down. After a day or two of practice
we were able to gel the chief pin with an output oi
four balls; but it cost us a great many deliveries
to the other two Hut by and by we succeeded
in perfecting our art. at least we perfected it to
our limit. We readied a scientific excellence
where we could net the three pins down with twelve
deliveries of the three small balls, making thirty
six shots to conquer the cocked hat.
Having reached our limit for daylight work, we
set up a couple of candles and played at ni^ht As
the alley was fifty or sixty feet lon^, we couldn't see
the pins; but the candles indicated their locality
We continued this game until we were able to
knock down the invisible pins with thirt y-six shots.
Having now reached the limit of the candle game,
we changed and played it left handed. We con
tinued the left handed game until we conquered
its limit, which was fifty-four shots Sometimes
we sent down a succession of fifteen balls without
getting anything at all. ...
We easily got out of that old alley five times the
fun that anybody could have gotten oui of the best
alley in New York.
ONE blazing hot lav. a modest and courteous
officer of the regular army appeared in our den
and introduced himself. lie was about thirty-five
years old, well built, and militarily erect and straight,
and he was hermetically sealed up in the uniform
of that ignorant old day,— a uniform made of heav\
material, and much properer for January than July.
When he saw the venerable alley, and glanced from
that to the ]<>n£ procession of shining balls in the
trough, his eye lit with desire ami we judged that
he was our meat. We politely invited him to take
a hand, and he could not conceal his gratitude;
though his breeding and the etiquette of his pro
fession made him try. We explained the game
to him and said that there were forty-one balls,
and that tin- player was privileged to extend his
jmiing and keep on playing until he had used them
all up repeatedly, — and that for every ten-strike
he got a prise. We didn't name the prize,— it
wasn't necessary, as no prize would ever f>e needed
i.r called for.
He started a sarcastic smile; but quenched it,
according t( the etiquette of his profession He
merely remarked that he would like to select a
couple of medium balls and one small one, adding
that he didn't think he would need the rest.
Then he began — and he was an astonished man
He couldn't get a ball to stay on the alley. When
he had fire 1 about fifteen balls and hadn't yet reached