Gleanings from the History of Billiards.

Perhaps nothing in history is more shrouded in doubt than the origin of this agreeable and harmless amusement — Billiards. Shakespeare would have us believe it was known in the days when Antony revelled in the luxurious love of the Egyptian queen, and that Cleopatra invited Charmian to the game 30 B. C.

We are told by some authorities it is French, because its name resembles Bille, which in that tongue signifies “ball,” and we are assured that Henrique de Vigne invented the sport in 1671. Another is equally positive the Normans were the primitive billiardists, because the word sounds very much like “billart, ” Norman for “stick.” Eurther, we learn that the English “halyards” is wonderfully like billiards, and Edmund Spencer, Elizabeth’s laureate, sang:

“With dice, with cards, with halyards far unfit,
With shuttlecocks, misseeming manly wit.”