Modern Billiards
Apart from its inviting to moderate and wholesome exercise, billiards, as popularly played, is pre-eminently a mental pastime. Nearly all its exponents of approved skill, whatever were the drawbacks of their youth, are intellectually quick and bright. This is due in some measure to the ready mathematical requirements of the play as a routine, but in a much greater degree to its taxing the eye, stimulating the fancy, and disciplining the mind by imposing watchfulness, invention, and analysis. Slowness is costly, and hence, as an early habit, an eager alertness of vision, alacrity of step, and promptitude of decision.