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Updated: June 19, 2025
Nevertheless, the town has its amusements; in the first place, the daylong and perennial one of donkey-riding along the sands, large parties of men and girls pottering along together; the Flying Dutchman trundles hither and thither when there is breeze enough; an arch cry-man sets up his targets on the beach; the bathing-houses stand by scores and fifties along the shore, and likewise on the banks of the Ribble, a mile seaward; the hotels have their billiard-rooms; there is a theatre every evening; from morning till night comes a succession of organ-grinders, playing interminably under your window; and a man with a bassoon and a monkey, who takes your pennies and pulls off his cap in acknowledgment; and wandering minstrels, with guitar and voice; and a Highland bagpipe, squealing out a tangled skein of discord, together with a Highland maid, who dances a hornpipe; and Punch and Judy, in a word, we have specimens of all manner of vagrancy that infests England.
I saw there none of the swell airs and graces, and ostentatious displays of money, and pompous squanderings of it, which used to distinguish the steamboat crowd from the dry-land crowd in the bygone days, in the thronged billiard-rooms of St. Louis.
And its bein' the biggest property there, of course it helped more than any thing else did to keep the streets smooth and even before the saloon- doors, so drunkards could get there easy; and to get new street-lamps in front of the saloons and billiard-rooms, so as to make a real bright light to draw 'em in and ruin 'em.
Carriages, with dowagers in amethyst and gentlemen spotted with carnations, intercepted cabs and motor-cars turned in the opposite direction, in which jaded men in white waistcoats lolled, on their way home to shrubberies and billiard-rooms in Putney and Wimbledon.
In the coffeehouses the grand sources of amusement are dice and drafts, along with backgammon and billiards. The latter two games are confined to the upper and middle classes. Most of the upper classes, I believe, have billiard-rooms at home, for family use and conversazione-party amusement.
If, now, we consider that this very common mood tends towards billiard-rooms, towards long sittings over cigars and brandy-and-water, towards Evans's and the Coal Hole, towards every place where amusement may be had; it becomes a question whether these precise observances which hamper our set meetings, have not to answer for much of the prevalent dissoluteness.
And in Belgium, France and Germany, for some years, this decayed and abortive prodigal might be seen lurking about billiard-rooms and watering-places, punting at gambling-houses, dancing at boarding-house balls, and riding steeple-chases on other folks' horses.
Julian had heard his sanctity laughed at in billiard-rooms and in bars many times, and had simply felt an easy contempt for the laughers, who could not understand that any nature could be finer than their own.
One of the finest buildings in the town is a handsome hotel, built of stone and brick, provided with a ball-room, billiard-rooms, and such like. It is altogether the finest up-country place of the kind that I have seen. Here we put up, and join the crowd of loungers under the verandah.
We rowed on the river, we played in the cricket-field, we lounged in the billiard-rooms, we ran up to town for the day, we had wine in one another's rooms after hall in the evening, and behaved like young fools, and threw oranges wildly at one another's heads, and generally enjoyed ourselves.
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