Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 29, 2025
The stillness and vast proportions of the structure; the endless darkened halls robed in tapestries and animate with oils; the heavy fragrance from the gardens, crushed out of blossoms by the fierce heat; rugs of all the world's weaving, from the golden fleeces of Persia to fire-lit Navajos; a glimpse to the left, of a room walled with books, and sunk into an Egypt of silence; an acreage of covered billiard-tables through a vast door to the right a composite of such impressions made the moment memorable.
Twice in the week concerts are executed by the first performers of the opera-bouffe; and twice in the week invitations to tea-parties are sent to some of the neighbours, or accepted from them. Besides four billiard-tables, there are other gambling-tables for Rouge et Noir, Trente et Quarante, Faro, La Roulette, Birribi, and other games of hazard.
Billiard-tables are fitted up for the amusement of the members, who also occupy themselves with other games, whilst refreshments are to be had the same as in a coffee-house. There are many of these establishments in Paris, which afford great facilities for the promotion of business.
He would go at once to that happy foreign shore, where the memory of no father would follow him, where the presence of no sister would degrade and irritate him, where billiard-tables were rife, and brandy cheap; where virtue was easy, and restraint unnecessary; where no duties would harass him, no tenants upbraid him, no duns persecute him.
C , R , and P had seated themselves in the vicinity of a billiard-table, and, when I partially recovered my senses, I followed their example. The table was about half the size of the billiard-tables in England, and the pockets were twice as large. The four balls, with which they played, were not much bigger than those generally used at bagatelle.
The Dutch have introduced a club, which they call Concordia, with billiard-tables, magazines, a reading-room, and a department for eating and drinking. Of this the voyagers were invited to be ordinary members. There was a book club among the English residents, where they enjoyed the sight of several new publications and periodicals.
The middle room of which, fitted up with a couple of old-fashioned billiard-tables, a huge coal stove, some rough benches, chairs, two or three round tables, and the inevitable bar and cigar-stand, bore on the portals the legend "officers'," as distinguished from the general "club-room" beyond.
Left entirely to themselves, the people have vegetated in these dull streets from generation to generation, and, though clustered together in a quasi town perhaps with octroi and mairie, a withered tree of liberty, and billiard-tables by the half-dozen the population is as essentially rural as though scattered in lone farms, unvisited, except on rent-day, by either landlord or agent.
They form a fashionable promenade for the Parisians, and abound with horsemen and carriages more than any other quarter of the town. Along the Boulevard Poissonnier are some of the handsomest houses in Paris. I dined with a family in one of them which commands a very cheerful scene. There are here, as in the Palais Royal, a vast number of coffee-houses, billiard-tables, and restaurateurs.
I am told there are churches, taverns, billiard-tables, and stone dwellings in these islands now, which are fast turning to the Christian religion, and obtaining the medley of convenience, security, vice, roguery, law and comfort, that is known as civilization. It was far different then, our reception being by men who were but a small degree removed from savages.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking