ZODIAC. This word has degenerated into Soda. It means the top card in the box.
TECHNICAL WORDS AND PHRASES,
USED BY
BILLIARD-PLAYERS.
ATTITUDE. The position in which the player stands while at the billiard-table, when about to strike the ball. The acquisition of a good attitude is a matter of first importance to the new beginner. It is almost impossible to lay down fixed rules in this particular, as the peculiarities of height and figure would render the rules that would be excellent in one case, totally inapplicable in the other. Perfect ease is the grand desideratum; and this is to be acquired by practice, and a close observation of the best players.
BANK. When the player makes his own ball hit any of the cushions before striking the object-ball.
BILLIARD-SHARP. A class of character not tolerated in respectable saloons. As a general thing, the billiard-sharp is a retired marker, who fancies it is no longer respectable to work for an honest living, but that he is smart enough, and has learned tricks enough at his former business, to enable him to win as much money as he wants from the less experienced amateurs of the game, who figure in his vocabulary as "the flats." He generally frequents those establishments where one or two billiard-tables are made the stall behind which some dishonest occupation is carried on; and here he is at home, and in his glory. He makes himself particularly friendly with any one who will ask him to "take a drink," and in his assumed duties he fills the offices of lounger, runner, talker, player, sponge, shoulder-hitter, and referee.
He is also a runner, and sort of travelling blower to second-rate manufacturers of billiard-tables. These men supply him with clothes, to enable him to mingle in respectable society, and allow him an enormous per centage for every billiard-table sold to a stranger through his agency. In addition to this, it is his business to pull down the reputation of such manufacturers as despise and scorn the means by which he earns his dishonest livelihood. As soon as he has made "a hit" in one saloon, he is off to another, and in this way goes the rounds of the city until all the places which harbor him, are, in his own phrase, "played out."
Such a man is to be avoided as one of the worst species of sharpers. He has a thousand pretenses under which to borrow money, and will act as if quite offended if refused. The stranger should avoid all such men, and especially any one with whom he is not well acquainted, who should ask him to play for any given sum, "just to give an interest to the game."