was a privileged person; so, going to the marker's desk, he took out a
little box of ivory balls, spilled them carelessly over a table and
languidly assailed them with a long stick.

Presently, by the merest chance, he executed a marvelous stroke. Waiting
till the astonished balls had resumed their composure, he gathered them
up, replacing them in their former position. He tried the stroke again,
and, naturally, did not make it. Again he placed the balls, and again he
badly failed. With a vexed and humilated air he once more put the
indocile globes into position, leaned over the table and was upon the
point of striking, when there sounded a solemn voice from behind:

"Bet you two bits you don't make it!"

Mr. Jarvis erected himself; he turned about and looked at the speaker,
whom he found to be a stranger--one that most persons would prefer
should remain a stranger. Mr. Jarvis made no reply. In the first place,
he was a man of aristocratic taste, to whom a wager of "two bits" was
simply vulgar. Secondly, the man who had proffered it evidently had not
the money. Still it is annoying to have one's skill questioned by one's
social inferiors, particularly when one has doubts of it oneself, and is
otherwise ill-tempered. So Mr. Jarvis stood his cue against the table,
laid off his fashionable morning-coat, resumed his stick, spread his
fine figure upon the table with his back to the ceiling and took
deliberate aim.

At this point Mr. Jarvis drops out of this history, and is seen no more
forever. Persons of the class to which he adds lustre are sacred from
the pen of the humorist; they are ridiculous but not amusing. So now we
will dismiss this uninteresting young aristocrat, retaining merely his