2o6 Life and Times of " The Druid" 



life — every thought was for others, never a 

 one for himself. 



I do not suppose that "The Druid" ever 

 had a billiard cue in his hand, yet the meet- 

 ing of John Roberts, sen., and William Cook 

 for the championship — the first match for 

 the championship that had taken place for 

 upwards of twenty years — excited him im- 

 mensely. It was played only a month prior 

 to his death, when he well knew that he 

 would never leave his room again alive, so 

 he had to send me to represent him at St. 

 James's Hall, with the strictest injunctions 

 that nothing was to prevent me from bring- 

 ing him the result on my way home. The 

 game of 1,200 up, the first ever played on a 

 small pocket table, was an unusually pro- 

 longed one, and it was after two o'clock on a 

 bitterly cold morning when I stood under his 

 bed-room window, shouting to him that 

 Cook had won. He could not, of course, 

 leave his bed, nor open the window, so com- 

 munication was difficult ; nevertheless, I was 

 not allowed to go home until I had yelled 

 out a complete epitome of the match at the 

 top of my voice ; a proceeding that must have 

 woke up everyone within a hundred yards. 



