The Count and his Excellency Baron von Punter were, I can tell you, astonished by the smartness of my play:  the first two or three rubbers Punter beat me, but when I came to know his game, I used to knock him all to sticks; or, at least, win six games to his four:  and such was the betting upon me; his Excellency losing large sums to the Count, who knew what play was, and used to back me.  I did not play except for shillings, so my skill was of no great service to me.

One day I entered the billiard-room where these three gentlemen were high in words.  “The thing shall not be done,” I heard Captain Tagrag say:  “I won’t stand it.”

“Vat, begause you would have de bird all to yourzelf, hey?” said the Baron.

“You sall not have a single fezare of him, begar,” said the Count:  “ve vill blow you, M. de Taguerague; parole d’honneur, ve vill.”

“What’s all this, gents,” says I, stepping in, “about birds and feathers?”

“Oh,” says Tagrag, “we were talking about—­about—­pigeon-shooting; the Count here says he will blow a bird all to pieces at twenty yards, and I said I wouldn’t stand it, because it was regular murder.”

“Oh, yase, it was bidgeon-shooting,” cries the Baron:  “and I know no better sbort.  Have you been bidgeon-shooting, my dear Squire?  De fon is gabidal.”

“No doubt,” says I, “for the shooters, but mighty bad sport for the pigeon.”  And this joke set them all a-laughing ready to die.  I didn’t know then what a good joke it was, neither; but I gave Master Baron, that day, a precious good beating, and walked off with no less than fifteen shillings of his money.

As a sporting man, and a man of fashion, I need not say that I took in the Flare-up regularly; ay, and wrote one or two trifles in that celebrated publication (one of my papers, which Tagrag subscribed for me, Philo-pestitiaeamicus, on the proper sauce for teal and widgeon—­and the other, signed Scru-tatos, on the best means of cultivating the kidney species of that vegetable—­made no small noise at the time, and got me in the paper a compliment from the editor).  I was a constant reader of the Notices to Correspondents, and, my early education having been rayther neglected (for I was taken from my studies and set, as is the custom in our trade, to practise on a sheep’s head at the tender age of nine years, before I was allowed to venture on the humane countenance,)—­I say, being thus curtailed and cut off in my classical learning, I must confess I managed to pick up a pretty smattering of genteel information from that treasury of all sorts of knowledge; at least sufficient to make me a match in learning for all the noblemen and gentlemen who came to our house.  Well, on looking over the Flare-up notices to correspondents, I read, one day last April, among the notices, as follows:—­

“‘Automodon.’  We do not know the precise age of Mr. Baker of Covent Garden Theatre; nor are we aware if that celebrated son of Thespis is a married man.