CUP AND BALL CRAZE IN PARIS

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2094, 31 May 1907, Page 1

CUP AND BALL CRAZE IN PARIS

Paris is developing a bilboquet craze. Bilboquet is cup and balls, a childish game not unknown in England. It lias always found still more favor ill France, and there not only, schoolboys alone, but grown-up men and women, serious and exalted personages, play it. There is a billoquef academy in Paris, and it is from it that the renewed interest in the game radiates. Edmond Poineau is Ujp proprietor. Cup and halj lias been the passion of his life. He is a retired cafe waiter and a cafe owner himself. When lie formed the project of his academy he drilled his wife in the game 9P>>ld catch all varieties of freak halls in all sorts of cups,

Then he Introduced the patrons of his cafe to the pastime, and when he saw how they took it ho wont ahead and opened his school. Poineau’s idea \Y.as too good to he monopolised. A rival was soon started. He doesn’t’ call his place an academy.. It is only a “salle de bilboquet.”

’Tho rival one is Gnillnrd. He is an expert player, and enthusiasts are trying to got up a match between him and Poiuonu. Both Gaillard’s place and Poinoau’s are constantly thronged with players. Mon and women may he scon playing elsewhere, and an outfit' has become ail important feature of many homes, while tho toy and fancy stores do a lively trade in bilboquets. - As for the hold that the game has on tile French mind, readers of Dumas will remember that in “Chicot’ the Jester” King Henry 111. is represented as playing cup and ball with his three favorites and the Court jester, Chicot. Louis XIV. disliked the game; lie' considered it vulgar; hut one of tho gentlemen of the Court, the Marquis de Bievro, was so export that he could throw the entiro bilboquot to tho ceiling, and, catching the cup, pocket the ball in it in the samo movement.

Guizot, tho statesman, was a fervent admirer of cup and ball. He always had several implements of tho game in the drawers of his desk at (lie Ministry of Foreign Affairs;., Olio day tho British Ambassador called on him. TJic two were closeted together for an hour. Curiosity grew as to what new move was afoot on tho checker-board of Europe. Other callers grow restless. At last a secretary ventured to tap on the door. Ho whs told to come in. He opened tho door and found the Minister, and his Ambassador, each armed witli a cup and ball, playing a match.