Neither my friends nor myself were satisfied with the result of this game, during the progress of which I had met with some hard luck, and which I was certain that I might have played better, and as a result we at once made another match at the same game to be played that night, the stakes this time being increased to $150 a side. The game was played in the presence of quite a crowd of billiard enthusiasts, and again Gallagher won by 309 to 280, but even this defeat did not convince me that he was a better player, and the result was still another match of 400 points up at the same game for stakes of $100 a side. This was played the following evening, and for the third time Gallagher carried off the honors, the totals showing 400 points for him as against only 183 for myself, and by this time I had come to the conclusion that he was a "leetle bit" too speedy for me, and that he could look for somebody else to pay his board-bills. That same fall Wyman McCreary, of St. Louis, then as now recognized as one of the strongest amateur players in the country, dropped into Slosson's room, and the result was that I played him two matches at the fourteen-inch balk-line game, each one being for $50 a side, winning both, the score in the first one being 300 to 164, and in the second 300 to 194, my average in the last being 8 14-17, a performance that was at that time something better than the ordinary. Even as far back as those days there was a craze for angle games, and at three cushions Eugene Carter was especially strong, he having a standing challenge to play any man in the world at that style of billiards. He finally offered to play me so points, his backer to wager $300 to $100 that he could beat me, and this offer I accepted. The story of that game, as told in verse by a Chicago newspaper man under the title of "A Match of Slosson's Room," was as follows: It was some time in the winter, and, if I remember right, There were snowflakes softly falling, through the darkness of the night, When I wandered into Slosson's, where the lights were all ablaze, In the hopes of seeing billiards, for I had the billiard craze. 'Round the table there had gathered all the sporting men in town, Putting money up in handfuls; each was anxious to take down. Some would yell out, "I'll take Anson at the odds of three to one," Then another'd cry, "I've got you," and the betting had begun. 'Twas a match game at three cushions, fifty points up, for a stake, 'Tween the base-ball man and Carter, and it wan't an even break, For the odds were all in money and the playing even up, But the horse that packs the top weight does not always win the cup. Odds in money cut no figure from a betting point of view, As I've found in life quite often, and, I doubt not, so have you. If a man can't win at evens then he cannot win at all, Be the odds they bet against him very large or very small.