"Well, if I know myself at all, I could have borne anything but billiards. The companions you'll find! The Captains that will be always borrowing fifty pounds of you! I tell you, Caudle, a billiard-room's a place where ruin of all sorts is made easy, I may say, to the lowest understanding, so you can't miss it. It's a chapel-of-ease for the devil to preach in--don't tell me not to be eloquent: I don't know what you mean, Mr. Caudle, and I shall be just as eloquent as I like. But I never can open my lips--and it isn't often, goodness knows!--that I'm not insulted. "No, I won't be quiet on this matter; I won't, Caudle: on any other, I wouldn't say a word--and you know it--if you didn't like it; but on this matter I WILL speak. I know you can't play at billiards; and never could learn. I dare say not; but that makes it all the worse, for look at the money you'll lose; see the ruin you'll be brought to. It's no use your telling me you'll not play--now you can't help it. And nicely you'll be eaten up. Don't talk to me; dear aunt told me all about it. The lots of fellows that go every day into billiard- rooms to get their dinners, just as a fox sneaks into a farm-yard to look about him for a fat goose--and they'll eat you up, Caudle; I know they will. "Billiard-balls, indeed! Well, in my time I've been over Woolwich Arsenal--you were something like a man then, for it was just before we were married--and then I saw all sorts of balls; mountains of 'em, to be shot away at churches, and into people's peaceable habitations, breaking the china, and nobody knows what--I say, I've seen all these balls--well, I know I've said that before; but I choose to say it again--and there's not one of 'em, iron as they are, that could do half the mischief of a billiard-ball. That's a ball, Caudle, that's gone through many a wife's heart, to say nothing of her children. And that's a ball, that night and day you'll be destroying your family with. Don't tell me you'll not play! When once a man's given to it--as my poor aunt used to say--the devil's always tempting him with a ball, as he tempted Eve with an apple. "I shall never think of being happy any more. No; that's quite out of the question. You'll be there every night--I know you will, better than you, so don't deny it--every night over that wicked green cloth. Green, indeed! It's red, crimson red, Caudle, if you could only properly see it--crimson red, with the hearts those balls have broken. Don't tell me not to be pathetic--I shall: as pathetic as it suits me. I suppose I may speak. However, I've done. It's all settled now. You're a billiard-player, and I'm a wretched woman." "I did not deny either position," writes Caudle, "and for this reason--I wanted to sleep." LECTURE THE LAST--MRS. CAUDLE HAS TAKEN COLD; THE TRAGEDY OF THIN SHOES