The weekly examiner., 1901-06-29
TN THE newspapers were to an nounce that billiard match |


 no1lnce that a billiard match
 for $2O,OO0 had been arranged for the most celebrated cue artists of the world, there would be doubt ex- pressed on all sides about the genuine ness of the ma tch. More than that: If Schaefer and Slosson were announced as the principals in $2,O ,OOO match, crit ics would shake their heads and say "fake." But there were days when thousands of dollars were wagered on billiard contests and often as high as $5,ooo has been recorded for the stake.
 Confined in a sanitarium by an old ailment-as thma-is Neil Bryant, Fl years old, and the only remaining link that binds the followers of the gen. tlemen's game to the days when he would pour out greenbacks from satche1 on billiard ta ble, stack up the money and ask for men to cover 1t. Neil is the last of the famous Bryant brothers who conducted the celebrated Bryant's minstrels from 1857 to the late 7Os. and he discourses on the old time days of billiards with the few cronies who occasionally open up this topic for reminiscent flaming" with sadness. The veterans health is poor and he never expects to get out again. Few of the generation of billiardists of to-day recall Bryant's game. But a small number of professionals, to say nothing of the amateurs, could tell how Neil's life had helped shape the destinies of the gentlemen's game.
 Yet Bryant was al one time not only a good player, but he was the most fla IL try. With such men as c. O'Connor, Michael Phelan, or Michael Geary, Neil was invariably the one who put up the main stake.
 Foster, Deery, Joe Dion, Goldthwait, Kavanagh, Rudolphe, .Carme, Garnier and Cyrille Dion, all such prominent professionals, looked to Bryant for the purses, and they were never disappoint- ed. Yet in all these years and up to 1870, Bryant held his amateur status, relinquishing only when he embarked in a billiard-room venture at Broadway and Thirty-second street in New York city. From this, Bryant enlarged his billiard properties and become the fore most referee in the land. When at the zenith of his billiard fame, Bryant took Sexton, Garnier, Daily and Slosson on their tour of 1876 as far as San Fran cisco.
 Discussing the days of Bryant and t'Dixie," which his minstrels helped to make immortal, if that be the word for the air that has guided the footsteps of both the blue and the gray, with Benjamin Garno, who is rapidly becom- ing known ass the sfa ther of billiard
 ,,9 | learngd So much of in-
 N bout this veteran sufferer, that
 kere given with no attempt to
 verbatim.
 With George Wilkes and myself" said MT. Garno, Bryant worked hard to get the push-shot abolished. For nine wears the crusade was maintained finally had it eliminated in 1869. Neil was the first amateur of note to advo-' cate the four-pocket table. He had seen an experimental table set up at a room in New York city and was cer- tain that it opened the way for great possibilities in billiard play.
 Not long after that, altogether abandoning the four-ball carom game as personal preference, he was the, first amateur in America to advocate the three-ball game steadily, sturdily and exclusively. Just previous to his debut as a technical professional in laS7o, Neil was one of the group of pest Known amateurs and fewer than a half H6zen men in America could hold their