Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray

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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.