man is the only animal that gambols and jumps and
skips after it has reached maturity. Were we to meet an elderly bearded
goat, springing about in the air and behaving, generally speaking, like a
kid, we should say it had gone mad. Yet we throng in our thousands to
watch elderly ladies and gentlemen jumping about after a ball, twisting
themselves into strange shapes, rushing, racing, falling over one
another; and present them with silver-backed hair-brushes and
gold-handled umbrellas as a reward to them for doing so.

Imagine some scientific inhabitant of one of the larger fixed stars
examining us through a magnifying-glass as we examine ants. Our
amusements would puzzle him. The ball of all sorts and sizes, from the
marble to the pushball, would lead to endless scientific argument.

"What is it? Why are these men and women always knocking it about,
seizing it wherever and whenever they find it and worrying it?"

The observer from that fixed star would argue that the Ball must be some
malignant creature of fiendish power, the great enemy of the human race.
Watching our cricket-fields, our tennis-courts, our golf links, he would
conclude that a certain section of mankind had been told off to do battle
with the "Ball" on behalf of mankind in general.

"As a rule," so he would report, "it is a superior class of insect to
which this special duty has been assigned. They are a friskier, gaudier
species than their fellows.

Cricket, as viewed from the fixed Stars.

"For this one purpose they appear to be kept and fed. They do no other
work, so far as I have been able to ascertain. Carefully selected and
trained, their mission is to go about the world looking for Balls.
Whenever they find a Ball they set to work to kill it. But the vitality
of these Balls is extraordinary. There is a medium-sized, reddish
species that, on an average, takes three days to kill. When one of these
is discovered, specially trained champions are summoned from every corner
of the country. They arrive in hot haste, eager for the battle, which
takes place in the presence of the entire neighbourhood. The number of
champions for some reason or another is limited to twenty-two. Each one
seizing in turn a large piece of wood, rushes at the Ball as it flies
along the ground, or through the air, and strikes at it with all his
force. When, exhausted, he can strike no longer, he throws down his
weapon and retires into a tent, where he