e adjustment of his hat
and his eyeglasses. He approaches the pitch, smiling the while to show
his purely genial import and to anticipate and explain any amateurish
touches. He reaches the wicket and poses himself, as the convenient book
he has studied directs. "You'll be caught, Muster Shackleforth, if you
keep your shoulder up like that," says the umpire. "Ya-a-ps! that's
worse!"--forgetting himself in his zeal for attitude. And then a voice
cries "Play!"

The vicar swipes wildly, cuts the ball for two, and returns to his
wicket breathless but triumphant. Next comes a bye, and then over. The
misguided cleric, ever pursuing a theory of foolish condescension to his
betters at the game, and to show there is no offence at the "Yaaps,"
takes the opportunity, although panting, of asking my ancient if his
chicks--late threatened with staggers--are doing well. What would he
think if my cricketer retaliated by asking, in the pause before the
sermon, how the vicarage pony took his last bolus? The two men do not
understand one another. My cricketer waves the hens aside, and revenges
himself, touching his hat at intervals, by some offensively obvious
remarks--as to a mere beginner--about playing with a straight bat. And
the field sniggers none too furtively. I sympathise with his malice.
Cricket is an altogether too sacred thing to him to be tampered with on
merely religious grounds. However, our vicar gets himself caught at the
first opportunity, and so being removed from my veteran's immediate
environment, to their common satisfaction, the due ritual of the great
game is resumed.

My ancient cricketer abounds in reminiscence of the glorious days that
have gone for ever. He can still recall the last echoes of the
"throwing" controversy that agitated Nyren, when over-arm bowling began,
and though he never played himself in a beaver hat, he can, he says,
recollect seeing matches so played. In those days everyone wore tall
hats--the policeman, the milkman, workmen of all sorts. Some people I
fancy must have bathed in them and gone to bed wearing them. He recalls
the Titans of that and the previous age, and particularly delights in
the legend of Noah Mann, who held it a light thing to walk twenty miles
from Northchapel to Hambledon to practise every Tuesday afternoon, and
wander back after dark. He himself as a stripling would run a matter of
four miles, after a day's work in the garden where he was employed, to
attend an hour's p