Next, I would like to quote a story which my old friend Mr. C. W. Alcock relates, and which, I fancy, he personally overheard on a tram: “No, Bill didn’t get much out of his day’s cricket. He had to pay eight bob for his railway fare, and lost ‘is day’s screw, and was fined a shilling for being late next morning, and ‘e didn’t get no wickets, and ‘e missed four ketches, and ‘e got a couple of beautiful blobs. He did feel sold, he did.” If anybody observes that is what can be euphemistically described as a chestnut, my retort is, that it will be new to a great many people. Certainly we all thought the story of Mr. “Buns” Thornton making a mighty slog, and Mr. Bonnor subsequently observing that he had a sister who could hit as hard, was a hoary veteran. You will remember Mr. Thornton’s reply: “Why not bring her over and marry her to Louis Hall? You could then combine the two styles.” That was said at Scarborough, but this very story in the cricket week of 1901 in that very town was hailed as a diverting and fresh anecdote. Wherefore I take courage to proceed in my own garrulous fashion. Among the pleasantest of all country matches are the military weeks. The play is brisk, hard hitting, keen fielding, usually a Tommy who sends down expresses which it is a treat to cut to the boundary, and, of course, the most unbounded hospitality and good-fellowship. Then there is always the regimental band in the afternoon, and one can do a little dance step to beguile the tedium of fielding, or should you be dismissed for one of those conspicuous oval blobs, it is at least consoling to retire to a tune from the last musical comedy. And of course, at soldier fixtures, all the ladies of the garrison muster in their brightest frocks, and I can truthfully say that a match where none of the fair sex are spectators loses one ray of sunshine for me. The follies of girls who do not understand the game may sound funny set down in printer’s ink, but spoken by merry lips, they only provoke laughter, while, as a matter of fact, lots of ladies understand cricket quite as well as most of men do; moreover, they are singularly quick at noticing idiosyncrasies in the players. School tours are splendid things at the beginning of the holidays. Eton Ramblers, Harrow Wanderers, Marlborough Blues, Old Malvernians, Uppingham Rovers, Old Cliftonians, and last, but chief in my eyes, Old Wykehamists—the very names cause a glow at our hearts. There you get boys leaving school playing side by side with a schoolmaster or two as comrades, and no longer _in statu pupillari_. The former gain confidence, the latter rub off the corners which may have become rather sharp during the half, and both are leavened by a further batch of old boys who have names still respected at the school. The cricket is keen, and the talk over the pipes after dinner is clean, healthy, and tends to put them all on good terms with one another.