It would be in the highest degree imprudent for any one in my position to say a word against country umpires. And, to give them their due, I have almost always found them, in what some would call these degenerate modern days, to be as accurate and as honest as their brethren in more exalted spheres; but there are brilliant exceptions! “To play eleven men and an umpire” is, I am told, a chestnut in Gloucestershire, and one story I can vouch for certainly bears out the theory. It was a match between two old-standing village rivals, and contrary to custom, the visiting team turned up with twelve men, owing to the unexpected arrival of a fairly good player. Another member of the team, conscious of his own weakness, but with perhaps more cunning than good-nature, promptly offered to stand down, “for,” said he, with a sly wink to his captain, “I can be of more use to the side if I umpire!” That comes from Gloucestershire, but it is easily beaten by the remark of the real umpire in a village match in Oxfordshire last August. “How’s that?” shouted the wicket-keeper proudly, as he captured the ball straight off the edge of the bat. “Not out,” said the umpire, “_but it was a damned fine catch if he hit it_.” I do not wish for a moment to insinuate that our friends in the north are not always the good sportsmen we believe them to be, so we will put the following tale under the head of “exceptions.” The match, a two-day one, was being played at Whitehaven, in Cumberland; things had gone badly with the home team, and all the morning of the second day the local umpire had been engineering his opponents out in the most courageous way. But to everybody’s astonishment, when a confident appeal was made against the last man on the side, he gave him “Not out.” Struck by this sudden conversion, a friend asked him what the meaning of it was. “Well,” he said, “if I’d a given ‘im out, they wouldn’t ‘a stayed to loonch, and my father does the caterin’”!