Richard Humphrey was the colt, and I sent for him into the Pavilion, and the ‘illustrious stranger’ shook hands with him and gave him the sovereign. The foregoing remarks about clubs apply to a country place with some pretensions to first-rate cricket and a village green. In a rural out-of-the-way place where the population consists of a class which cockney writers call ‘Hodge,’ and which we call ‘chaw-bacons,’ bats and balls and stumps and all implements must be provided by subscription. In all other cases those who want to play cricket must pay for their own cricket things. If a good ground is provided the cricket ought to grow of itself. ‘And this country cricket must cost a good deal of money,’ perhaps you will remark. Of course it does; so does fishing, or shooting, or hunting, or any other sport. There are many men who want to skim the cream of the cricket and to play in a good home match who will not play in an out match because ‘they have not time,’ really because they are too stingy. If you mean cricket you must back it everywhere with all your heart and all your strength. Whatever you do, never forget the wind-up match and supper at the end of the season, and get some good cricketers from amongst your foes to join, and above all a parson or two if possible. In these days, I need not say ‘abolish all ribald songs and drunkenness,’ as cricketers have good manners now. As a last word, I must say something for country umpires. When changes in the game are proposed, a lot of outsiders who try their hardest to prevent penal laws being made intelligible, on the ground that ‘the change will put too much on the umpires’ shoulders--especially country umpires,’ are talking nonsense. In the days of Caldecourt, John Bayley, Tom Barker, and Good at Lord’s, umpires did their duty without fear or favour, and did not let men ‘cheat’, and the same stamp of umpires still exists in counties and on many a village green; and if there are any umpires on public grounds who cannot administer the law fearlessly, they had better be supplanted by those who can. If batsmen in the past had shamelessly stopped the ball with their pads without ‘offering’ at the ball with their bat, country umpires would have given them out for unfair play, on the same principle as wilfully obstructing the field. I suppose they would call it l.b.w; and the crowd would have given the retiring batsman (?) a _very_ cold reception; or perhaps a very hot one: neither extreme of heat or cold is pleasant. The late Chief Justice Cockburn said of county magistrates: ‘They may sometimes administer bad law, but generally good justice;’ and the remark applies to village-green umpires. CHAPTER VIII. BORDER CRICKET. (BY ANDREW LANG.)