On the whole, professionals who have an assured place in their county eleven have, for men of their social position, a very good time. They only get nominally 5_l._ a match, but this often means a minimum wage of 10_l._ a week, and besides this they are well known and consequently well advertised, and this means a good deal. Many have shops for sale of cricket goods and golf clubs, footballs and archery, _cum multis aliis_. A great many become publicans, which, though many of us think a loathsome profession, is at any rate a livelihood, and they become publicans because they are well known and popular, and brewers like such men to manage their public-houses. Even if they keep no shop, they are constantly selling bats and balls, and a fair proportion of them, the picked men of the profession, get permanent posts in public schools. When there is no county match on a great many, especially in the North, get engagements in the detestable modern one-day league match. Leaving publicans out of the question, at the present day, from our own knowledge, the following old and young professionals keep cricket shops: Daft, Shaw and Shrewsbury, Gunn, Watson, Briggs, Sugg, Nichols, Abel, the two Quaifes, Walter Wright, Baldwin, Peate, Ward, Tunnicliffe, and George Hearne, and there are no doubt many more; while the following have permanent engagements as coaches at schools, often with a shop also: Wright of Nottingham, Louis Hall, Woof, Emmett, F. Ward, Wootton, and Painter. In addition to all this, in some counties there has arisen, in the last year or so, a system of winter wages, or a bonus paid about Christmas, and when all things are considered, we cannot help thinking that a professional of ability who is steady has a better time of it than any other working man; and even if not a publican or shopkeeper, many have trades to which they can turn their hands in the winter. The first-class professional cricketer is usually a well-made, strong-looking man, ranging from two or three and twenty to thirty five, with agreeable, quiet manners. He is a great favourite with the crowd, and when his side is in may be seen walking round the ground surrounded by a body of admirers, any one of whom is ready and willing at any moment to treat his ideal hero to a glass of anything he may wish for. It is greatly to the player’s credit that in the face of this temptation to insobriety he is such a sober, temperate man. I have never seen on a cricket field a first-class professional player the worse for drink, and I have only on one occasion heard the slightest whisper against the sobriety of such a man during the progress of a match. I believe that, as a class, and considering the thirsty nature of their occupation and the opportunities that offer themselves for drinking, there is no more sober body of men than cricket professionals.