Having, as it were, reported yourself at the wicket, it is a good plan to discover that you need a new batting-glove. This will afford you an excuse for a return journey to the pavilion, during which your gait will lose nothing in stateliness if you can manage to adopt the goose-step. On your return to the wicket you will probably find, if the weather is mild and the grass dry, that the fieldsmen are reclining on the ground; it will enhance your reputation for nonchalance and good-fellowship if you can contrive to give one of them a playful pat with your bat in passing, especially if he is a total stranger to you and much your senior. On your second arrival at the wicket, you might get the wicket-keeper to take his gloves off and adjust the straps of your pads. This is one of many subtle ways of demoralising the fielding side and whetting the interest of the onlookers. After taking middle with such scrupulous exactitude as to imply that you suspect the umpire's eyesight, take one of the bails and scratch a block deep enough to plant something in. Then beckon to the square-leg umpire to come and replace the bail. In this you will be strictly within the law, and nobody can suspect you of the surreptitious use of a little cobbler's wax. Your next move should be to summon the other batsman to a whispered conference in the middle of the pitch. It doesn't much matter what you say to him; a new funny story or the plot of a play you saw last week will serve to make him assume an air of thoughtful attention. After a chat of about five minutes, you will return slowly to your crease, there to scrutinise the slip fieldsmen, and then to gaze all round the ground as if to make sure that the other side is not playing more than eleven men. When taking your stance you will do well to give full effect to some such mannerism as Mr. WARNER'S trick of hitching up the left side of the trousers and tapping the ground seven times. And just as the bowler is about to start his run you can disconcert him by suddenly whipping round to see if they have moved another man over to the leg side while your back was turned. As soon as the bowler has covered half his course to the wicket you should raise your hand to arrest his career. Then you must stroll about a third of the way up the pitch and give the ground a good slapping with the face of your bat. If you feel so inclined, there is no reason why you should not repeat this man[oe]uvre. Nothing is more calculated to upset a highly-strung bowler. And when the ball does come down the chances are that it will be a wide, in which case you will have earned one run for your side. If, on the other hand, it should happen to knock your middle stump out of the ground, there is nothing more to be done, but you will have the satisfactory feeling that your little turn in the limelight has not been utterly inglorious. * * * * * [Gothic: In Memoriam.] CECIL CLAY.