to play? But as they make sometimes five and sometimes fifty, we still contend with flesh and blood. Even Achilles was vulnerable at the heel; or, mythologically, he could not stop a shooter to the leg stump. So never let the Satan icagency of the gaming-table brood on those “happy fields” where, _strenua nos exercet inertia_, there is an energy in our idle hours, not killing time but enjoying it. Look at good honest James Dean; his “patient merit” never “goes Out sighing” nor In, either--never in a mumbling, though a “melting mood.” Perspiration may roll off him, like bubbles from a duck’s back, but it’s all down to the day’s work. He looks, as every cricketer should look, like a man out for a holiday, shut up in “measureless content.” It is delightful to see such a man make a score. Add to all this, perseverance and self-denial, and a soul above vain-glory and the applause of the vulgar. Aye, perseverance in well-doing--perseverance in a straightforward, upright, and consistent course of action.--See that player practising apart from the rest. What an unpretending style of play--a hundred pounds appear to depend on every ball--not a hit for these five minutes--see, he has a shilling on his stumps, and Hillyer is doing his best to knock it off. A question asked after every ball, the bowler being constantly invited to remind him of the least inaccuracy in hitting or danger in defence. The other players are hitting all over the field, making every one (but a good judge) marvel. Our friend’s reward is that in the first good match, when some supposed brilliant Mr. Dashwood has been stumped from leg ball--(he cannot make his fine hits in his ground)--bowled by a shooter or caught by that sharpest of all Points Ἄναξ ἄνδρων, then our persevering friend--ball after ball dropping harmless from his bat, till ever and anon a single or a double are safely played away--has two figures appended to his name; and he is greeted in the Pavilion as having turned the chances of the game in favour of his side. Conceit in a cricketer, as in other things, is a bar to all improvement--the vain-glorious is always thinking of the lookers-on, instead of the game, and generally is condemned to live on the reputation of one skying leg-hit, or some twenty runs off three or four overs (his merriest life is a short one) for half a season.