I am willing to leave to other and more skilful hands the pleasure of narrating the joys and trials of county cricket, club cricket, and the splendid cricket of country houses and village greens.  Not that my task is the more modest, for, having a just regard for relative values, I think that it is of cricket I write, such cricket as small boys play in dreams (ah, me, those sixes that small boys hit in dreams!); such cricket as the ghosts enjoy at nights at Lord’s.  It is well for the eye to take pleasure in shining flannels and ivory-white boots; there is a thrill in the science of the game, the swerve of the new red ball, the quick play of the batsmen’s feet; but I think that when good cricketers die it is not to such elaborate sport as this that they betake themselves in the happy playing-fields.  To mow the astonished p. 113daisies in quick retort to the hardly gentlemanly sneak; to pull like Mr. Jessop because one knows no better; to be bowled by every straight yorker; to slog at full pitches with close-shut eyes; thus and thus only is the cricket of Arcadia.

In its simplest form we played it in the garden after dinner, but even here environment and our imaginations combined to make it complicated.  The lawn was small, and there were flower-beds and windows to be considered.  The former did not trouble us very much; indeed, we lopped the French lilies with a certain glee, but a broken window was a more serious business, and lofty drives to the off were therefore discouraged.  Yet once, I recollect, the ball was sent through the same window three times in an afternoon.  Of course, the unfortunate batsman who allowed his enthusiasm thus to outdrive his discretion was out, as also was he who hit the ball into the next garden.  But this latter rule was rather conventional than imposed by necessity, for we were fortunate in the possession of a charming neighbour; and sometimes youth, p. 114adventuring in search of cricket-balls, would be regaled with seed-cake and still lemonade, and return rampant to his comrades.  But the great zest of our games lay in our impersonation of real famous cricketers.  We would take two county sides, and divide the r?les of their members amongst us, so that each of us would represent two or three members of each team.  The score-sheets of these matches would convey a strange impression to the erudition of the New Zealander.  For the greatest cricketers failed to score frequently, and, indeed, inevitably if they happened to be left-handed bats.  So far our passion for accuracy carried us, but, like Tom Sawyer, we had to “lay on” that we bowled left-handed when it was in the part, while realistic impersonations of lightning bowlers were too dangerous to the batsman to be permitted.

These great contests did not pass without minor disagreements.  The rights of age were by no means waived, and in those days I was firmly convinced that the l.b.w. rule had been invented by the M.C.C. to assist elder brothers in getting their rights.  Moreover, p. 115there was always high argument over the allocation of the parts of the more popular cricketers.  My sister, I remember, would retire wrathfully from the game if she were not allowed to be K. J. Key, and so, when Surrey was playing, we had to permit her to be titular captain.  Girls are very keen at cricket, but they are not good at it.  Or perhaps in the course of the game “W. G.” would find it necessary to chase Lockwood all over the field for bowling impudently well.  Yet while we mimicked our elders we secretly thought Olympian cricket a poor, unimaginative game without any quarrels.  It was thrilling t............