With the enormous number of large schools in England where cricket is played, it will seldom happen that any cricket neighbourhood has not some young fellows from school, or possibly a few from either University, close by; and if they happen to be of the right sort they are a great boon. At the same time it should be a golden rule never to put out of the eleven a good one, who has worked for and earned his place, for a 'swell.' The rule must be kept hard and fast, that the eleven is open only to those who have proved themselves good enough, and if that rule is observed, in the event of a real first-rate amateur turning up, you will generally find that more than one volunteer will offer to stand out for him.
Captaining a village team is not all a bed of roses; but if you are really a cricketer at heart, you will soon acquire the absolute confidence of people of all classes, especially of the humbler order. It is not an unpleasant thing, as you walk across the green on your way to the train, to hear a pack of little boys on their way to school, who look on you as a kind of big dog that won't bite, all chattering about the match the day before. 'Ah! Sir, I heerd my father say that he won a pot over the match,' says one. 'That boy, Sir, got the stick for playing truant yesterday morning,' says another. 'Well! if I did,' replies the culprit, 'I see the beginning of the match, and you did not—there!' That boy may be another Fuller Pilch some day.
And if you are sitting in the tent when your side is in, revolving many things in your mind, and you feel that the whites of the eyes of Mr. Chummy the sweep, a good cricketer formerly, who sits on a form just outside the tent, behind a very short pipe, are glancing round on you, what a comfort it is, if you turn round, to see an almost imperceptible nod of Mr. Chummy's head—for he never speaks during a match—which says, 'Going on all right—we shall win!' That nod of the head is only intelligible to a cricketer, just as a very 'shy' rise of a trout is only perceptible to a genuine fisherman. Those, too only who have known some celebrated cricketer from child-
