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While gazing on the animated scene I have attempted to described, I fancied myself contesting some of my own young encounters over again, and I won't say how often the unavailing wish escaped my lips—
"I would I were a boy again!"
Our early days—how often back
We turn on life's bewildering track
To where o'er the Atlantic plays
The sunlight of our early days."
The day on which this great contest came off, will be to all enthusiastic Cricketers in New York, a sort of "St. Crispin's Day."
Whoever have taken part in the game, they—
"Will stand on tiptoe, when the day is named,
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But they'll remember, with advantages,
What feats they did that day. Then shall the names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words,
Of Parr and Wisden, Grundy and the rest,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered,
This story shall each good man teach his son;
The day shall ne'er go by
From this day to the ending of the world,
But they in it shall be remembered,
The few, the happy few, the Band ot Brothers."
May such be the happy character of all the meetings in future between the two countries. May balls fly between them with the rapidity but not the hostile fury of cannon balls. May nothing occur to diminish the confidence that now distinguishes both the mother and the daughter—England and America—the one in the other. No more the drum or trumpet's clangor provoke them to arms. May their only emulation be, who shall serve their respective countries most, not in "the big wars that make ambition virtue," but in cultivating that Peace and good-will upon earth, which is the source and soul of social life. We mean that peace and good will which, with much significance, Cumberland tells us in words to the following purport, bestows holidays and joyous feasts like the present, and increases the number of our friends, our social comforts and our pleasures, which alone make life a blessing!
But I have done. I have had too much experience in festive gatherings of this kind not to have learned by this time, that it is in exceedingly bad taste to interrupt at anytime, by any lengthened remarks, the "feast of reason, and the flow of soul," but particularly so after dinner, on an occasion like the present, when there is so much to do, and so little time to do it in. I will only therefore trespass long enough, representing as I have the honor to-night to do, American Cricketers, to offer in their name and in their behalf
