sometimes by a man bring run out. A perfect cricketer, like a perfect whist-player, must qualify his scientific rules, and make the best of a bad partner—but, how few are perfect, especially in this point! Talk not alone of good batsmen, I have often said.—Choose me some thorough-bred public-school cricketers; for, "the only men," says Clarke, "I ever see judges of a run, are those who have played cricket as boys with sixpenny bats, used to distances first shorter, then longer as they grew stronger, and learnt, not from being bowled to by the hour, but by years of practice in real games. You blame me because the All England Eleven don't learn not to run out, though always practising together. Why, a run is a thing not learnt in a day. There's that gentleman yonder—with all his fine hitting he is no cricketer; he can't run; he learnt at a catapult, and how can a catapult teach a man the game?"
Great men have the same ideas, or Clarke would seem to have borrowed from Horace
"Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam
Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit"
A good innings disdains a sleeping partner. Be alive and moving; and—instead of saying, "Well played!" "Famous hit!" &c.; or, as we sometimes hear in the way of encouragement, "How near!" "What a close shave!" "Pray, take care,
