do is to look out for the balls of his own set; whether hit or not by a ball from behind, is very much a matter of chance. A ball from the opposite row once touched my hair. The wonder is, that twelve balls should be flying in a small space nearly every day, yet I never heard of any man being hit in the face—a fact the more remarkable because there was usually free hitting with loose bowling. Pierce Egan records that, in 1830, in the Hyde Park Ground, Sheffield, nine double-wicket games were playing at once—two hundred players within six acres of grass! One day, at Lord's, just before the match bell rung after dinner, I saw one of the hardest hitters in the M. C. C. actually trying how hard he could drive among the various clusters of sixpenny amateurs, every man thinking it fun, and no one dangerous. An elderly gentleman cannot stand a bruise so well—matter forms or bone exfoliates. But then, an elderly gentleman,—bearing an inverse ratio in all things to him who calls him "governor,"—is the most careful thing in nature; and as to young blood, it circulates too fast to be overtaken by half the ills that flesh is heir to.
A well known Wykehamist player of R. Price's standing, was lately playing as wicket-keeper, and seeing the batsman going to hit Off, ran almost to the place of a near Point; the hit, a tremendously
