accounts are balanced, the surplus that remains, if any, does not go to swell the speculator's income, but is devoted to the improvement of accommodation, the advancement of the game, or that prudent economy that provides against the cricketer's bugbear, in every sense of the word—a rainy day.
I have suggested that we owe the increase of cricket to the growth of county cricket, and the reasons are not far to seek. When once a county is included in the first class, or aspires to it, its first effort is to enlist all its available talent, and as the reward of the great cricketer is no mean one, whether that reward come in the shape of reputation and amusement to the amateur, or of good red gold to the professional, the aim and ambition of every promising player and of the club to which he belongs is to get at least a fair trial in the higher spheres of the game. Further than that, the executive does not merely wait to receive the applications of the ambitious, but, like Porsena of Clusium, it "bids its messengers ride forth, east and west and south and north," not exactly "to summon its array," but to ascertain what fighting blood there is in the county ready for immediate action, and what recruits there are whose early promise may be developed into disciplined effectiveness. In other words, the cricketing pulse of the county at once begins to throb, and the executive, like a wise physician, keeps its finger on that organ, to ascertain the condition of the patient. But it is not merely by inquisition into the talent that is available that the ranks of a county eleven are filled
