the parish at what he considers the psychological moment, generally after dinner in the evening; for which extra labour he is accorded a commission of is in the pound collected. The details of expenditure require no elucidation; they are the same in all cricket clubs; only the healthy countryman, with plenty of muscle, but no skill to apply it, will require at least twice as many bats every season as an ordinary cricketer. And mind you, they don't go at the edges; they come right in half. Is it the stiff wrist? But when all is said and done, what fun it is! I have played most sorts of cricket—country-house cricket, club cricket, touring with my old school eleven, and so on, and once I even appeared for the county second eleven, when I was run out by a local tradesman before I had a ball; but none of them ever touched village cricket for pure, unadulterated amusement. My earliest recollection takes me back to a pretty little ground not far from Croydon, where a local schoolmaster enjoyed a great reputation as a demon underhand bowler. It was not so much the pace or the pitch that proved so disastrous to the batsmen, as the man himself. He looked destructive from the moment he began his run, and as soon as the ball was delivered he used to ejaculate fiercely, "That's got yer!" Whether such a remark at such a critical moment was entirely in accordance with the customs of the game, it never entered our heads to inquire; we only knew it generally had the desired effect.
It was on this same ground, I remember, that
