friendships. You, I am sure, can echo this sentiment. You are a musician as well as a friend, and know the value of steadiness in both characters. I think we could give some of the young whipsters a little trouble even now. Like the old Knight of the Boar's Head, we might need the legs of these Harry Monmouths; but it is my opinion we could bother them yet, at a good stand to our post. They would find some trouble to bowl down our stumps. They say, Jack, you were born with a bat in your hand. I can believe the tale, for I am sure you inherited the craft from both father and mother. She, I think, took as much delight and interest in the game as he. Many 's the time I have seen that worthy woman (every way deserving of so kind and excellent a husband) come galloping up the ground at a grand match, where he was to play (for, you know, she always accompanied him to those high solemnities); and no player even could show more interest in the progress of the game than she, and certainly no one, as was natural, felt so much pride in her husband's fine playing.
I do not remember, John, that you were much of a bowler; but I remember that you were everything else, and that your judgement of the game was equal to that of any man. Your style of hitting, to my mind, was of the very first quality; and I can name no one who possessed a more accurate judgement of a short run. By the by—is that account true which I have heard, that upon one occasion, at Mary-le-bone, you and Hammond went in first, when there were only forty runs to get to win the match; and that you made an agreement together to run whenever the ball passed the wicket-keeper: that you did this, and between you got the whole forty runs before you were out? I have been told this anecdote of
