Page:Cricket (Hutchinson, 1903).djvu/298

204 the gate-money, and deliver the amateur safe back in his own country without the payment to the amateur of a penny? The word expenses has a well-defined and proper meaning, known to everybody. It represents the actual cost to a player of living, travelling, and playing, from the moment he leaves this country to the moment he sets foot in it again; but it is perfectly certain that, if left to the amateur to make a sort of private bargain, other and improper developments will take place, and it is notorious that they do.

Now let us consider for a moment the position of affairs, as far as this question of amateurs and professionals is concerned, in the case of Australia. As was said before, there was some sort of discrimination between the two in the first Colonial eleven in 1878. Both the Bannermans, as noted above, were avowedly professionals, and Midwinter also, if I remember rightly, and perhaps one or two others. But the bulk were amateurs, and the mystic sign "Mr." was placed before their names. If no authoritative statement is made, and no balance-sheet made public, nobody can be surprised if the facts are more or less conjectural. But for all that, rumour in this instance is no lying jade, and without fear of contradiction, I assert that many of the so-called Australian "amateurs" who have been to this country have made money over and above their expenses. Let nobody be misled, or assume from this that any stigma