Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/25

10 appreciated cricket. Carlyle, that sour, snarling, dyspeptic old man, took eighteen years in writing the life of Frederick. What his poor unselfish wife suffered during that time we all know, but I cannot help thinking that if in the year 1861, when he was deepest in the valley of the shadow of Frederick, he had gone to Lord's and seen the University match, and entered into the spirit and excitement of that interesting game, he would have returned home a better man in every way. Frederick would have been forgotten, perhaps even the dyspepsia and the noise of the neighbour's poultry, and best of all Mrs. Carlyle might have had some hours' peace.

Cricket and golf are the two games that this volume professes to try and discuss, and in doing so it is difficult not to enter into comparisons. It is an evil and a danger to England that the crowds who go to races are more in number than the crowds at any other game. Of course racing goes on in some form or other all the year round, but the demoralising thing about racing is that the vast majority only go to races because of the facilities given to betting. Few