Page:The Hambledon Men (1907).djvu/34

xxviii As cricketers' trousers were made wider the handkerchief went; and now long-stop has gone too; and it looks almost as if point is to follow him.

The last picture of special note is that opposite p. 238—the odd old gentleman, bat in hand, on the lawn of his house. Who this is, and who painted it, I have no notion; but there is so pleasant an old-fashioned air about it, and the scene is so obviously Hampshire or Sussex (with the smooth grass down rising behind), that it seems to me to consort with peculiar appropriateness with this old-fashioned Hampshire book, dealing with a time when cricket had so little of fever about it that gentlemen could continue to play in matches when well past middle age. The conjecture of the M.C.C. catalogue is that the picture, which is on wood, was once the sign-board of a Sussex inn. So much the better. E.V.L.

April, 1907.