absolutely to the hints of the newspapers, to casual political
speeches, to the cartoons of the comic papers or a chance reading of
some Socialist pamphlet for any general ideas whatever about the
huge swirling world process in which we found ourselves. I always
look back with particular exasperation to the cessation of our
modern history at the year 1815. There it pulled up abruptly, as
though it had come upon something indelicate. . . .

But, after all, what would Topham or Flack have made of the huge
adjustments of the nineteenth century? Flack was the chief
cricketer on the staff; he belonged to that great cult which
pretends that the place of this or that county in the struggle for
the championship is a matter of supreme importance to boys. He
obliged us to affect a passionate interest in the progress of county
matches, to work up unnatural enthusiasms. What a fuss there would
be when some well-trained boy, panting as if from Marathon, appeared
with an evening paper! "I say, you chaps, Middlesex all out for a
hundred and five!"

Under Flack's pressure I became, I confess, a cricket humbug of the
first class. I applied myself industriously year by year to
mastering scores and averages; I pretended that Lords or the Oval
were the places nearest Paradise for me. (I never went to either.)
Through a slight mistake about the county boundary I adopted Surrey
for my loyalty, though as a matter of fact we were by some five
hundred yards or so in Kent. It did quite as well for my purposes.
I bowled rather straight and fast, and spent endless hours acquiring
the skill to bowl Flack out. He was a bat in the Corinthian style,
rich and voluminous, and succumbed very easily to a low shooter or
an unexpected Yorker, but usually he was caught early by long leg.