Intellectual application will, to some extent, overcome physical
difficulties. By working at least five hours a day, and by reading the
_Cricket Field_ daily and nightly, I did learn to bowl a little, with
a kind of twist. This, while it lasted, in a bowlerless country, was
a delightful accomplishment. You got into much better sporting society
than you deserved, and, in remote parts of the pastoral districts
you were looked up to as one whose name had been in _Bell's Life_;
we still had _Bell's Life_ then. It was no very difficult matter to
bowl a rustic team for a score of runs or so, and all went merry as a
wedding bell. But, alas, when Drumthwacket played Tullochgorum, there
was a young Cambridge man staying with the latter chieftain. I began,
as I usually did, by "yorking" Tullochgorum's Piper and his chief
Butler, and his head Stalker, and then SMITH of King's came in. The
ground, as usual, had four sides. He hit me over the enclosure at
each of the four sides, for I changed my end after being knocked for
five fours in his first over. After that, my prestige was gone. The
rustics, instead of crawling about their wickets, took to walking
in and smacking me. This would not have mattered, if any of the
Drumthwacket team could have held a catch, and if the wicket-keeper
had not let SMITH off four times in one over. My character was lost,
and all was ended with me north of the Grampians, where the wickets
are peculiarly suitable to my style of delivery.

As to batting, there is little that is pleasant to confess. As soon as
I got a distant view of a ball, I was ever tempted to whack wildly in
its direction. There was no use in waiting for it, the more I looked
at it the less I liked it. So I whacked, and, if you always do this,
a ball will sometimes land on the driving part of the bat, and then it
usually happened that my companion, striving for a five or a six, ran
me out. If he did not, I did not stay long. The wicket-keeper was a