Retire gracefully, and devote the rest of the afternoon to tea and mild flirtation with the five men who have been weeded out. Manage to put yourself in first, and play with confidence the initial ball.Īmidst the applause of the six fielders you will be clean bowled. Get up a match by saying to some local subaltern that it would be such fun to have a game, and you know a girl who could give points to Grace.Īgree with the youthful warrior that the fun would be increased by allowing the men to play with broom-sticks, and left-handed, and the girls, of course, with bats, and unrestricted.Īrrange your eleven in such a fashion that you come out as captain in the most picturesque costume.īe careful to "kill" your colleagues' appearance by an artful combination of discordant hues.Ĭarry out the above scheme with the assistance of a joint committee consisting of two, yourself and the local subaltern.Īrrange, at the last moment, that the men shall only send out six of their team to field. My spirits are low and my scores are not high,īut day after day, we've soaked turf and grey sky,Īnd I sha'n't have a chance till the wickets get dry, The people will swear that I don't play the game, “Now I feel just as sure as I am that my name The spectators impatiently shout, shriek, and stamp,īut a batsman, you see, cannot play with a Gamp, I've been waiting all day in these flannels―they're damp!― He said “In the mud one can't score, anyhow, With a low-muttered swear-word or two he replied, “Or a bad ‘brace of ducks’ that has lowered your pride? Is it lowness of average, batsman,” I cried Singing ‘Willow, wet-willow, wet-willow’? In the dull, damp pavilion a popular “Bat”Īnd I said “Oh! great slogger, pray what are you at,
Cricket might of itself have furnished forth a volume, Football, and Racing also but we have sought after variety rather than repletion, and to this end even the passing craze for Ping-pong has not been ignored, as it is not the least of the merits of the Punch Library of Humour that within these volumes is enshrined a comic chronicle of the passing time. Punch's wittiest sayings on a variety of games and pastimes. And is not he always ready to pillory the cad and the incompetent as further proof of the soundness of his heart?Ĭertain volumes of this library are devoted entirely to one or other of our popular pastimes, determined mainly on their varying richness in humour, but in this "Book of Sports" we have brought together a carefully chosen selection of Mr. Punch's attitude is one of satirical criticism on the contrary, his sympathies are with every form of sportsmanship, and it is chiefly because his jovial knights of the pencil delight to illustrate the mishaps incidental to all games that we are entitled to look upon him as a great patron of our sports. Punch's mirror, and join in the laughter at their own expense.īut it must not be assumed that Mr. Indeed, there is no kind of open-air pastime which has escaped the kindly attention of our national humorist, and the fact that he never tires of poking good-natured fun at these hobbies of his countrymen, making merry over their misadventures, indicates in some degree that, whatever our social critics may think of the national taste for outdoor games, these must have a humanising influence and make for manliness, when their devotees can thus with good grace look upon themselves in Mr. Punch would seem to be determined that there shall be no lack of humour in the process for an immense proportion of his merry pages have been occupied with the humour of sport.
If there be any truth in the assertion that Englishmen are neglecting the more serious affairs of life in their devotion to all forms of athletic sports, Mr. Punch is nothing if not typical of his fellow countrymen in his interest in sport.
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