ven witness
a cab accident without wanting to be the horse or the man who is
sitting on the horse's head. They walk round the prostrate animal
and give advice; and if they are allowed to help in any way, they are
quite happy. If such people watch a game of any sort, they always wish
they were taking part in it. I once went to a cricket-ground to eat
luncheon, and I went with an enthusiast of this kind. We noticed that
his attention seemed distracted, that he only replied in monosyllables
when we spoke to him, and that there was something on his mind. "I
would give," he exclaimed, at last--and it was the only remark that he
had volunteered for half-an-hour--"I would give a year of my life for
twenty minutes with that bowling." He was evidently deeply affected.
"_Why_ don't they take him off?" he moaned. There were tears in his
eyes. I do not quite understand that feeling. I can watch absolutely
anything, but I never want to do more. I was not made to undertake
principal parts--I can witness amateur theatricals without wishing to
be the prompter. I review novels, but I do not write them.

The other day I watched a game of tennis. I had placed the
lounge-chair in a safe and shady position. I had got a paper-knife and
the third volume with me. The cat had followed me out of the library,
and sat down in a convenient position so that I could scratch it
gently behind the ear if I wanted to. I was smoking a pipe that had
just reached the right stage of maturity, and, in some indefinable
way, made life seem richer and better. Everything was well arranged
for the watching of tennis.

There were two players--BILL, a young son of the house, whom I knew
intimately, and TOMMY, a boy of the same age, who had just come up
from the Rectory. I had not seen TOMMY before. He was a nice-looking
little boy, and wore a black necktie in the collar of his silk
tennis-shirt. BILL is not good-looking; he is red and freckled, and
grins vastly. He was wearing rather unclean flannels, and did not look
quite so refined and delicate as TOMMY. I compared the two boys, and
thought that I preferred BILL. In the first game of the set, BILL, who
plays wonderfully well, won easily; after that, my attention got fixed
on that third volume. I turned down a corner of the page whenever I
came across anything that was at all conventional. I was reading the
book for review, and my notice of it was to appear in _The Scalpel_
on the following Saturday. It was, on