t before the match, to be read to every
form, that the boys were desired not to indulge in any "ironical
cheering" at Lord's; this was his euphemism for what we called
"chaff," and I fear that on this occasion the warning was disregarded
even more completely than usual.

As a child, I generally paid a visit to London with my brothers and
sisters during the Christmas holidays to see a pantomime, and I
remember an occasion when returning from Covent Garden Theatre after a
matinee we all--nine of us--walked over Waterloo Bridge and paid nine
halfpennies toll--a circumstance that had never happened before, and
never happened again.

In the days before the railway was made between Alton and Farnham the
old bailiff on the Will Hall Farm at Alton, who, though quite an
elderly man, had never visited London, expressed a wish to visit it
for once in his life. His master gave him a holiday and paid his
expenses, and the old man drove the ten miles to Farnham Station.
Arrived in London he started to walk over Waterloo Bridge, but the
further he got the more astonished he became at the traffic, and began
to wonder what "fair" all the people could be going to. Feeling very
much out of his element he reached the Strand, and looking up and down
he saw still greater crowds of passengers and the unending procession
of 'buses, cabs, and vans. He became so confused and alarmed that he
turned round, went straight back to Waterloo Station, and left by the
first available train. He came home disgusted with London, and in an
account of the traffic and the people, ended by saying, "I never saw
such a place in my life; I couldn't even get a bit of anything to eat
until I got back to Farnham." This old man was called "the Great
Western": I suppose his bulk and commanding figure were reminiscent of
the power and energy of one of the locomotives on that line. He wore a
very wide-brimmed straw hat, and a vast expanse of waistcoat with
sleeves, without a coat over it, and he had a very determined and
masterful habit of speech. Caldecott's sketch of Ready-Money Jack in
_Bracebridge Hall_ always recalls him to my mind. He must have been
born before the opening of the nineteenth century, for he could
remember the stirring events of its early years. Any remark about
unusual weather made in his hearing was at once put out of court by
his recollections of "eiteen-eiteen" (1818), which seems to have been
a very remarkable year for maxima and minima of met