e
assertion of rights which the malignity of men has filched from them.
Later on, she presides over her various Committees, and she returns home
to find that her child has burnt himself by falling on to the
dining-room fire, and that her cook has given warning.

She will eventually fail to be elected a member of the School Board, and
having written a strong book on a delicate social question, will die of
the shock of seeing it adversely reviewed in _The Spectator_.

* * * * *

PLAYING DARK.

(_New Style._)

[Illustration]

THE great success which, in their own estimation, has attended the
endeavour to establish a series of Night Field Sports in the
neighbourhood of Melton Mowbray, so dashingly led off recently with a
regular across country Steeple Chase, "by lamplight," has, it is said,
induced the spirited organisers to extend their field of experiment; and
it is alleged that tennis, golf, hockey, and football are all to be
tried in turn, under the new conditions. That some excitement may be
reasonably looked for from the projected contests may be gathered from a
reference to the subjoined score, put on paper by the newly constituted
"Melton Mowbray Midnight Eleven," who, in a recent trial of strength
with a distinguished local Club, it will be seen, showed some capital,
if original play, in meeting their opponents in the national game,
conducted under what must have been necessarily somewhat novel and
unfamiliar conditions.

The boundaries of the field in which the wickets were pitched were
marked out with night-lights, the only other illumination being supplied
by a couple of moderator lamps, held respectively by the Umpire and
Square-leg. The costume, of course, comprised a night-shirt and a pair
of bed-room slippers, with which was also worn a pink
dressing-gown,--pink being the colour adopted by the Club. Owing to the
absence of any moon, and also to the fact that the night was a rather
boisterous one, on account of the persistency both of wind and rain, the
play suffered from some disadvantages. However, the Eleven went pluckily
to the wicket with the following result:--

Mr. GEORGE P-G-T, mistaking, in the obscurity, the Umpire for
his wicket, gets out of his ground, and is instantly
stumped out 0

Mr. SYDNEY P-G-T treads on his wicket 0

Mr. OTTO P-G-T takes the Wicket-kee