this disappointing indifference was becoming
somewhat general, when an event occurred
which at once aroused all drooping energies,
and of which Paris resolved to take every
advantage. Sir Robert Clifton, the member for
Nottingham, offered to take over a team of
Nottingham men, at his own expense, to contest
the honours of the Parisian Club. This was an
occurrence which, if nothing else could do so,
would surely rouse the dormant interest of the
native mind, and the occasion was improved
to the utmost. The Nottingham men duly
turned up, and were fêted with an ostentation
and assiduity which could not have been
surpassed had they been the barbaric envoys of
some interesting region far away. To them
it was doubtless an excursion of a highly enjoyable
nature, amusing, novel, and cheap. And
although they are believed to have expressed
some surprise at being required to display their
not inconsiderable skill on an oblong patch of
hard-baked clay, surrounded by brushwood
thickets (very destructive to any exhibition
of free hitting), they conducted themselves in
a perfectly well-behaved, respectful English
manner, and doubtless returned home in high
good humour. The example thus set was
followed in several places; but in one and all
it was unsuccessful in inducing the French or
German youth to acquire the principles of the
game.

At Homburg, a loudly heralded match was
played between France and Germany. That is to
say, eleven Englishmen on the side of Germany,
found means to induce eleven more Englishmen
on the side of France to come from somewhere, or
anywhere, and have what they playfully termed
an International Match. But, although the
ground was occupied by the additional attraction
of a very large proportion of the Landgrave's
army—to wit, the band—and that potentate
himself was reported to be present, the game
found no adopters among all the heterogeneous
crowd gathered at that lively spa. Here, as
in Paris, the white-breeched, alpaca-coated
foreigners grouped themselves upon the ground
in the cool shade, and, luxuriously smoking
cigarettes, made the most whimsical
comments upon the spectacle before them. The
bowler appeared to be the popular bête
noir. It seemed to them monstrous that he
should be allowed to discharge his missile
at the unoffending batsman with impunity;
while it seemed equally absurd that the latter
did not run away. The running; was a still
greater source of wonder, when it was noted
that the object did not appear to flee from the
reach of the aggressive bowler, while the general,
and apparently resultless movement caused by
the cry of "over," was a mystery altogether
too deep for solution. When the ball was hit
away, a general murmur of satisfaction hailed
the event. The aggressor was now believed to
be nonplused; and much disapprobation was
expressed at the alacrity with which the non-
combatants in the field strove to neutralise the
feat, and the fury with which they hurled the
recovered ball at the unfortunate foe. But
after watching the game for a while, impatience
began to be manifested. Was this all? Was
this the game? Ten men to stand in the hot
sun all day, to watch the eleventh throw a hard
ball at his friend! Could that be a fit amusement
for grown Englishmen? For a whole day,
too! Well, if that were all, they thought but
very little of the boasted " Kricket-Match,"
which, without doubt, was not half so amusing
as their own game of ball, that could be
played under the trees in the cool evening.
However, for a time the more patient were
content to wait. The horses, or, as at Homburg it
was believed, the cards, would come at last, and
decide the final issue of the game, of which the
present proceedings were looked upon as a somewhat
frivolous preliminary. But when their
patience too was exhausted, and their mistake
corrected by some lingual Briton, they also went
off, with eloquent shrugs of derision at the
immense and elaborate trouble ceux drôles
Anglais were taking to waste their time, and make
themselves uncomfortable. And this indeed
brings us to our point. Can we hope to see our
neighbours over the water welcoming cricket
among them as an established national pastime?
Has experience given us any ground to hope
so? We opine not.

             GOING INTO BUSINESS.

  IN THREE PARTS. PART THE SECOND.

"THIS sort of thing won't do," said my
partner, Mr. Velardi,* to me one day, upon
receiving from our banker a polite note declining to
discount certain bills which we had sent in that
morning; "if it gets known in the City that our
bills are going a-begging, we shall very soon be
what you Englishmen call, up a tree."
* See Going into Business, page 378 of the
present volume.

Now, to the truth of this observation I could
hardly dissent, although I felt in my heart that
if I had been a banker, and the bills which were
offered me for discount were such as we had
latterly sent in to our bank, I should certainly
have "declined with thanks"—a phrase not
unknown, I believe, to the highly-respected
"Conductor" in charge of this present vehicle.
The truth was, that although we had never yet
left a bill unprovided for, the discount market
in the City, in Paris, and at Marseilles, was
becoming overstocked with our paper, which
certainly, when inquired into, could only bear
the character expressed by the well-known
slang commercial phrase of "pig upon bacon"
—the meaning of which is, that although drawn
by one person or firm, and accepted by another,
both drawer and drawee are in point of fact one
and the same person.

That such was the real character of our bills,
there can be no doubt. Either the firm of
Velardi, Watson, and Co., of London, drew on
Velardi and Co., of Smyrna; or else the latter