I have missed him from my bus route of late; but I hope that only means that he has carried his sunshine on to another road. It cannot be too widely diffused in a rather drab world. And I make no apologies for writing a panegyric on an unknown bus conductor. If Wordsworth could gather lessons of wisdom from the poor leech-gatherer "on the lonely moor," I see no reason why lesser people should not take lessons in conduct from one who shows how a very modest calling may be dignified by good-temper and kindly feeling.
It is a matter of general agreement that the war has had a chilling effect upon those little every-day civilities of behaviour that sweeten the general air. We must get those civilities back if we are to make life kindly and tolerable for each other. We cannot get them back by invoking the law. The policeman is a necessary symbol and the law is a necessary institution for a society that is still somewhat lower than the angels. But the law can only protect us against material attack. Nor will the lift-man's way of meeting moral affront by physical violence help us to restore the civilities. I suggest to him that he would have had a more subtle and effective revenge if he had treated the gentleman who would not say "Please" with elaborate politeness. He would have had the victory, not only over the boor, but over himself, and that is the victory that counts. The polite man may lose the material advantage, but he always has the spiritual victory. I commend to the lift-man a story of Chesterfield. In his time the London streets were without the pavements of to-day, and the man who "took the wall" had the driest footing. "I never give the wall to a scoundrel," said a man who met Chesterfield one day in the street. "I always do," said Chesterfield, stepping with a bow into the road. I hope the lift-man will agree that his revenge was much more sweet than if he had flung the fellow into the mud.
BILLITCH AT LORD'S
Of course, there were others there besides Bill. There were twenty thousand people there. There was the whole Oval crowd there. I was there—I always try to put in a day at Lord's when the Oval crowd charges across the river with its jolly plebeian war-cries and swarms into the enclosure at St. John's Wood like a crowd of happy children. It makes me feel young again to be caught in that tide of fresh enthusiasm. I know that is how I used to feel in the good old days of the 'eighties when I used to set out with my lunch to the Oval to see Walter Read and Lohmann and K. J. Key and M. P. Bowden and Abel and Lockwood and Tom Richardson and all the glorious company who filled the stage then. What heroes they were! What scenes we saw! What bowling, what batting, what fielding! I daresay the heroes of to-day are as heroic as those of whom I speak; but not for me.
Cricket, to the ageing mind, is never what it used to be; it is always looking back to some golden age when it flourished, like chivalry, in a pure and unsullied world. My father used to talk to me with fervour about the heroic deeds of Caffyn and Julius Cæsar, and I talk to young people about the incomparable skill of Grace and Steel and Lohmann, and they no doubt will be eloquent to their children about Hobbs and Gregory. And so on. Francis Thompson explained the secret of the golden age when he sang:
Oh, my Hornby and my Barlow long ago.
That is it. It is that "long ago" that makes our giants so gigantesque. Cricketers, as the old gentleman said of the peaches, are not so fine as they were in our young days. How could they be? Why have we lived all these years if we are not allowed to have seen greater things than these youngsters who are shouldering us out of the way have ever seen? Of course, they don't believe in "our Hornbys and our Barlows long ago" any more than I believed when a boy that Caffyn and Julius Cæsar could hold a candle to W. G. or Walter Read, and they will find that their children will think lightly of Hobbs in comparison with some contemporary god of their idolatry.
But whatever change has taken place in cricket—or in me—I swear there is no change in the jolly Oval crowd. It is, as it has always been, the liveliest, most intense, most good-humoured mob that ever shouted itself hoarse at cricket. It is as different from the Lord's crowd as a country fair is from the Church Congress. At Lord's we take our cricket as solemnly as if we were at a prayer-meeting. We sit and smoke and knit our brows with portentous gravity. Sometimes we forget ourselves and say: "Well run, sir!" or "Missed. By Jove!" Then we turn round to see if anybody has heard us. We have even been known to clap; but these extravagances are rare. Generally we end by falling asleep.
But we were done out of our sleep on Monday. There's no possibility of sleep when the Oval crowd is about and when they have brought Billitch with them. At Lord's we never have a popular hero or a comic figure. Cricket is far too serious a thing to turn to fun. If Little Tich came and played at Lord's, we should not smile. We should take him very seriously, and call him Mr. William Tich if he came out of the front-door of the pavilion, and Tich (W.) if he came out of the side-door. On Monday we had several bad shocks to our sense of the solemnities of cricket. For example, we saw Fender, the Surrey captain, lead the "gentlemen" members of his team to the professionals' quarters and bring his team out to the field in a body, just for all the world as though they were all one flesh and blood. It was a painful sight, and many of us closed our eyes rather than look upon it. We felt that Bolshevism had invaded our sanctuary at last.