As I stood on the platform last Saturday evening devouring the latest war news under the dim oil lamp, a voice behind me said, in broad rural accent, “Bill, I say, W.G. is dead.”  At the word I turned hastily to another column and found the news that had stirred him.  And even in the midst of world-shaking events it stirred me too.  For a brief moment I forgot the war and was back in that cheerful world where we used to be happy, where we greeted the rising sun with light hearts and saw its setting without fear.  In that cheerful world I can hardly recall a time when a big man with a black beard was not my King.

I first saw him in the ’seventies.  I was a small boy then, and I did him the honour of playing truant—­“playing wag” we called it.  I felt that the occasion demanded it.  To have the god of my idolatry in my own little town and not to pay him my devotions—­why, the idea was almost like blasphemy.  A half-dozen, or even a dozen, from my easily infuriated master would be a small price to pay.  I should take the stripes as a homage to the hero.  He would never know, but I should be proud to suffer in his honour.  Unfortunately there was a canvas round the field where the hero played, and as the mark of the Mint was absent from my pockets I was on the wrong side of the canvas.  But I knew a spot where by lying flat on your stomach and keeping your head very low you could see under the canvas and get a view of the wicket.  It was not a comfortable position, but I saw the King.  I think I was a little disappointed that there was nothing supernatural about his appearance and that there were no portents in the heavens to announce his coming.  It didn’t seem quite right somehow.  In a general way I knew he was only a man, but I was quite prepared to see something tremendous happen, the sun to dance or the earth to heave, when he appeared.  I never felt the indifference of Nature to the affairs of men so acutely.

I saw him many times afterwards, and I suppose I owe more undiluted happiness to him than to any man that ever lived.  For he was the genial tyrant in a world that was all sunshine.  There are other games, no doubt, which will give you as much exercise and pleasure in playing them as cricket, but there is no game that fills the mind with such memories and seems enveloped in such a gracious and kindly atmosphere.  If you have once loved it and played it, you will find talk in it enough “for the wearing out of six fashions,” as Falstaff says.  I like a man who has cricket in his soul.  I find I am prejudiced in his favour, and am disposed to disbelieve any ill about him.  I think my affection for Jorkins began with the discovery that he, like myself, saw that astounding catch with which Ulyett dismissed Bonnor in the Australian match at Lord’s in 1883—­or was it 1884?  And when to this mutual and immortal memory we added the discovery that we were both at the Oval at the memorable match when Crossland rattled Surrey out like ninepins and the crowd mobbed him, and Key and Roller miraculously pulled the game out of the fire, our friendship was sealed.