9.  Spin out your sentences.

10.  Mix up your metaphors, moods, tenses, singulars, plurals, and the sense generally.

11.  Refer often to “the good old days” you don’t remember, and bewail the decadence of sport of all kinds.

12.  Occasionally be haughty and contemptuous, and make a parade of rugged and incorruptible honesty.  In short, be as vain and offensive as you can.

13.  Set yourself up as an infallible judge of every branch of sport and athletics.

First Example.—­Event to be reported:  An American pugilist arrives at Euston, and is received by his English friends and sympathisers.

O’FLAHERTY IN ENGLAND.

ARRIVAL OF THE CHAMPION.  HIS RECEPTION.  WHAT HE THINKS OF ENGLAND.

It was somewhere towards “the witching hour of noon” that the broad and splendid artery of commerce, to wit, the Euston Road, became, for the nonce, a scene of unwonted, and ever-increasing excitement.  Old Plu[1] had promised, as per Admiral FITZROY’S patent hocus-pocusser, to give us a taste of his quality; and it is unnecessary, in this connection, to observe that the venerable disciple of Swithin the Saint was as good as his word.  But Britons never never shall be slaves.  England expected every man to do his duty.  Forward the Light Brigade, and so on to where glory and an express train were waiting, or would be waiting, before you had time to knock a tenpenny nail on the head twice.  The company on the platform comprised the elite of the sporting world.  “Bluff” TOMMY POPPIN, the ever courteous host of “The Chequers,” “BILL” TOOTWON, by his friends yclept the Masher, JAKE RUMBELO, the middle-weight World’s Champion, were all there, wreathed in silvery smiles, and all on the nod, on the nod, on the nod, as the poet hath it, though why “hath it” no man can tell, in words that will last while Old Sol, the shiner, drives his spanking tits along the azure road.  Punctual to the moment the train steamed into the station, and the giant form of O’FLAHERTY, the “man in a million,” leaped out of the railway carriage, amid the plaudits of all the blue blood of England’s sports.  In answer to inquiries the Champion laughingly said, “he guessed this was a mighty wet country for a dry man,” and proceeded to the refreshment-room, where he “asked a p’leece-man”—­oh no, not at all, but, “Deep as the rolling Zuyder Zee, he drank the foaming juice of Grapes.”  Thence a move was made to the palatial office of the Sporting Standard, where the Champion was introduced to the Staff.  Hands all round followed, and a glorious day wound up with a visit to the theatrical resorts of the latter-day Babylon, in company with some of the right sort, though these be getting both fewer and farther between than in the good old days.

[Footnote 1:  An agreeable variant for this is Ju.  P.]

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AUSTRALIA AT ST. PAUL’S.