as it were, a prerogative of our nation to be pig-headed and averse to changes of system, and cricketers are no exception to the rule. It would, in the first place, be useless to inaugurate the system we suggest unless the Counties, one and all, consented to abide loyally by an agreement to make some sacrifice for the public weal. Furthermore, most unfortunately, Lords is notorious for its habit of providing curious wickets and yet more curious performances in the month of May; and lastly, it would be hardly worth while to invoke the strength of England for the purpose of smothering well, shall we say, Derbyshire? Once again, then, we repeat, improve the ground at Lords, and cut down the number of first-class Counties. What is the good of calling a County first-class if it is nothing of the kind? And what is the good of a cricket-ground if you cannot play proper cricket upon it? There are occasions when a visit to Lords-and this not only in May-reminds us of a story told many years ago in our hearing by Anthony Trollope. Having bought what he considered rather an expensive umbrella on Monday, he took it back to the shop before the end of the week and invited the vendor to inspect its condition. "Look at this thing that I paid two guineas for at the beginning of the week." The shopman unfolded the umbrella and subjected it to a lengthy examination. "Do you know, sir," he said at last, "it looks-I hardly like to suggest such a thingbut yes, it really does look as if you had been holding it up in the rain." "Of course I have," admitted the astonished novelist. "Oh! well, sir, really! If you will treat a good umbrella like that, what can you expect?" Since the above was written the news has come to hand that, with the view to the selection of a representative English side,we presume for 1912,-two trial matches are to be played next season between picked Elevens of Probables and Possibles. This is good hearing so far as it goes. But we trust that, after a representative side has been finally chosen, the men will be given at least three opportunities of playing together by way of shaking them down into their proper places both in the field and the batting order. That is by no manner of means the strongest available Eleven, however good the individual players, which contains half a dozen men practically wedded to the habit of going in first, or, again, half a dozen candidates for positions at point or short-slip. A little organisation beforehand will go almost as far in the cricket-field as in a General Election. THE HOUSE OF HEALING. THE House of Healing stands upon a hill flecked by the sun, shaded by the pines, and surrounded by an odour of disinfectant. To the eye there is nothing to distinguish it from other houses; the same flowers deck its gardens, the same tennis-court stands before it, the same breezes whisper in the trees around it, but always there is that clean smell of disinfectant which assails the nose of the wayfarer while yet the House itself is out of sight. This holds good for the afternoon, but come in the morning and a different sight greets the eye, although the same aroma meets the nose. Upon the broad verandah of the House, and overflowing into the sun-swept tennis-court, is the crowd of those who come for healing,-a motley crowd, the members of which differ from each other in all things save one, and the single point that they have in common is the one that differentiates the House of Healing from all other institutions where the art of healing is practised. It is this, that its patients come to it to be cured of an illness that has never seized them. Once the disease with which the House of Healing deals has secured its grip upon its victim, the House is helpless, and it but remains for the patient to die as quickly as heaven will let him, fortified by the rites of such Church as may be his by choice or by birth-Christian, Buddhist, Mussulman, or Hindu. It only remains to bow the head to God or Prophet or Idol, and to pray that death may be sent with such merciful speed as may be deemed fitting. But the House has a weapon with which it fights the disease before the latter has declared itself. The House is, as it were, a St George, whose task it is to crush an everlasting dragon; and if the dragon cannot be eternally crushed, St George has nevertheless the power and the means to rescue from it those of its victims who appeal to him in time. The dragon is a deliberate dragon, and he always sends a warning to those whom he has chosen as his victims, and therein lies his own undoing. For if his selected victims make their appeal at once to St George, if they invoke his protection within three weeks of receiving the dragon's summons, the puissant saint will save them, and the dragon must go hungry. But if they delay in their appeal St George has to fight with one hand tied behind his back, and though he puts up a mighty fight on behalf of the oppressed, none can foretell the outcome of the battle; and while he is generally victorious, there have been occasions when the saint has bitten the dust. The purlieus of the House a dozen may leave to-day, and to-morrow as many more will come, or perhaps twice as many, for the House sets no limits. Nothing differs except the individuals; there is always the same stream of people of every sort and kind and colour and religion, who, impelled by fear of the disease which they have not got, but of the possibility or probability of which warning has reached them, come to invoke the help that is never refused. of Healing are a curious sight in the morning. The dragon is no respecter of persons, and his taste is cosmopolitan. There are men clad in all kinds of raiment, from a Norfolk jacket "built " in Savile Row to a loin-cloth fashioned by the wearer's wife; there are women in corsets and women with noserings, children in sailor suits and children in no suits at all. There is the British officer and the babu from Bengal, the British soldier and the bunnia, the planter and the policeman; the Sikh farmer and the Frenchman from a commercial house in Calcutta, the shaven-headed man from Bombay, and the Punjaubi with the oiled curls that cling around his neck; the twice-born Brahmin and the filthy Sadhu with ashsmeared face and yellow garment which leaves him nearly nude. Truly it is a wonderful collection of beings-high-born and low-born, from far and from near, Asian, Eurasian, and European, believers in God, believers in The Gods, and all believing in the power of the House of Healing. This last article of faith is the sole bond that is common to all the sixty or seventy persons who await, day after day, the summons to enter the House. But the crowd that is here to-day is not the crowd that will be here next month, or next week, or even to-morrow; daily others arrive to claim the help of the House. Half VOL. CLXXXIX.-NO. MCXLIII. The laws of precedence do not hold in the House of Healing; by a reversal of the usual rule pride of place is awarded to those who have come last, and for the rest all must take their proper turn. The Brahmin must follow the sweeper, the police inspector must give place to one who looks every inch a thief, the private precedes the colonel, and age for once must follow in the footsteps of youth. The man who comes for the first time this morning is, as it were, senior to the man who made his first appearance yesterday, and it is on these lines that the scale of precedence is regulated. Punctually at the appointed hour the messenger from the inner shrine appears, and the patients are summoned in turn. The inner shrine in the House of Healing is an apartment simple to austerity; its sole furniture consists of a chair and a table, but on the table is a lamp, and on the lamp, watched by a whitecoated acolyte, is the stuff G that works the miracle-a stitutes a gigantic rupture yellow fluid in a glass jar. of his ordinary daily routine. Surely the waters of Abana and Pharpar, the home-made remedies, the prayers of priest or wonder-worker or village quack, the attentions of one's own Edinburgh-qualified doctor, must be not less effective than that simple-looking yellow fluid? There is certainly nothing impressive about it, yet those who wash in the waters of Abana and Pharpar suffer all the pains of hell before they die; while they who use this tawny Jordan cat their daily chupatties or their sevencourse dinner with unimpaired appetite, until some other disease claims them. That is the difference,—Abana and Pharpar are just rivers, but the tawny fluid is itself a miracle, with almost boundless powers to work other miracles. A table-spoonful of this particular Jordan has more power, as regards the needs of those who come to the House of Healing, than all the other rivers of the universe. The wondrous properties of the tawny fluid are in all probability realised more fully and marvelled at more keenly by the educated European than by the half-tamed man of the jungles, to both of whom alike it brings its benefits. The one knows more or less exactly what it is, what it does, and how it does it; to the other it is but "the medicine," and it forms probably one of the smallest items in what con Take, for instance, the case of little Basant Kor, who all her life had dwelt in a mudbuilt village. Once or twice she had been taken to a big mela or festival, but except for memories of those delightful excursions the world for her had consisted of the limitless plain dotted with villages and cut into little unhedged fields. She had never seen a hill, much less a railway, she could not read or write, and had never seen a Sahib (not that she wanted to set eyes on this last work of God); life for her, at the age of ten years, already meant work and little else, and though she did not realise it, it was work set within the narrowest and compass. most circumscribed And then the dragon sent his message that he would shortly require her. Fortunately for Basant Kor, her father, although but an unlettered yeoman farmer, was a man of some enlightenment; he hied himself to those in power, and forthwith his daughter found herself in a world she had never dreamed of. She was taken many miles to the railway, the silver bangles on her ankles rattling as her tired feet made their way over the rough, hot country roads; she passed through the bazaar of a great town, dragging on her father's hand as her eager eyes tried to take in all that she saw around her of crowded streets, hurrying foot-passengers, uni up on a place as high as that. So Basant Kor and her father set forth, and ever they climbed up and up and up; before and on each side were more enormous hills stretching away as far as the eye could see, and cocked up against the most distant sky were more hills, still higher than the others, and quite white. But behind them lay the plains spreading away and away till they were lost in nothingness, and Basant Kor liked best to look backwards over her shoulder at their friendly and familiar flatness. formed soldiers, gay shops managed to build houses away where were sold things to eat and things to wear. And then they arrived at the station, where her father, reckless man, did not even try to bargain with the man who sold him what was called a "tickut," and where they waited in a noisy crowd till the train should arrive. It came with a roar that made Basant Kor shrink back in fear; ensued a rush for seats, and the bumping and the jostling so took away her breath that Basant Kor realised nothing more till she found herself, olinging as ever tight to her father's han 1, in a crowded third-class compartment. It was all wonderful, but it grew to be miraculous when the train started and they rushed through the countryside. It went just as fast by night as by day, till at length it got to a place where it could run no more, and Basant Kor alighted with her father. At the entrance to the station her father was bold enough to ask questions of one magnificent in belted livery; he was as kind as he was great, and he actually belonged to the place where they were going. "That's the road," said he, "and there is the place." He pointed skywards, as it seemed to Basant Kor, and her eyes following his finger saw a sprinkling of white houses aloft upon what appeared to her to be a stupendous mountain. She wondered how they At last they reached the House of Healing, and Basant Kor was now so full of astonishment that her faculties of surprise were for the time benumbed. She had never before seen a Sahib's bungalow, and as she sat on the tennis-court she admired very greatly the house that stood before her; it was snow-white and very high, and it looked as though it would neither collapse nor leak however heavy the rain that fell upon it. She was so busy examining the house that first day that she took no notice of the people who stood about its precincts, and she was quite sorry when a man called loudly upon her own name, and her father seizing her by the hand led her inside the wonderful structure. Basant Kor cast her eyes in wonder round the room while her father spoke to a big man in a long white coat; besides him there was another Sahib who watched a little glass |