Volume 93 — FIRST IN THE FIELD.
Reading edition
A Song of the Cricket Championship.
Em met. (Yorks.)
The Graces are hers, but the Parcæ have tost her Of late, so the Championship won't go to Gloucester; Despite brave Lord Harris, and efforts well-meant, That honour won't fall to the bold Men of Kent. 'Twould have charmed not a few of the "better for wus" sex, Had luck smiled (not she!) on their sweethearts of Sussex; And, though it is famed as the pluck and hard-work shire, The top of the tree is not reached yet by Yorkshire. Dame Fortune, that Sphinx of the riddle-cum-diddle sex, Crowns not with success the crack Batsmen of Middlesex. Spite of Shrewsbury, Gunn, and such cricketing pots, Her Song for this season is "No, not for Notts!" And, although "runner-up" (if like greyhounds one rank a shire) She's just missed first place, has stout Hornby-led Lancashire. Thanks—in chief—to young Lohmann, whom fate cannot flurry, The Championship once more comes South. Bravo, Surrey!
Pilling. (Lancs.)
Ominous.—Lord R. Churchill is to address a meeting of Unionists at Sunderland. Hardly strikes one as quite a suitable spot for that purpose, Sunderland being rather suggestive of the Separatist policy that Lord Randolph and his friends are so strongly opposed to. The Home Rulers would have chosen Cumberland as more appropriate.