PEEFACE. 



HOME twelve years ago the late Mr. Baily, the publisher 

 '^ and originator of Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pas- 

 times — which is familiarly known now as " The Old Green 

 Cover " — asked me if I could contribute an article on cricket 

 in the days of the grand old Kent and Sussex elevens, as 

 one of the greatest sportsmen in England, who took an 

 interest in the magazine (and who died in 1884), was 

 anxious that a record of past cricket heroes should be pre- 

 served in its pages. Happening to have known Fuller Pilch 

 for the last twenty-five years of his life, I put in wi'iting all 

 that I could remember which had fallen from his Kps — during 

 many a long evening spent with him — under the name of 

 *' Fuller Pilch's Back Parlour," which appeared in a book of 

 mine, published in the summer of 1887 by Messrs. Swan 

 Sonnenschein& Co., under the title of "The Game of Cricket." 

 After the publication of that article in 1875, the old sports- 

 man who was the instigator of its production, and who was 

 a leading member of the Pugilistic Club, when the Ping was 

 supported by noblemen and gentlemen, asked if I could do 

 something in the same style about the Prize Ping, and, 

 curiously enough, I had the materials at hand, as during 



