298 SPORTING STORIES 



age was Mr Charles Absolom, a master butcher of North 

 London (not to be confounded with my old friend and 

 comrade, C. A. Absolom, the famous Kentish amateur 

 and Cambridge " Blue "). Mr Absolom was an active 

 and vigorous player up to the age of 75. He played 

 and won a single-wicket match against an opponent 

 half his age when he was within a few months of his 

 eightieth year, Mr Absolom died at the age of 90 in 

 January 1908. 



Cricketers now do not take the same care of themselves 

 as the old race used to do. Mr Budd, for example, took 

 constant and regular exercise, and kept himself perpetually 

 in good condition. Never did he let a day pass without at 

 least a good six-mile walk at a swinging pace. He kept 

 his weight scrupulously to 12 st., the weight at which ex- 

 perience taught him that his athletic powers were at their 

 best. He was very temperate in his diet, and utterly 

 eschewed smoking. Now, when everyone smokes, Budd's 

 abstention from the soothing weed may be laughed at as 

 an old-fashioned fad ; but some of the best sportsmen 

 England has ever seen — Hugo Meynell, Jack Musters, 

 Admiral Rous, George Payne, and the Rev. Jack Russell — 

 never smoked. I am inclined to think that smoking, except 

 in great moderation, is detrimental to prolonged athletic 

 exertion, and that the man who would keep his eye and 

 nerve at the highest pitch should smoke as little as possible. 

 I have known, and still know, great cricketers who are 

 great smokers. When they begin to fall off in their play, 

 and become unaccountably out of form, the last cause to 

 which they would attribute their decadence would be 

 smoking. Yet I have a shrewd suspicion that tobacco 

 has far more to do with the falling-off than they would 

 admit. 



Our greatest cricketer, Dr W. G. Grace, keeps himself in 

 condition by constant exercise all the year round. But 

 then he has the constitution of an elephant, and he never 

 smokes ! It was thought a marvellous feat of endurance 

 that Mr Budd should have played in one season in five 

 consecutive weeks ! But that is " small potatoes " compared 

 with the cricketers of to-day, who play from May to the 



