xxxii MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 



he often used to tell how the people cheered him 

 through the streets after some great batting or 

 bowling display. In the memory of at least one 

 inhabitant of that town, his powers of hitting were, 

 fifteen years after he had laid down the bat for good 

 and all, still enshrined, as the following anecdote 

 will show. One of Mr. Foster-Melliar's sons was 

 batting on the Stowmarket ground, and an elderly 

 man was fielding at point, a ball was bowled rather 

 to the off and pitched rather short, the batsman 

 hit it with all his strength straight into point's 

 hands, point stopped it, dropped it and started 

 jumping about and shaking his hands. Fearing 

 lest he had broken one of his fingers, for the ball 

 was going very fast, the batsman went up to him 

 and hoped he was not hurt. No, he wasn't hurt, 

 but he was annoyed. It was fifteen years since he 

 had had a ball like that, and he had dropped that 

 one too, and he had never known but one person 

 who could hit a ball like that, and was the batsman's 

 name Foster-Melliar ? In these days of socialistic 

 enterprise, it is just as well to remember that the 

 hereditary principle will occasionally assert itself. 



In his youth Mr. Foster-Melliar was a keen fly 

 fisherman but, in latter years he did not do much, 

 if any, fishing. But the trout pool, hidden beneath 

 the old elm and among the roses, was one of his 

 pleasures. There, on summer evenings, he would 

 sit for hours feeding the fat trout with bread and 

 earwigs, the latter of which he would blow on to the 

 water by means of hollow tubes. He has described 

 in his book how he used to catch the earwigs in those 

 hollow tubes. 



His great passion, however, was shooting. He 



