"A somewhat artistically-built kiosk stands a hundred yards or so away. If the mass of cricketers want another, by all means let them have it, and drive the unsightly tent-jobbers out of the Park.
"If this sort of thing is allowed by officials in charge, then, sir, I venture to think the sketch heading this letter, 'What it will come to,' will be an actual illustration of fact.
Unfortunately my more recent attack on "Lord's," and my letters and articles on various other public matters, have not met with the same success. Even domestic annoyances have been ventilated by me, and I fondly hope have had some effect.
_A propos_ of the foregoing, I may here make full confession of how
The following incident may prove interesting to the public in general and naturalists in particular:
While taking an early walk in Regent's Park on Saturday, June 12th, 1894, I captured, not the proverbial worm, but a specimen of a rare species of snake, which was indulging in a constitutional on one of the broad paths. "What a gigantic worm!" was my first thought, but on my using my stick to arrest its further progress it rose in the orthodox snake-like fashion at my cane, throwing itself into an attitude of defence and hissing with anger. The park-keeper, park-labourers who were mowing the grass close by, and divers members of the British public, from the piscatorial street arab with his minnow-ensnaring thread and bent pin to the portly merchant wending Citywards, were soon on the spot, and really that diminutive reptile caused more consternation than would have been the case had it been instead an Anarchist bomb. I sent over to the cricket pavilion for a tin canister wherein to cage _pro tem._ the wily stranger, and excitement waxed high as preparations were made to accomplish the fearsome feat. This was safely managed by the aid of a newspaper, which naturally enough, considering the events of the week, proved to be of a sporting character, and the viper, probably anxious as to the result of the Oaks, glided to the column containing that news, whence it was expeditiously shaken into the canister, which I perforated at the top, and walked off with my tinned snake to the Zoological Gardens hard by, where its roaming propensities were kept in check within the walls of the reptile house.