WHIMSICAL BARRIE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 134, 8 June 1934, Page 7

WHIMSICAL BARRIE.

Amusing Speech at Dinner to

Australians,

ARCHBISHOPS'S THREE WOES,

LONDON, June 3,

At the Surrey County Cricket Club's djnner to the Australians, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Cosmo Lang, passed the loving-cup to Mr. Harold Bushby and Sir James Barrie passed it to Woodfull.

Sir James Barrie, proposing the health of the Australians in a whimsical speech, said that a small boy with an autograph book had approached him outside the hall and asked for his autograph on a pink page.

An inspection of the book showed that its blue pages were marked in a. childish hand, reserved for Test cricketers, only," but lie had caught the Archbishop of Canterbury signing on a blue page.

"Although a Scot," he said, "I thrilled with an English tlirilZ when I read in the stop-press that McCabe had arrived in London and gone for a walk. So did I the first day I arrived in London, but nobody noticed it."

Referring to "brighter cricket," Sir James suggested following the example of chess players in Spain, where the games were so long that players leave the continuance of the matches to their second sons in their wills.

England' and cricket got round everybody, except, perhaps, Mr. Grimmett, though, perhaps, it was shabby of him to let the Australians know that.

"Cricket is an idea of the prods, who sent it to us as a gift when we were in their good graces. I have spent many delightful hours at Lord's and The Oval, sometimes in the pavilion among you great ones, sometimes among the crowd. Often at Lord's I sit at the little 'pub' as you enter the gates. The groundsman always says, very pleasantly, 'Glad to see you again, Charlie.'"

The Archbishop of Canterbury, describing himself as the world's worst cricketer, said lie liad never been able to manage mathematics, matrimony, or cricket. He laughingly added that for every 10 people in England who noticed the small paragraphs accorded to his doings, 00 knew all about the Australian cricketers.