nexpected,
thrilling feel of it in arms and body, the tingling vision of the day
when he will find out how he did it, and be able to repeat at will!
That keeps him going--that, and a trophy he once achieved by winning
the beaten eight division of the sixth sixteen. It was a little pocket
match-safe, but it is more precious in his eyes than pearls, aye, than
much fine gold or his reputation as perhaps the deftest writer of
dialogue on the American stage. It represents definite achievement in
the game of Golf.

You may suppose, dear Reader, if by some miracle you are not a golfer,
that I have been pressing the essayist's privilege and indulging in an
attempt at whimsicality. Nothing, I assure you, could be farther from
the fact. I am, in this chapter, a realist. All I have here set down
is a record of actuality. Nay, I have erred on the other side. I have
said nothing whatever about my own reasons for giving up golf forever.
Nor have I told the story of the elderly gentlemen at a course near
Boston, whom I once observed in an exhibition of renunciation that
perhaps deserved recording.

This course was of nine holes (it is now the site of several apartment
houses), and the last hole called for a carry over a little pond, to a
green immediately in front of the club-house. The somewhat elderly and
irascible gentleman in question, playing in a foursome, had reached
this ninth tee on the shore of the pond, and even from the club
veranda it was evident that his temper was not of the best. Things had
not been going right for him. His three companions carried the pond.
Then he teed up, and drove--splash!--into the water. A remark was
wafted through the still air. He teed again--another splash. Then
followed an exhibition which I fear my wife would describe as
childish. First this elderly gentleman spoke, in a loud, vexed voice.
Then he hurled his driver into the pond. Then he snatched his bag of
clubs from the caddie's shoulder, seized a stone from the pond side,
stuffed it into the bag, grasped the strap as a hammer-thrower the
handle of his weight, swung the bag three times around his head, and
let it fly far out over the water. It hit with a great splash, and
sank from sight. His three companions, respecting his mood, discreetly
continued their game, while he came up to the club-house, sought a far
corner of the veranda, and with a face closely resembling a Greek mask
of Tragedy, sank down huddled into a chair.

On the ver