IN A STONE-BUNKER.

velous agility in placing themselves beyond the reach of their employer's club.

Positions for putting are so various that one feels something more than one's accustomed diffidence about dogmatizing on the subject; but I believe any professional would say that the putt ought to be made "off the right leg"; that is, that the weight of the body should rest upon that leg, the left being slightly in advance, with the toe pointing toward the hole. The right elbow should be kept close to the side, and the putter firmly gripped with both hands. Personally, I own to having adopted a style of putting which is considered heterodox; for I am in the habit of laying the forefinger of my right hand down the shaft of the putter. I think that this gives steadiness to my stroke and accuracy to my aim; but I am told that it cannot do either. However, as I remain unconvinced, I benefit, no doubt, by my credulity after a fashion akin to that claimed by the numerous persons who assert that they have been cured of divers diseases by the use of patent medicines that, according to the doctors, could not possibly have cured them.

Nervousness is answerable for many melancholy failures on the putting-green. The match, it may be, is drawing to a close; you are, we will say, "all even" so far, and only one more hole remains to be played after this. Should you lose this one, your antagonist will be "dormy," that is to say, he will be one hole up with one to play; so that, although you may yet halve the match, you will not be able to win it. It is, therefore, essential that you should hole out from a distance of three feet, and there is no earthly reason why you should miss. Yet, alas! you do miss. You played too hastily, or you waited too long, or you loosened your grip of your putter-there are fifty things that you may have done; but the cause of your having done

one or all of them is not far to seek: it is that your nerve has forsaken you at the critical moment. There is no use in thinking about it; but if you must needs think about it, comfort yourself with the reflection that scarcely anybody is exempt from this humiliating malady, and that the man who can be relied upon to hole out at three feet is an awkward customer to tackle, even though his driving be feeble and his approach-play indifferent.

One more distressing and not uncommon experience remains to be noticed in connection with the putting-green. Your opponent's ball may be lying directly between yours and the hole, in such a manner as to bar your passage; and as, by the rules of the game, the ball farthest from the hole must always be played first, your situation is not a comfortable one. If by good luck the obstructing ball should lie within six inches of your own, you will be entitled to remove it; but if not, all you can do is to hole out either by circumventing the obstacle or by playing over it. To circumvent it is only possible when the slope of the ground happens to favor you, and the alternative course, which is called "stimie-lofting," partakes of the nature of a forlorn hope. Nevertheless, this stroke is performed with great accuracy by professionals, and I have often seen it successfully accomplished (though I have much more often seen it missed) by amateurs. It can only be described as a lofting-stroke in miniature, and the best advice that can be given with respect to it is that, like every other stroke in the game, it must be played firmly. No matter how short the distance to which you may wish to send

your ball, you will never attain your object by means of a feeble tap. To hole out in the manner described is highly satisfactory, while failure can scarcely be called disgraceful. There is a general and rather strong feeling that stimies are unfair, and the question of abolishing them, by compelling the obstructionist to lift his ball while the stroke is being played, has more than once been mooted. It is, however, unlikely that this will ever be done; for the difficulty, as we have seen, is not insurmountable, and no game is improved by the elimination of surmountable difficulties. At the same time, if, after losing a hole through a stimie, you feel as if it would do you good to call such a mishap "very hard lines," or even to substitute emphatic adjectives for the word "very," your adversary, having won the hole, will probably forgive you. But this is really the only occasion on which you ought so to express yourself, though you will hardly play a round without being tempted again and again to break out into violent and unseemly language. I do not know why of all games in the world golf should be the most trying to the temper; but of its preeminence in that respect one is soon persuaded, not only by observation of others, which is merely amusing, but by personal experience, which is humbling to the pride. For one thing, it is extremely exasperating to find that what looks so easy is in reality so difficult, and, for another thing, each stroke is made with such deliberation as to render a resultant "foozle" doubly ridiculous; still, one must admit that clumsiness and ignorance merit defeat. What causes a man's gorge to rise against the injustice of Fate is to make a splendid drive, and to discover his ball firmly embedded in a sand-bunker, or buried beneath a stone wall. It is at such moments that he is conscious of a tendency of blood to the head, that he slashes and whacks furiously at the insensible gutta-percha without taking due aim at it, and that by his lack of self-control he converts a misfortune into a disaster. "Keep your temper," like "Keep your eye on the ball," and "Don't press," is one of the elementary precepts which are sure to be instilled into the would-be golfer; but how to put the advice into practice nobody can tell you, because nobody knows. You must do it, or else your play will suffer, that is all. Man being an imitative creature, example is, in this as in all cases, more powerful than precept; but examples of the right kind are not to be met with every day, and at the present moment I can think of only two players whose serenity may be counted upon to remain unshaken by any ordeal. I am acquainted, to be sure, with a large number whose wrath does not find expression in vehement expletives, or in ludicrous onslaughts upon inanimate obVOL. XLIV.-80.

jects; but in spite of the creditable appearance of calm which these gentlemen maintain, they are inwardly raging, and the consequences of inward rage are scarcely, if at all, less calamitous than those of an outward and visible demonstration.

Some months ago I used to play pretty frequently against an opponent whose struggles with himself excited my constant admiration. In the letter of introduction which he brought to me he was described as "a very good fellow, although a parson," and I can testify to the truth of the description, while I must, of course, protest that I am wholly unable to see the significance of the qualification. Not being precisely a first-rate player, he was often in difficulties, and when so situated he would deliver stroke after stroke, without result, in unbroken silence, firmly compressing his lips and betraying his emotion only by an ever-increasing pallor. One day, as we were walking homeward together, he said to me, with a sigh:

"After all, I don't know whether I should n't do better to swear and have done with it. The words are all there, you see, though I don't let them out; and bottling them up as I do only makes me feel like a humbug."

He might have pleaded, in addition, that the process of internal fermentation to which he referred is injurious to health; and indeed, if the words be there, they may perhaps as well come out. Only I wish he had not said it; because now, whenever a hasty expression escapes me (and this does sometimes-though only sometimes, I do assure you-happen), I think to myself, with a certain degree of complacency, "Well, you may be an ass, and, judging by the countenances of the bystanders, nothing but politeness restrains them from calling you so; but at least you are not a humbug." Oh, no; there is no humbug about my ejaculations when they do force themselves into articulate form, nor any ambiguity-nothing of the sort! He who runs may hear them, and he who hears them-that is to say, the small boy who carries my clubs-very often begins to run. I dare say he is right; for there is no knowing what a fool who has lost command of his temper may do next.

But although, like Horace, deteriora sequor (occasionally, only occasionally, mind), video meliora proboque. It is not only ignoble but supremely silly to get into a passion with bad luck. One may almost lay it down as an axiom that you will not get out of a bunker while you continue in a passion, and there are even some who maintain that you will never get into a bunker through bad luck alone. These deny the existence of such a thing as bad luck, and trace every imaginable misfortune to bad play. If you did n't know that the bunker was

clean and hard with your iron, it will sail away from its predicament like a swallow on the wing. But to hit the ball clean is exactly what you must not dream of attempting; nor, if you are wise, will you use the iron in a bunker until you have become a player of the first class. The only weapon for you is the niblick, a powerful little club with a stiff shaft and a short, rounded iron head; and as for hitting the ball clean, you would only bury it, were you to do so. What you must do is to deliver a sharp, downward blow, not upon the ball itself, but upon the sand a couple of inches or more behind it, and in this instance you may use all the strength that you possess. Of course it requires some faith to believe that such a stroke will move the ball at all, but, as a matter of fact, it does; and any other kind of stroke will almost certainly get you into still worse trouble. Unfortunately, it is not at all easy to strike two inches behind an object at which you ought not to be looking, but at which you can hardly restrain yourself from looking, and the difficulty is greatly increased by the rule which forbids you to touch the ground with your club when in a hazard. But for this cruel rule, you might make a nice little mark on the surface of the sand to guide your eye; and indeed you are not at all unlikely to do this accidentally-thereby, on some greens, losing the hole, while on others you will be let off with a penalty of a stroke. If you manage to extricate the ball at your first attempt, you may well be thankful: as for dismissing it any distance on its way, you are not trying or expecting to do that. It is far more probable that you will ineffectually belabor the earth for several minutes, that you will fill your mouth and eyes with sand, and that you will emerge at length, heated and infuriated, to find that you have played "six more."

CLUB HOUSE

Martyr's Monument

Colton NY

All bunkers, however, are not sand-bunkers, and on many links there is no sand at all. Those on which I am accustomed to disport myself are situated in the west country, on downs high above the sea-level, and the only luxuries that we can boast of in the way of hazards are walls, cart-ruts, whins, and stone-bunkers. Not that a stone-bunker is a thing to be despised, or that a ball which has perversely dropped into it can be made to leave it with ease. The niblick, if properly handled, will accomplish wonders; but not even the niblick will avail when the wretched little ball has wedged itself firmly between two fragments of rock. In such a case there is nothing for it but to lift and lose a couple of strokes-which is usually tantamount to losing the hole. I have a very kindly and sympathetic friend who, when he is in these parts, is sometimes good enough to play a match with me, although he is my superior

in your line, or if you did n't know that your ball would roll quite so far, or that the wind would set it round in that direction, then you ought to have known, they say. To such unfeeling persons we will only reply, as Job replied to their prototypes, " No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you." We will not waste our noble ire upon them, but will turn our whole attention to the ball, which we will suppose to be badly bunkered, and therefore in need of it. It lies in one of those sandy hollows, surrounded by miniature cliffs, which are to be met with on all golf-links of the orthodox type, and your first impression will doubtless be that if you can only hit it

by a long way. He is always very sorry when I come to grief.

"In the stone-bunker again!" says he, with an air of mournful consternation. "Dear, dear! But not badly in, I trust ?"

Now, he must know perfectly well that whenever I am in anything (were it only an investment) I am sure to be badly in; but this does not deter him from cheering me up with suggestions of bright possibilities as we draw near to the fatal spot, nor from standing over me and smiling pleasantly while, after having reached it, I essay obvious impossibilities. Yet I have never picked up one of those stones and hurled it at his head; I feel convinced that I should never be able to forgive myself were I so shamefully to forget myself. All the same, the momentary enjoyment would be intense.

Whins are not, as a rule, quite such stubborn enemies to deal with as stones. You may, it is true, find your ball in the very middle of a clump of gorse-bushes four or five feet high, and then your plight will be a piteous one; but generally speaking, it will be found to be more playable than it looks. The iron, the mashy, and the niblick are powerful weapons, and the ball, when rightly struck by the first of the three, will often travel much farther than the player has dared to anticipate. When it is not rightly struck-well, very terrible things may occur then. Yet golf would be hardly worth playing if there were no hazards, and it is possible that the careful man, who never goes straight for a difficulty in the hope of clearing it, but prefers to play short or to avoid risks by steering a zigzag course, may find his game as lacking in excitement as hunting is to those sportsmen who ride hard only along a road.

For my own part, I have no such complaint to make. Only once, when I did the eighteen holes in 86,-I am well aware that modesty ought to restrain me from referring to that historic event; but I can't help it, I never can help referring to it when I get a chance,-only that once, I say, can I remember to have played a round without falling into trouble of one kind or another. The game, therefore, provides me with quite as much excitement as is good for me at my time of life, and will, I trust, continue to fulfil that useful function as long as I am able to stand up and to swing a club. This, indeed, is the immense merit of golf-that age cannot wither, nor custom stale its infinite variety. You may play a very fair game at threescore years and ten; for no running is required of you, and although stiffened muscles may interfere with the freedom of your stroke, the ball and the club are very good-natured. They will do a great deal for you, provided only that you have learned-as surely you will have done by that time-how little they stand in need

of assistance from thews and sinews. And you will not weary of their companionship. I cannot pretend to explain how it is that you can play golf day after day and year after year without growing tired of it; I know no other game of which as much could be said; but, Heaven be praised! so it is. I do not suggest that you should play all day long. Hard-worked men, who get only a few weeks' holiday in the course of the year, do this, and enjoy it, and are entitled to their enjoyment; but the ordinary individual had better be satisfied with one round, either in the morning or in the afternoon. This, including his walk or drive to the links and back, will probably occupy him for about three hours, which is neither too long nor too short a time to devote to exercise and oblivion of the manifold worries of existence.

Another merit which may be claimed for golf is its cheapness. You can buy all the clubs that you are likely to want for about $12, your annual subscription will probably not exceed $15, balls cost a shilling each, and the remuneration of caddies is in most cases a modest one. In Scotland, however, the caddie is usually a very different being from the ragged juveniles who carry clubs on English greens for sixpence, ninepence, or a shilling. Unlike them, he is a fullgrown man; he has the game at his fingers' ends; he is acquainted with every inch of the ground; he knows a great deal better than you do which club you ought to take for any given stroke; he favors you with his advice when you ask for it,- sometimes even when you do not,— and in return for these valuable services he will certainly expect half-a-crown. I am not sure that he is not a little dear at the price; because his utterances are apt to be characterized by such painful frankness, and one's game is not likely to be improved at first by the consciousness that, in the eyes of the beholder, it is a deplorable caricature of what a game ought to be. Still, if you can accustom yourself to his little ways, you will find him very helpful, and you may learn more from playing a match with him than from the careful instruction of a fullblown professional.

Even in England the boys are becoming wonderfully adroit, some of them. Last summer I played two rounds at Bembridge, in the Isle of Wight, with a tiny scrap of a creature whose head hardly reached my elbow, and who beat me without any trouble at all. And, lest anybody should imagine that this does not necessarily imply a high degree of proficiency, I may mention that his scores were 87 and 89. The Bembridge course is a somewhat "trappy" one, the putting-greens were at that time rather difficult to play, owing to a spell of dry weather, and a good player would have had no reason to be ashamed of such a performance.

But that counting of strokes is a bad business, and some of us would not be as fond of golf as we are, if the winner of a match were he who had accomplished the whole round in the lowest score. Happily for us, it is not so. If you hole out in four, while I, through circumstances which I have been unable to control, have taken ten or twelve over it, you have, after all, only won the hole, and at the next hole the tables may be turned. Though I only secure that next hole by one, yet we shall then be all even, and thus the bitterness of memory will be assuaged. It is in what is called medal play, under which system the generality of prizes are competed for, that the score of the whole round must be kept; and it is obvious that under no other system could there be an equal certainty of gaging each player's capacity. That the capacity of every member of a club should be ascertained as nearly as possible is essential, since almost all golf-competitions are handicaps, and the handicapper (unless he wishes to render himself still more unpopular than the fact of his holding that office is already pretty sure to have made him) must be chiefly guided in his estimate of what a man can do by the record of what that man has done. The difficulty of his task is not lessened by the unfortunate propensity of some players to tear up their cards, instead of handing them in, on the conclusion of the round. It is mortifying, no doubt, to have to deliver up a duly attested document, setting forth the fact that you have taken 130 strokes over a round which, if you had been playing in your usual form, you would have accomplished well under 100; but it is rather unpatriotic, perhaps, also rather beneath a man of your well-known magnanimity, to blink that fact; and if you will not tell the truth about it, what is a poor handicapper to do with you? What he assuredly will not do, if he be a sensible man, is to increase your allowance.

There is doubtless satisfaction to be derived from the winning of medals, silver cups, and other trophies; there is satisfaction of a kind in merely trying to win them; but it is seldom upon such contests that the golfer muses, with a retrospective smile of contentment, when he is debarred for a time by circumstances from indulging in his favorite recreation, and when he is fain to solace himself with memories of past days spent upon the links. The hardfought match which he just managed to win by the last stroke of the last hole; the foursome in which he and his partner worked so well together that they inflicted defeat upon a powerful couple who started by superciliously of fering them odds; and the sunshine, the fresh breeze,―all links are breezy,-the springy turf, the pungent, aromatic odor of the wild thyme, the yellow whin-blossoms, the sense of space

and freedom-these are what come back to a man at times, when he is compelled to breathe the exhausted air of some great city, and cause him to wonder why any human being who is able to live in the country should deliberately choose to take up his abode in a town.

Fortunately for the welfare and health of mankind, golf-links have now sprung up, and are springing up, in the neighborhood of most large towns,-I should be afraid to say how many are situated within easy reach of London,-and soon every citizen who wishes to keep his eyes clear, his figure presentable, and his digestion in good order will have only himself to blame if he is driven to resort to that most dreary of all expedients, a daily constitutional.

Perhaps one word ought to be said, in conclusion, about the dangers of the game. These are not serious, nor are accidents common; still accidents do sometimes occur, and they are likely to occur with much more frequency, now that the number of players has been so greatly increased, and that so large a proportion of them are apt to play with the carelessness of inexperience. A golf-ball, it is as well to remember, is a very hard missile which travels through the air at a high rate of speed, and by hitting a man in the right place with it you may kill him as easily as possible. I myself was once knocked over like a rabbit at St. Andrew's by a ball which must, I am sure, have traversed nearly a hundred yards of space before it came into violent contact with my head. In that instance my unintentional assailant, though he was extremely civil and apologetic, was not technically to blame, inasmuch as he had observed the rule of allowing me to play my second shot before he struck off. It was no fault of his that I had made a wretched drive, while it was at once his good fortune and mine that Heaven has granted me a thick skull. But that rule is not invariably observed, nor are players who chance to cross one another on the green always as scrupulous as considerations of prudence ought to make them. An impatient player is apt to think that when he has shouted" Fore!"—which is the recognized danger-signal—he has done all that can be required of him, and may go gaily ahead; but it is often difficult to tell from which direction the warning shout comes, and it is quite possible that the shouter may be himself invisible. The red coat, which is the time-honored uniform of all golf clubs, has its raison d'être in the desirability of rendering human figures as conspicuous as may be. Among the many golden rules which are usually impressed upon the beginner, three have been selected for constant reiteration: "Keep your eye on the ball," "Don't press," and "Swing slowly back." To these is sometimes added