These little histories and traditions of American golf do become attractive as one probes more deeply into them. It was in Massachusetts that the most remarkable thing that has ever taken place in the history of the game on the other side of the Atlantic, or anywhere perhaps - meaning, of course, the Ouimet triumph - happened lately, and I have been much attracted to the story of the beginning of golf in that part of the American world, and not less so when I see that the start was made such a very little while before the birth of the boy who won that great championship at Brookline. American golf and Ouimet have grown up together. One finds that in the summer of 1892 a young lady from Pau went on a visit to Mr. Arthur Hunnewell, at Wellesley, Mass., and took with her a set of golf clubs and balls. They had been playing the game for a long time past at Pau, but it was only just being started in other parts of France. After Yonkers it had been reproduced at Shinnecock and one or two other places, but so far Massachusetts had not known it. The girl showed Mr. Hunnewell how the clubs were used, and some relatives of his, owning adjacent estates and being fond of outdoor pastimes, watched and were won quickly to the game. On the first of June Mr. Hunnewell wrote down in his diary, "F. B. arrived to-day from Europe "; and on the fifteenth of September, " We are getting quite excited about golf." A fortnight later he wrote that "J. B. is here and plays golf all day." I calculate it as a coincidence worth remark that twenty-one years afterwards, to the month and to the week, Mr. Ouimet won the great championship.

Many of Mr. Hunnewell's friends were invited to come and attempt the game at his place, which they did accordingly and fell in love with it. He had fashioned a course of seven holes of moderate length over undulating lawns and some park-land. The actual holes consisted of five-inch flower-pots sunk in the turf, and the hazards were avenues, clumps of trees, beds of rhododendrons, an aviary, a greenhouse, and an occasional drawing-room window, as it is facetiously remarked by Mr. Lawrence Curtis, who became the first secretary of the golf committee of the Country Club, and to whose account of these happenings I am indebted for my notes upon them. Mr. Curtis, seeing the fascination that the game exercised upon all who became acquainted with it, wrote a letter to the executive council of the Country Club informing them of it, suggesting that it was a pastime that might very well be brought within the scope of the club, and that the cost of an experimental course need not exceed some fifty dollars. The suggestion was backed by several members and the council agreed, the course being laid out in the spring of the following year. The home hole was placed on a lawn in front of the clubhouse which was soon discovered to be a very dangerous place for it, so that it had to be removed. Almost immediately the game became a strong attraction at the Country Club, new members came along in droves because of it, and it has flourished ever since. The example of this powerful club was followed at the Essex County Club at Manchester, then just being begun. Mr. Herbert Leeds, now so closely and honourably associated with Myopia, won the Country Club's championship in 1893 with a score for eighteen holes of 109, Mr. Curtis being next with 110; and that summer a Country Club side won a team tournament that was played at Tuxedo against the St. Andrews and Tuxedo Clubs. And afterwards all went very well indeed.

And while I write in this way of the grand pioneering work that was done in those days when champions of the present time were being born and trained, I am reminded of a conversation I once had with Mr. Edward Blackwell, in which he told me of his going out to California in 1886 and staying there for six years. His people had bought some land in those western parts, and he and his two brothers went out there to convert it from barley to a vineyard. Mr. Blackwell is a very great golfer to-day, but considering the gutty ball and circumstances in general, he was, relatively to his contemporaries, as great then. Only about a week before he sailed for California a match was arranged between him and Jack Simpson, who had gained the Open Championship the previous year, and Mr. Blackwell won that match at the last of the thirty-six holes that were played. Out in California there was plenty of hard work to do on the land and good sport with the gun, but, of course, there was no golf. Mr. Blackwell's thoughts frequently turned towards it, and he missed it very much. He considered the possibilities and found that they were practically nonexistent, for the country round about was too hopelessly rough for laying out any sort of holes. So he never saw a golf club and never hit a ball during those six years, but for all that he won the King William IV. medal at the autumn meeting of the Royal and Ancient Club immediately on his return. Then he went back to California and did not see club or ball for another five years. Some of us could almost wish he had made some sort of course out there in California and become the first golfer of that far west, for he would have been so good to have been a pioneer, and golf has flourished there exceedingly since then. California sends men to championships. It would have given a special piquancy to that fateful amateur championship final at Sandwich in 1904 when Mr. Blackwell was his country's last hope against America's Mr. Walter Travis, and as it happened he was not quite equal to the occasion, for the American captured four holes at the start with his amazing putting, and he won by as many at the end.

That was a great day for American golf, a kind of consummation it was, and I shall never forget the queer sensation that filled the atmosphere on the St. George's course, nor the dumb feeling, not exactly of dismay but of incomprehension, there was at the end. As to the first of these sensations I believe that nearly everybody felt - without knowing why exactly, for comparatively few had noticed his play until he got to the fourth or fifth rounds and was appreciated as dangerous - that the American player was nearly sure to win, that nothing could stop him from winning. It was a conviction.