The traveller who is golfless has often no friends at the places that he visits. Some men and women have good capacity for making them at each hotel they stay in; others have not. In any case these acquaintanceships are exceedingly thin; the people do not really know each other; oftentimes they say not what they think, and they have no common interest. This kind of friendship with all its making of artificial conversation is poor stuff at times. The golfless wanderer in his travelling does one of two things; either he does hardly anything at all or he goes to see the sights; and one suspects that much of the peering through the gloom of dark cathedrals and the lounging in picture galleries is done merely for the killing of time, and for the formal recording of places that have been visited and sights that have been seen. Some travellers are happiest when they have done their business with the churches and the local castles and may leave by the next train - one day nearer home and still working well!

The case of the golfing traveller is very different. He has friends in every big town in every country, and all await his coming to make pleasure and happiness for him. He needs to scheme nothing in advance; they are prepared for him always. The automatic management of this real society of friends is most marvellously perfect. The wanderer, let us say, is advancing towards a new place - one that he knows nothing of. From the people about him now he may make inquiry as to which is the golf hotel at his destination, for often there is one to which golfers most resort, and, with his golf directory containing the names of all the golf clubs in the world, and with some particulars and the secretaries' addresses, away he goes complete and well prepared. His corny hands and his bag of clubs are his passport to every links. By the perfect system that we have, every man who is a golfer and a member of a golf club is ipso facto a travelling member of nearly every other golf club in the world, and is admitted to full playing and other privileges without delay on paying the trifling fees of temporary membership, sometimes with even less than that. And one golf club seems very much like another - just a branch of it; the atmosphere is the same, and the men are the same. The stranger reaches his new destination, in England or in India, in France or in America; he registers at his hotel; and as soon as may be he seeks direction from the manager or the hall porter as to the whereabouts of the golf club. There he goes. At once, then, he is admitted to the local community of players, and they make much of him. They arrange games for him, surround him with the most hospitable companions, discover that he and they have many mutual friendships in different parts or the world, and linger upon other common ground in their memories of the third hole at one and the seventeenth at some other place. How the talk goes on! This golfer arrived among the unknown at ten in the morning, and at four in the afternoon he is tied to as many good friends as man could need. They invite him here and there; they take him to their homes; they make much of him. Stranger indeed! A thin voice of a petulant cynic may be heard again. "Yes," says he, "but in travelling one does not wish to spend all one's time in playing games and lounging about golf clubs!" True; and the golfing traveller, though he likes to visit courses in other countries, and finds it well to have an object always and something good with which to fill the daylight hours and keep his health in a well-balanced state, uses the game and its people to greater advantage than even that. The golf community of a place is always the most active and the most useful. There are the local dignitaries, the people of influence and consequence, men who know everything about the town, and can do most things. They can open doors that are locked, and take you to the most secret places. And so the golfing traveller, the first desire for the best of games being satisfied, always finds that his new friends wish to help him. Perhaps the ambassador is here, and ambassadors are serviceable men. All wise people golf a little at the present time. They give their guest letters of introduction; they tell him how to go about. They do much more than that, for they get out their cars and take him. Places which seem unfriendly to others are always friendly to the golfer. There is no particular community, no society, no association, no brotherhood in the world that is so real in its effectiveness, so thoroughly practical as this of golf. A quarter of a million British golfers know that this is true, and they know the reason why.

From the consideration of this busy world of golf in general it is an easy move in thought to the one wee spot of it from which it has to a large extent developed, upon which the great scheme continually hangs, being the fourth of our seven wonders of golf - ancient St. Andrews. In a measure I developed this idea at the beginning of the consideration of golf as the world game; but now for a moment regard the capital of golf, not as the parliament place where the high statesmen do ponderously deliberate and with stern visage that befits their lofty authority most solemnly severally and jointly promulgate various laws and ordinances, but as the wonder city of the golfing world where one gathers emotions from a ghostly past, a city where golf is everything and nothing else is anything, where golf is life. This is the aspect of St. Andrews, and the only one, in which it is really great. We have much respect for our rulers. They are wise men, and we believe that they maintain the spirit of the game better than any other body of men could or would. They are well born and trained in golf, and the atmosphere of St. Andrews keeps them straight in the true golfing way. One who lived in an inland manufacturing town or spent his days in the office of a colliery would lose his golfing perspective early in middle age. But these excellents of Fifeshire play a little, read a little, talk much and deliberate, and the social and intellectual atmosphere keeps them strong in their golfing sense always. The government of St. Andrews is really one to respect and have faith in, but it is not the existing wonder of St. Andrews. When you visit the place, such of these rulers as live there do not impress you for anything save their good golf, their excellent and pleasant manners, their keen wit, their fine sense in matters of intellect, their tolerable aestheticism, their shrewd judgment in political affairs, their sound advice on financial questions, their fine epicurean taste, their kingly cellars, their magnificent hospitality, and their charming women. In nothing else that I can think of do they excel, and as minor deities, or as a college of cardinals with a captain for pope, endowed with powers transmitted from a golfers' heaven, they are failures. They are merely human, very good, and excellently conservative.