It might be of service to add to it an account of a shot that was played on one occasion by a gentleman of no less scientific importance than Professor John Milne, who is known as a great seismologist, the man who is most in evidence when earthquakes are troubling. When the earth is still the Professor will leave his instruments in the Isle of Wight to their own care for a period, and he will wander away to the links for some golf. To what great feat has the golf of this professor led him? Why, he of all men became the first to drive a golf ball across the Victoria Falls on the Zambesi River - a hundred and sixty yards of roaring, foaming water. That was when the British Association went for its annual meeting to South Africa, and Professor Sims Woodhead, the celebrated Cambridge pathologist, was so much impressed by the achievement, that he too attempted to drive the Zambesi, and succeeded. But these are the things that may be done by Professors once, and not always. Two more balls were teed on the bank, and the Professors smote them with their clubs, but those balls were claimed by the Zambesi, and perchance they have been digested by the crocodiles. Now here you have something done by golf which was not golf, but which marked the advance of civilisation into the dark regions of the African continent. Our practical friends must allow this to the credit of the game, not only for the achievement in itself, but for the possibilities that it suggests, for is not a picture at once conjured up of the resourceful golfer driving a ball from the shore to a sinking ship, when all other means of establishing communication therewith had failed ? To the ball there will be tied a silken thread, and the thread will help a string across, and the string will drag a rope. Thus must we plead for golf!

While in these serious aspects of the battle of life the game is thus to come to our aid, it shall be of similar service also in the gentler paths. Once upon a time a maker of golf balls told me how he had suspected a rival of putting cores from old balls made by him A into all so-called new ones made by the rival B. Therefore A for a little while wound a tiny piece of tissue paper with the rubber of his cores, and on the paper there was written A's name and address. Some time later the tissues came home again through the medium of the balls that bore the name of B. There was this damning evidence of the pilfering of the cores. This story is not told as a hint to the trade, but surely it will convey one to ingenious persons who wish for a mode of secret communication with others which will be sure and safe. May it not be that some Romeo of to-day has already come by the device of lofting a ball or two on to the balcony of the fair Juliet, who in the seclusion of her chamber may be discovered in operation upon the cover with hair-pins and fire-irons, and presently in raptures upon the endearments expressed in the billet doux of her Romeo ?

Perhaps it will not avail us as golfers to tell our practical friends that the principles of the application of physical force which have been taught us in the game, as of the steady body, the fixed centre of movement, and of the hand being under the constant leadership of the eye, have benefited us not merely in the playing of other games, such as billiards and tennis, but in the attainment of greater proficiency in some of the most practical and useful of domestic occupations, so that the man of all others who may be depended upon to hang up the pictures in a new house as pictures should be hanged, is the golfer who has got his handicap down to 6. We will tell also to the critic of our game that it affords a scope for a kind of humour that is of occasional service to some wits and others. It helps them to raise a laugh over the tea-cups when they say that they will take the odd or two more in sugar. We do not like this jugglery with the terms, and it is only to be excused in such exceptional cases as when the doctor tells the new 8 golfer that his temperature is 99° and the patient inquires anxiously as to what the bogey is; or when, in discussing the frowning fortunes of some unfortunate acquaintance who has had a hard time in life, and is called upon for severe labour in his last days, it is said of this poor chap that he is playing the nineteenth hole and has made an indifferent drive. But, in seriousness, we like our golf to be kept sacred to itself, and unassociated with the generally duller pursuits of this workaday world.

XI

Is there not a considerable superstition of the links ? Even great players have old clubs that they carry about with them, not so much for their practical value as for the luck of the thing, as they fancy it; and a man once said at Prestwick that he always carried in his bag a queer-shaped iron, though he never used it in these days. This was because on one famous occasion many years before, when he was seven down with eight to play, and won the match by a brilliancy that did not belong to him, he could only account for it by the circumstance that this club had somehow found its way into his bag by accident. As a small acknowledgment to the gods, and a hint that such favours would be welcome in the future, he vowed that he would carry that club with him on the links for evermore, but that never would he play with it. And he keeps his vow most steadfastly, to the irritation of the burdened caddie.

Some sentiment clings to that cleek belonging to Mr. Edward Blackwell, which, it has been said, is "shaped like an old boot," but which, as we all know, has done work upon which any cleek might be congratulated. And is it not declared that before Mr. Travis set out to play in the championship at Sandwich, Ben Sayers lent to him for mascot his favourite spoon ?

Other golfers other fancies. Some have it that it is unlucky to go out to play without a supply of money, for then surely shall the half-crown be lost; and others fear that it might go hardly with them if they had not the company of their favourite pipe. On severely important occasions, Andrew Kirkaldy will hie himself beforehand to his tobacconists in St. Andrews and buy himself a new pipe for luck. Does not special fortune attach to special golfing clothes, and is not the light grey jacket that which brings most luck? Think of all the fine players who jacket themselves in this way with darker wear below, which is out of the usual order. Mr. Hilton has a jacket which goes always with him as the lamb went with Mary, and has thus played its part in championships innumerable. This is a jacket that has won its place in golfing history.