It is indeed but a small return I can make to the writer of this pleasantly practical little treatise on Golf. For the fact is the author is my golfing godfather. On a certain genial autumn morning some six years since, he, with Mr Frank Wadsworth, a much-respected Times Gallery man, induced me to walk round the North Surrey Golf Course with them. I was, at that time, a ribald scoffer. The game was futility itself: its votaries were idiots of the first water. Needless to say I pressed these views upon my companions with much picturesque embellishment as the game proceeded. Suddenly, inspiration supervened where openly expressed exasperation at my gibes had previously held sway; and our now altogether infuriated author, turning sharply towards me after some exceptionally cutting remark of mine, said: "Look here, Mac! You seem to know a thundering lot about this game, and you evidently think it infernally easy. Now let's see you try a shot!"

With much ceremony he tee'd up the ball and defiantly handed me his driver.

Try a shot? Of course I would. Me! The centre of a hundred election free fights! The Director General of numerous desperate college affrays! Me? Of course. If it were only something where skill was really required!

So up to the ball I went, the club in hand, and delivered what would have been a most powerful swipe to the boundary if the club had been a bat and the gutty made of leather. It was - I make frank confession-the surprise of my life. By some weird pro-cess of necromancy, by some remarkable ex-hibition of the malice of inanimate objects, the ball remained untouched upon the tee! I looked up in blank amazement at my companions. They were softly but with one accord whispering an elaborate "A-hem!" behind the tips of their extended fingers. Well, every golfer knows what followed. I tried again and again and again. Shame, humiliation, and the reckless expenditure of many foot-pounds of physical energy left me hot, perspiring, and wildly infuriated. And to add fuel to the flame of my bitter discomfiture every attempt of mine to hit that unspeakably silly little ball was loftily and superciliously punctuated by a gentle "A-hem!" from behind two sets of finger-tips. In the end I kicked the stupid ball into the future, and sent the club whizzing after it.

But I was bitten. The thing was a provocation of the most acute character. And I was not going to be beaten by it. Secretly, and with much malicious purpose, I joined the aforesaid North Surrey Golf Club and put myself into the hands of the "pro." Within six weeks my little back garden of ten paces square was a six-hole putting-green. I was scouring the house for corks upon which to practise the gentle art of driving, and many choice drawing-room ornaments had gone to eternal smash in witness of my growing prowess with the mashie. And, bless the Giver of all good things, I have lived to see the day when I could beat both Butler and Wadsworth. My sole ambition in life at the present time is to play their best ball for a Haskell apiece and win on the eighteenth hole.

Now, observe in all this you have the secret of the fascination of the greatest of all human pastimes - the provocation of it. Here is a first-class county cricketer. For him to cut a ball to the boundary is as easy as kiss hands. Yet, when he stands on the tee and puts the very best that is in him into the task of striking the wee white ball tee'd up before him, the odds are that he will simply send up a splutter of sand and find the ball a couple of yards in front of him instead of, as it ought to be, a couple of hundred. Here is a skilful advocate. He can cause an Old Bailey jury to melt into tears. He takes the club in his hands with the air of a man who is insulted rather than otherwise at being asked to do so simple a thing as strike it fairly in the face. After four or five attempts his countenance begins to wear a far-off and chastened expression which no judge or jury in the land have ever looked upon. Here is a great divine. In his time he was a Wrangler. He is one of the Cumini Sec tores of theological dialectics. He bends his episcopal knees to a putt, and the ball is farther from the hole than when he took the matter in hand! If you can imagine features the antithesis of his own when he pronounces the Benediction, you will know how he looks then.

Now all these good people - like me -think the thing over. They know their own powers. Golf teaches them swiftly and sharply and unerringly their limitations. It applies the rough hand of hard reality to the peach-like cheek of personal vanity. And these good people do not like it. They are not going to be beaten by a simple thing like this. So they determine to master this silly and provoking game. And henceforward, they are in its grip enthralled.

Happily, the golf enthusiast, in giving himself over body and soul to the imperious behests of his most exacting mistress, is more than amply rewarded physically and intellectually. He can pursue his delightful hobby all the year round, and the more he pursues it the better he finds himself body and mind. It lures him on to walk three or four miles a day in the freshest of fresh air, and on the greenest of green swards. Were it not for golf he would be lounging from the club smoke-room to the club lift; from the lift to the hansom outside the main entrance; thence to the theatre stalls; and thence by way of another pair of wheels, as Pepys would say, to bed. As it is, Golf affords him the most complete preoccupation of mind associated with the most health-giving of exercise.

That the great game takes its victims wholly into abject subjection nobody doubts. Witness the gentle curate who gave out as his text: "For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose the last hole?" Only the other day my excellent friend, Mr Causton, called me from the bench to retire with him behind the Speaker's Chair. His manner was full of portent and impressiveness. "I want you a moment," whispered he, with the air of one who was about to place at your disposal the refusal of the premiership. "Come out into the lobby," said he, in a dreadful stage whisper. I did so, setting my nerve for some momentous communication that might not altogether be unconnected with the well-being of nations and the peace of the civilised world. It was this: "Can you play in the House of Commons team against Ranelagh next Saturday?" And often in the fog of fight I look across the bench and see a far-off smile lighting up the expressive features of the Leader of the Opposition. I am sometimes disposed to slip across and whisper in his ear: "Yes, that was a fine recovery, wasn't it?"

For myself, I while away the weary railway journey by selecting beautiful golf courses as the train rushes past the countryside, deplor-ing the while the number of really splendid courses which all over the country still await development. And my friends know my weakness so well that when they write to me to come down from London to speak at a meeting they invariably add the seductive postscript: "Our course is in wonderful condition just now." That settles it.

T. J. MACNAMARA.