Caddies are persons employed to carry golfers' clubs. Some people call them 'caudies,' others try to do without them; but experience teaches that a bad one is better than none.

On the older greens, where carrying is established as a free trade, there is a very miscellaneous selection of caddies - boys, ragamuffins just out of prison, workmen out of a job, and professional carriers. All but the last ought to be avoided.

A good boy to carry is not a bad thing in its way. From him too much must not be expected. If the tees he makes are not over two inches in diameter, if each time a club is required he is not further than three minutes' walk from his master, if he knows the names of the clubs, he is a good boy. But on free greens, where there are professionals, the boys do not come up to this standard. They are, however, cheaper than professionals. The workman out of a job is not cheaper, besides being more inefficient than a boy.

From men who have adopted carrying as a trade, the golfer is entitled to expect the highest standard of efficiency. If he carries for you regularly, the professional ought to know what club you intend to take, and to give it without being asked. When you are in doubt about how to play your shot, he ought to confirm you in the opinion you have formed regarding- it. He must never show the just contempt he has for your game.

Carrying clubs is one of the most agreeable trades open to the lower orders. In it an amount of drunkenness is tolerated which in any other would land the men in the workhouse. A very low standard of efficiency and very little work will secure a man a decent livelihood. If he is civil, willing to carry for three or four hours a day, and not apt to drink to excess before his work is done, he will earn a fair wage, and yet be able to lie abed till nine in the morning like a lord. If he does not drink (this is a hard condition, as he has little else to do), he is positively well-off; if he makes balls, and can play a good game himself, he may become rich. A caddy who, in addition, employs his leisure (of which there will still remain a great deal) in acquiring the elements of an education, may rise to be a green-keeper or a club-master, and after his death be better known to fame than man)' a defunct statesman or orator.

As a rule, however, the professional caddy is a contented being, spending what he gets as soon as he gets it, a Conservative in politics, a heathen in religion. He is a Conservative because he likes and admires gentlemen, who, according to his idea, are the class which plays golf and overpays him. He is a heathen, churches being to his mind as sacred to gentlemen as clubs.

A caddy's occupation being connected with a sport, he hates anything which would tend to make it a steady, regular wage-earning business. Accordingly badges, tariffs, and benefit societies he abominates. Clubs or eating-houses got up for his advantage he will have nothing to do with, if conditioned with the payment of a periodical sum, however small. A coffee-house erected for him unconditionally is well enough. It can do no more harm than the gift of a suit of old clothes too ragged to wear. A caddy is always grateful for, and solicitous of, suits of old tweeds. If you offer him a frock-coat, he suspects you of quizzing. The sumptuary laws in his set make the wearing of frock-coats or knickerbockers impossible. Nor is a gift of shirts appreciated by caddies. Our shirts are too light in colour for their fashion of wearing one till it is only fit to send to the paper-maker.

On free greens the question of paying caddies is rather a troublesome one. There is usually an understood tariff. But as ragged children, miners out of work, discharged coachmen and butlers, drunkards who have spent their all, and ex-criminals are entitled to be paid on this scale for very inferior work, the professional carriers naturally expect more. What this more ought to be no man knows. It is useless to ask a friend what he pays, for he will not tell the truth. He will understate the amount. He dare not admit to having overpaid his caddy. Since John Stuart Mill and others made the law of supply and demand popular, the morality of stinginess, except where your name is to appear in a subscription list, has been fully admitted. Therefore to pay a caddy as much as will be accepted without grumbling, and to announce it, will lead you into an argument. Here is a specimen of the kind of thing I myself have gone through:-

' How much did you give your caddy?'

(Rather ashamed) 'Four shillings' (having given five).

'What nonsense! Three shilling's are more than enough.

' Perhaps' (rather mildly, but feeling right).

'Just spoiling the market. Three shillings for three hours' work! - more than any skilled workman can earn. Besides, it does no good - they just spend it.'

I submit; but alone in the evening I have it out with my hard-headed friend. I say:-

'Sir, when you accuse me of spoiling the market you are merely degrading free-trade principles to the position of handmaids of your selfish avarice. Free trade can live alongside of charity. If not, I go for charity. You seem to have heard of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, but not of his treatise on the Moral Sentiments. You have evidently read neither; or, if you will argue on the selfish principle, it is politic to overpay caddies. Cheapening golf is debasing golf. I wish it were compulsory to pay a sovereign a round. These school-boys and mechanics, and pot-hat golfers with a club and a cleek, are a nuisance. I wish gutta-percha balls had never been invented, and, as for eclipses, they are simple communism. They rob wealth of its advantages.

'"The caddies will only drink the more if overpaid," you say. Indeed ! and to what good purpose do you apply the money you grudge to the poor? Is there something nobler in your gout and dyspepsia than in my caddy's red nose? Or no! I do not despise your gout (I feel a twitch myself), but your incapacity for taking pleasure in giving it

(cheaply) to others is what I contemn. An Epicurean with the vices of a Stoic, and none of his virtues ! I shall grossly overpay my caddy in future.' On the newer greens, private ones, and those far from a town - in short, where it has been possible to reduce the carrying proletariat to subjection - the player will find a crowd of boys, with a sprinkling of meek men, near the club-house, from whom to choose a caddy. Under these circumstances a boy should be chosen. The men are no better than they, and, being grown up, not so scoldable. From boys, as I have said, the same standard of carrying cannot be expected as from professionals, but a well-chosen boy is satisfactory enough. He must not be too big. The big ones are usually louts who cannot stay the distance. He must not be too intelligent-looking-. The bright-eyed, eager boy is apt to be admiring Nature whilst you are waiting for a club, and his interest in the game being awakened by a sharp word, it becomes for the moment too intense. He arranges the clubs whilst you are putting, or wanders into inconvenient situations to see you hole-out. The intelligent boy is sometimes himself a golfer. For the first half-round, whilst studying your game, he is a perfect treasure. After that, with the arrogance of youth, he assumes that he knows more than you do, and clubs are offered before asked, advice given in regard to distances, etc. Another kind of boy is chatty, and his anecdotes, autobiographical and local, which at first amuse, become intolerable as the match closes in darker and darker each hole. An embryo village plumber or carpenter, neither clever nor stupid, will carry best. On his home green the golfer soon settles upon a professional or a boy to his mind, according as his is a free or a controlled green. On the latter, when he is merely on a visit, there is not much trouble either. Any person has the moral courage to pay off a child at the end of the day if he does not suit, and to try another. It is different when you have once employed a man. Steaming, say to St. Andrews, the player is filled with anxious thought regarding caddies. He makes up his mind what manner of man to employ; but scarcely does he set foot in the station before he is bewildered by a dozen clamouring volunteers, unless he has had the forethought to disguise himself as a commercial traveller or as a tourist. Even disguise will only delay the inevitable for a few moments; when the tell-tale club box comes out of the van he is discovered. It is of course possible to flee before it is laid on the platform, leaving secret instructions with a trusty porter. But if the player has ever visited St. Andrews before, disguise and flight are of no avail. Years may have elapsed since his last visit, nevertheless he will be greeted by name. Several will assert that they carried for him before. He must either be more than humanly firm, or else be diplomatic, asserting, for instance, that he has a sprained wrist and does not intend to play, or before he has got to his lodgings he will find him-self the thrall of perhaps the same being who poisoned his last visit. It might seem that the simplest course was to employ a boy so small that the weakest of men could dismiss him if unsatisfactory. But somehow there are none such at St. Andrews. There are carrying persons with the outward semblance of boys, but these chew, smoke, and drink. It seems as if education or something bridged the space between childhood and manhood. Should the player escape to his lodgings unpledged, his best plan is to get down to the club as unobtrusively as possible, and make a selection from the window with an opera-glass. A caddy once engaged, most men make the best of him. Should he disappear for a day or two, having gone on the spree, you are not necessarily free from him. You have probably furnished the means for the debauch by paying some days' wages in advance, and it seems hard to sacrifice the money entirely, more especially as the miscreant will return humble and apologetic.

Yet it is not so difficult as it seems, even for a man of average will, to dismiss a caddy who is not to his taste. The best plan is to pay him at the end of the day, and say nothing- about it, making some excuse for taking your set into the club-house instead of leaving them in his charge. Next day you take on a fresh caddy by simply handing the clubs to him, and it is astonishing how little demur the old one will make. Caddies are a race as proud as they are improvident, and, however sycophantic under ordinary circumstances, they will take no other revenue for this insulting sort of dismissal than to assert that they left because underpaid, and because it is too wearisome to carry for such a bad golfer.

To summarise my advice in regard to caddies on greens to which the golfer is a temporary visitor, I advise him. where there is a corps of badged and licensed caddies, to choose the smallest boy who seems capable of getting round, and to keep him, if he stands still during play and is generally within earshot when a club is required. It is necessary that he should not leave the ball in the hole, nor lose clubs on the way round. On free greens, persons having the outward semblance of boys are to be avoided, and a professional chosen if a good one be known to the player. If, however, he is a complete stranger to the green, his safest course is to select a decrepit old man. His age proves him not to be an inconveniently excessive drinker, whilst being steady and still a carrier of clubs further proves that he is a meek, mild, mindless creature, who will trudge round without interfering.