The country round about New York abounds in interesting golfing places, and if inclination were followed there should be descriptions given of Nassau, of Apawamis (not forgetting the rock to the right of the first green there which an English ball most usefully struck when the thirty-seventh hole was being played in the final of the American championship, Mr. Fred HerreshofF, finalist, being loser thereby), of Garden City, Baltusrol, and many other good golfing places in these parts. Garden City is a name familiar to golfers in Britain, because it is the place where Mr. Walter J. Travis came from when he won the championship at Sandwich. If it lacks some of the boldness of feature of some of the later American courses, yet this is a fine testing course, thoroughly - and so deeply! - bunkered, and with splendid putting-greens, and all the place round about is very pleasant. And now I am very anxious to see Piping Rock, as I soon expect to do.

There are good reasons for making a journey by the Pennsylvania railroad from New York to Washington. One must pay the visitor's homage to the seat of American government and experience the feeling of being at the heart of the States, with its magnificent buildings and its historical remembrances. It is an intensely interesting place. At the White House there is Mr. President Wilson who is a golfer, as ex-President Taft was, and remains one of the keenest in the land. Mr. Taft will write enthusiastically about the game, and make speeches about it when he thinks it proper. "My advice to the middle-aged and older men who have never played golf," he says, "is to take it up. It will be a rest and recreation from business cares, out of which they will get an immense amount of pleasure, and at the same time increase their physical vigour and capacity for work as well as improve their health." And he also says, "Preceding the election campaign in which I was successful, there were many of my sympathisers and supporters who deprecated its becoming known that I was addicted to golf, as an evidence of aristocratic tendencies and a desire to play only a rich man's game. You know, and I know, that there is nothing more democratic than golf, and there is nothing which furnishes a greater test of character and self-restraint, nothing which puts one more on an equality with one's fellows - or, I may say, puts one lower than one's fellows - than the game of golf. If there is any game that will instil in one's heart a more intense feeling of self-abasement and humiliation than the game of golf, I should like to know what it is." One who was in office there told me something of his enthusiasm for the game. I asked him how often Mr. Taft had played when he was there in the golfing season. The answer was that Mr. Taft used to play every day, positively every day, and some of those who played with him indicated to me what a very thorough and determined golfer he was. It might be said of the ex-President that he has spent more time in bunkers than most citizens, because he has generally insisted on playing out, no matter how many strokes have been needed. He has been playing now for sixteen years, and is quite one of the oldest American golfers in point of service to the game. Nothing can take away from him the distinction of having been the first President of the United States to play what they have determined shall be their national game.

I had a happy experience when one day I left New York, where it was most swelteringly hot, and went up into the Green Mountains of Vermont for golf at the Ekwanok Country Club. A friend, Mr. Henry W. Brown of Philadelphia, who had played with me at my favourite Brancaster in Norfolk once, had heard I was somewhere in America and sent a letter to me directed to a chance address, which, being a golfing kind of address, found me with little delay. "Come," said Brown, "to Manchester-in-the-Mountains in Vermont. You ought to see our quite famous Ekwanok course, and I can promise you some fine mountain air, good golf, and a hearty welcome. If you will tell me what train you will come by, I will meet you with the car at Manchester Station." A moment's hesitation dissolved in firm decision and action, which took the form of a taxicab to the New York Central Station, and the north-bound train which left at twenty minutes to one in the afternoon. Then along we went by the Hudson river, up which I had sailed from Albany a year before, past the Palisades, past Poughkeepsie and the Catskill Mountains, through Troy and Albany, and as the daylight waned we were mounting upwards through the hills of sweet Vermont. At a quarter to eight the train reached Manchester, Brown and his car were waiting there, and we sped along the main street to his home.

It seemed that the silver moonlight was shining not upon an earthen road but glistening on snow. Little villas like chalets and chateaux of Switzerland lined the way and the people living in them could be heard in their laughter and song, for the dinner time was just gone by and yellow light shone from the windows, making that happy contrast with the coldness of the moonshine, that speaks of home and comfort. We passed the great hotel where five hundred people are constantly gathered together in the summer time from all parts of the States, and indeed from places far beyond the States, for there are Britons in numbers here, and travellers from Africa and the deep southern lands, making such a cosmopolitan gathering of its size for drawing-rooms and bridge parties and the usual orderings of social gatherings as is not easily to be matched. And there is an amazing vivacity among all these people, for two reasons, one being that the American spirit at its best pervades, and the other that it is Ekwanok, the heartening, the vigour-making, the youth-restoring. In New York and Chicago at the end of the day one is a little apt to think of the wear and tear of life and the fading capacity of a good constitution; high up in the mountains of Vermont, in the shadow of the hills of Equinox, one revels in fresh youth again and has no more envy for the lad of twenty. And that again is a reason why Ekwanok is not like the other golfing places of America, and another following upon it is that this is, so far as I have discovered, the only truly golfing holiday resort in all the States, a place to which people go for the pleasure of the happy game and for hardly anything else, a place that lives and thrives on golf. From far and wide the Americans come to it and leave all their work behind, and are happy and leisurely as you rarely see them at other times. In Britain we have a very large number of resorts that are for holiday golf alone, and more are coming all the time, but this is a feature of golf that America in general has yet to know. If it comes to that, Man-chester-in-the-Mountains is not so very high (that is a rather curious association of English ideas - Manchester and mountains, dingy streets with the smoke-thickened atmosphere of the Lancashire city and the big bold hills of God), but here is the mountain scent, enlivening, heartening. The house of my host, Breezy Bank as it is called, is set at the foot of one big mountain and looks across the green valley, where the golf course lies, out toward another - a delightful abode. A log fire burned red on the big hearth, a kind hostess gave us welcome, and after a supper that embraced fresh green corn (it is the essence of the enjoyment of green corn that it should be taken quickly from the growing to the kitchen), we talked, over cigars and coffee, golf from one end of the game to the other, and right across it, and handled clubs, until bedtime came. Brown is keen, and he has sound views on the influence of the game on national character.