while some unscrubbed boy who goes around under eighty imparts a little
of his miraculous knowledge.

Two hours later, for every ten that have gone out so blithely, two
return crushed and despondent, denouncing and renouncing the game, once
and for all, absolutely and finally, until the afternoon, when they
return like thieves in the night and venture out in a desperate hope;
two more come stamping back in even more offensive enthusiasm; and the
remainder straggle home moody and disillusioned, reviving their sunken
spirits by impossible tales of past accomplishments.

There is something about these twilight gatherings that suggests the
degeneracy of a rugged race; nor is the contamination of merely local
significance. There are those who lie consciously, with a certain frank,
commendable, whole-hearted plunge into iniquity. Such men return to
their worldly callings with intellectual vigor unimpaired and a natural
reaction toward the decalogue. Others of more casuistical temperament,
unable all at once to throw over the traditions of a New England
conscience to the exigencies of the game, do not burst at once into
falsehood, but by a confusing process weaken their memories and corrupt
their imaginations. They never lie of the events of the day. Rather they
return to some jumbled happening of the week before and delude
themselves with only a lingering qualm, until from habit they can create
what is really a form of paranoia, the delusion of greatness, or the
exaggerated ego. Such men, inoculated with self-deception, return to the
outer world, to deceive others, lower the standards of business
morality, contaminate politics, and threaten the vigor of the republic.
R.N. Booverman, the Treasurer, and Theobald Pickings, the unenvied
Secretary of an unenvied hoard, arrived at the first tee at precisely
ten o'clock on a certain favorable morning in early August to begin the
thirty-six holes which six times a week, six months of the year, they
played together as sympathetic and well-matched adversaries. Their
intimacy had arisen primarily from the fact that Pickings was the only
man willing to listen to Booverman's restless dissertations on the
malignant fates which seemed to pursue him even to the neglect of their
international duties, while Booverman, in fair exchange, suffered
Pickings to enlarge ad libitum on his theory of the rolling versus the
flat putting-greens.

Pickings was one of those correctly fashioned and punctilious golfers
whose stance was modeled on classic lines, whose drive, though it
averaged only twenty-five yards over the hundred, was always a
well-oiled and graceful exhibition of the Royal St. Andrew's swing, the
left sole thrown up, the eyeballs bulging with the last muscular
tension, the club carried back until the whole body was contorted into
the first position of the traditional hoop-snake preparing to descend a
hill. He used the interlocking grip, carried a bag with a spoon driver,
an aluminium cleek, three abnormal putters, and wore one chamois glove
with air-holes on the back. He never accomplished the course in less
than eighty five and never exceeded ninety four, but, having aimed to
set a correct example rather than to strive vulgarly for professional
records, was always in a state of offensive optimism due to a complete
sartorial satisfaction.

Booverman, on the contrary, had been hailed in his first years as a
coming champion. With three holes eliminated, he could turn in a card
distinguished for its fours and threes; but unfortunately these sad
lapses inevitably occurred. As Booverman himself admitted, his
appearance on the golf-links was the signal for the capricious imps of
chance who stir up politicians to indiscreet truths and keep the Balkan
pot of discord bubbling, to forsake immediately these prime duties, and
enjoy a little relaxation at his expense.

Now, for the first three years Booverman responded in a manner to
delight imp and devil. When standing thirty-four for the first six
holes, he sliced into the jungle, and, after twenty minutes of frantic
beating of the bush, was forced to acknowledge a lost ball and no score,
he promptly sat down, tore large clutches of grass from the sod, and
expressed himself to the admiring delight of the caddies, who favorably
compared his flow of impulsive expletives to the choice moments of their
own home life. At other times he would take an offending club firmly in
his big hands and break it into four pieces, which he would drive into
the ground, hurling the head itself, with a last diabolical gesture,
into the Housatonic River, which, as may be repeated, wriggles its way
through the course as though convulsed with merriment.

There were certain trees into which he inevitably drove, certain waggish
bends of the river where, no matter how he might face, he was sure to
arrive. There was a space of exactly ten inches under the clubhouse
where his balls alone could disappear. He never ran down a long put, but
always hung on the rim of the cup. It was his adversary who executed
phenomenal shots, approaches of eighty yards that dribbled home, sliced
drives that hit a fence and bounded back on the course. Nothing of this
agreeable sort had ever happened or could ever happen to him. Finally
the conviction of a certain predestined damnation settled upon him. He
no longer struggled; his once rollicking spirits settled into a moody
despair. Nothing encouraged him or could trick him into a display of
hope. If he achieved a four and two twos on the first holes, he would
say vindictively:

"What's the use? I'll lose my ball on the fifth."

And when this happened, he no longer swore, but said gloomily with even
a sense of satisfaction: "You can't get me excited. Didn't I know it
would happen?"

Once in a while he had broken out, "If ever my luck changes, if it
comes all at once--"

But he never ended the sentence, ashamed, as it were, to have indulged
in such a childish fancy. Yet, as Providence moves in a mysterious way
its wonders to perform, it was just this invincible pessimism that alone
could have permitted Booverman to accomplish the incredible experience
that befell him.




II


Topics of engrossing mental interests are bad form on the golf-links,
since they leave a disturbing memory in the mind to divert it from that
absolute intellectual concentration which the game demands. Therefore
Pickings and Booverman, as they started toward the crowded first tee,
remarked _de rigueur_:

"Good weather."

"A bit of a breeze."

"Not strong enough to affect the drives."

"The greens have baked out."

"Fast as I've seen them."

"Well, it won't help me."

"How do you know?" said Pickings, politely, for the hundredth time.
"Perhaps this is the day you'll get your score."

Booverman ignored this set remark, laying his ball on the rack, where
two predecessors were waiting, and settled beside Pickings at the foot
of the elm which later, he knew, would rob him of a four on the home
green.

Wessels and Pollock, literary representatives, were preparing to drive.
They were converts of the summer, each sacrificing their season's output
in a frantic effort to surpass the other. Pickings, the purist, did not
approve of them in the least. They brought to the royal and ancient game
a spirit of Bohemian irreverence and banter that offended his serious
enthusiasm.

When Wessels made a convulsive stab at his ball and luckily achieved
good distance, Pollock remarked behind his hand, "A good shot, damn it!"

Wessels stationed himself in a hopefully deprecatory attitude and
watched Pollock build a monument of sand, balance his ball, and
whistling nervously through his teeth, lunge successfully down.
Whereupon, in defiance of etiquette, he swore with equal fervor, and
they started off.

Pickings glanced at Booverman in a superior and critical way, but at
this moment a thin, dyspeptic man with undisciplined whiskers broke in
serenely without waiting for the answers to the questions he propounded:

"Ideal weather, eh? Came over from Norfolk this morning; ran over at
fifty miles an hour. Some going, eh? They tell me you've quite a course
here; record around seventy-one, isn't it? Good deal of water to keep
out of? You gentlemen some of the cracks? Course pretty fast with all
this dry weather? What do you think of the one-piece driver? My friend,
Judge Weatherup. My name's Yancy--Cyrus P."

A ponderous person who looked as though he had been pumped up for the
journey gravely saluted, while his feverish companion rolled on:

"Your course's rather short, isn't it? Imagine it's rather easy for a
straight driver. What's your record? Seventy-one amateur? Rather high,
isn't it? Do you get many cracks around here? Caddies seem scarce. Did
either of you gentlemen ever reflect how surprising it is that better
scores aren't made at this game? Now, take seventy-one; that's only one
under fours, and I venture to say at least six of your holes are
possible twos, and all the rest, sometime or other, have been made in
three. Yet you never hear of phenomenal scores, do you, like a run of
luck at roulette or poker? You get my idea?"

"I believe it is your turn, sir," said Pickings, both crushing and
parliamentary. "There are several waiting."

Judge Weatherup drove a perfect ball into the long grass, where
successful searches averaged ten minutes, while his voluble companion,
with an immense expenditure of force, foozled into the swale to the
left, which was both damp and retentive.

"Shall we play through?" said Pickings, with formal preciseness. He
teed his ball, took exactly eight full practice swings, and drove one
hundred and fifty yards as usual directly in the middle of the course.

"Well, it's straight; that's all can be said for it," he said, as he
would say at the next seventeen tees.

Booverman rarely employed that slogan. That straight and narrow path was
not in his religious practice. He drove a long ball, and he drove a
great many that did not return in his bag. He glanced resentfully to the
right, where Judge Weatherup was straddling the fence, and to the left,
where Yancy was annoying the bullfrogs.

"Darn them!" he said to himself. "Of course now I'll follow suit."

But whether or not the malignant force of suggestion was neutralized by
the attraction in opposite directions, his drive went straight and far,
a beautiful two hundred and forty yards.

"Tine shot, Mr. Booverman," said Frank, the professional, nodding his
head, "free and easy, plenty of follow-through."

"You're on your drive to-day," said Pickings, cheerfully.

"Sure! When I get a good drive off the first tee," said Booverman
discouraged, "I mess up all the rest. You'll see."

"Oh, come now," said Pickings, as a matter of form. He played his shot,
which came methodically to the edge of the green.

Booverman took his mashy for the short running-up stroke to the pin,
which seemed so near.

"I suppose I've tried this shot a thousand times," he said savagely.
"Any one else would get a three once in five times--any one but Jonah's
favorite brother."

He swung carelessly, and watched with a tolerant interest the white ball
roll on to the green straight for the flag. All at once Wessels and
Pollock, who were ahead, sprang into the air and began agitating their
hats.

"By George! it's in!" said Pickings. "You've run it down. First hole in
two! Well, what do you think of that?"

Booverman, unconvinced, approached the hole with suspicion, gingerly
removing the pin. At the bottom, sure enough, lay his ball for a
phenomenal two.

"That's the first bit of luck that has ever happened to me," he said
furiously; "absolutely the first time in my whole career."

"I say, old man," said Pickings, in remonstrance, "you're not angry
about it, are you?"

"Well, I don't know whether I am or not," said Booverman, obstinately.
In fact, he felt rather defrauded. The integrity of his record was
attacked. "See here, I play thirty-six holes a day, two hundred and
sixteen a week, a thousand a month, six thousand a year; ten years,
sixty thousand holes; and this is the first time a bit of luck has ever
happened to me--once in sixty thousand times."

Pickings drew out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

"It may come all at once," he said faintly.

This mild hope only infuriated Booverman. He had already teed his ball
for the second hole, which was poised on a rolling hill one hundred and
thirty-five yards away. It is considered rather easy as golf-holes go.
The only dangers are a matted wilderness of long grass in front of the
tee, the certainty of landing out of bounds on the slightest slice, or
of rolling down hill into a soggy substance on a pull. Also there is a
tree to be hit and a sand-pit to be sampled.

"Now watch my little friend the apple-tree," said Booverman. "I'm going
to play for it, because, if I slice, I lose my ball, and that knocks my
whole game higher than a kite." He added between his teeth: "All I ask
is to get around to the eighth hole before I lose my ball. I know I'll
lose it there."

Due to the fact that his two on the first brought him not the slightest
thrill of nervous joy, he made a perfect shot, the ball carrying the
green straight and true.

"This is your day all right," said Pickings, stepping to the tee.

"Oh, there's never been anything the matter with my irons," said
Booverman, darkly. "Just wait till we strike the fourth and fifth
holes."

When they climbed the hill, Booverman's ball lay within three feet of
the cup, which he easily putted out.

"Two down," said Pickings, inaudibly. "By George! what a glorious
start!"

"Once in sixty thousand times," said Booverman to himself. The third
hole lay two hundred and five yards below, backed by the road and
trapped by ditches, where at that moment Pollock, true to his traditions
as a war correspondent, was laboring in the trenches, to the
unrestrained delight of Wessels, who had passed beyond.

"Theobald," said Booverman, selecting his cleek and speaking with
inspired conviction, "I will tell you exactly what is going to happen. I
will smite this little homeopathic pill, and it will land just where I
want it. I will probably put out for another two. Three holes in twos
would probably excite any other human being on the face of this globe.
It doesn't excite me. I know too well what will follow on the fourth or
fifth. Watch."

"Straight to the pin," said Pickings in a loud whisper. "You've got a
dead line on every shot to-day. Marvelous! When you get one of your
streaks, there's certainly no use in my playing."

"Streak's the word," said Booverman, with a short, barking laugh. "Thank
heaven, though, Pickings, I know it! Five years ago I'd have been
shaking like a leaf. Now it only disgusts me. I've been fooled too
often; I don't bite again."

In this same profoundly melancholic mood he approached his ball, which
lay on the green, hole high, and put down a difficult put, a good three
yards for his third two.

Pickings, despite all his classic conservatism, was so overcome with
excitement that he twice putted over the hole for a shameful five.

Booverman's face as he walked to the fourth tee was as joyless as a
London fog. He placed his ball carelessly, selected his driver, and
turned on the fidgety Pickings with the gloomy solemnity of a father
about to indulge in corporal punishment.

"Once in sixty thousand times, Picky. Do you realize what a start like
this--three twos--would mean to a professional like Frank or even an
amateur that hadn't offended every busy little fate and fury in the
whole hoodooing business? Why, the blooming record would be knocked into
the middle of next week."

"You'll do it," said Pickings in a loud whisper. "Play carefully."

Booverman glanced down the four-hundred-yard straightaway and murmured
to himself:

"I wonder, little ball, whither will you fly?
I wonder, little ball, have I bid you good-by?
Will it be 'mid the prairies in the regions to the west?
Will it be in the marshes where the pollywogs nest?
Oh, tell me, little ball, is it ta-ta or good-by?"

[Illustration: "Oh, tell me, little ball, is it ta-ta or good-by?"]

He pronounced the last word with a settled conviction, and drove another
long, straight drive. Pickings, thrilled at the possibility of another
miracle, sliced badly.

"This is one of the most truly delightful holes of a picturesque
course," said Booverman, taking out an approaching cleek for his second
shot. "Nothing is more artistic than the tiny little patch of
putting-green under the shaggy branches of the willows. The receptive
graveyard to the right gives a certain pathos to it, a splendid, quiet
note in contrast to the feeling of the swift, hungry river to the left,
which will now receive and carry from my outstretched hand this little
white floater that will float away from me. No matter; I say again the
fourth green is a thing of ravishing beauty."

This second shot, low and long, rolled up in the same unvarying line.

"On the green," said Pickings.

"Short," said Booverman, who found, to his satisfaction, that he was
right by a yard.

"Take your time," said Pickings, biting his nails.

"Rats! I'll play it for a five," said Booverman.

His approach ran up on the line, caught the rim of the cup, hesitated,
and passed on a couple of feet.

"A four, anyway," said Pickings, with relief.

"I should have had a three," said Booverman, doggedly. "Any one else
would have had a three, straight on the cup. You'd have had a three,
Picky; you know you would."

Pickings did not answer. He was slowly going to pieces, forgetting the
invincible stoicism that is the pride of the true golfer.

"I say, take your time, old chap," he said, his voice no longer under
control. "Go slow! go slow!"

"Picky, for the first four years I played this course," said
Booverman, angrily, "I never got better than a six on this simple
three-hundred-and-fifty-yard hole. I lost my ball five times out of
seven. There is something irresistibly alluring to me in the mosquito
patches to my right. I think it is the fond hope that when I lose this
nice new ball I may step inadvertently on one of its hundred brothers,
which I may then bring home and give decent burial."

Pickings, who felt a mad and ungolfish desire to entreat him to caution,
walked away to fight down his emotion.

"Well?" he said, after the click of the club had sounded.

"Well," said Booverman, without joy, "that ball is lying about two
hundred and forty yards straight up the course, and by this time it has
come quietly to a little cozy home in a nice, deep hoof track, just as I
found it yesterday afternoon. Then I will have the exquisite pleasure of
taking my niblick, and whanging it out for the loss of a stroke. That'll
infuriate me, and I'll slice or pull. The best thing to do, I suppose,
would be to play for a conservative six."

When, after four butchered shots, Pickings had advanced to where
Booverman had driven, the ball lay in clear position just beyond the
bumps and rills that ordinarily welcome a long shot. Booverman played a
perfect mashy, which dropped clear on the green, and ran down a moderate
put for a three.

They then crossed the road and arrived by a planked walk at a dirt mound
in the midst of a swamp. Before them the cozy marsh lay stagnant ahead
and then sloped to the right in the figure of a boomerang, making for
those who fancied a slice a delightful little carry of one hundred and
fifty yards. To the left was a procession of trees, while beyond, on the
course, for those who drove a long ball, a giant willow had fallen the
year before in order to add a new perplexity and foster the enthusiasm
for luxury that was beginning among the caddies.

"I have a feeling," said Booverman, as though puzzled but not duped by
what had happened--"I have a strange feeling that I'm not going to get
into trouble here. That would be too obvious. It's at the seventh or
eighth holes that something is lurking around for me. Well, I won't
waste time."

He slapped down his ball, took a full swing, and carried the far-off
bank with a low, shooting drive that continued bounding on.

"That ought to roll forever," said Pickings, red with excitement.

"The course is fast--dry as a rock," said Booverman, deprecatingly.

Pickings put three balls precisely into the bubbling water, and drew
alongside on his eighth shot. Booverman's drive had skimmed over the
dried plain for a fair two hundred and seventy-five yards. His second
shot, a full brassy, rolled directly on the green.

"If he makes a four here," said Pickings to himself, "he'll be playing
five under four--no, by thunder! seven under four!" Suddenly he stopped,
overwhelmed. "Why, he's actually around threes--two under three now.
Heavens! if he ever suspects it, he'll go into a thousand pieces."

As a result, he missed his own ball completely, and then topped it for a
bare fifty yards.

"I've never seen you play so badly," said Booverman in a grumbling tone.
"You'll end up by throwing me off."

When they arrived at the green, Booverman's ball lay about thirty feet
from the flag.

"It's a four, a sure four," said Pickings under his breath.

Suddenly Booverman burst into an exclamation.

"Picky, come here. Look--look at that!"

The tone was furious. Pickings approached.

"Do you see that?" said Booverman, pointing to a freshly laid circle of
sod ten inches from his ball. "That, my boy, was where the cup was
yesterday. If they hadn't moved the flag two hours ago, I'd have had a
three. Now, what do you think of that for rotten luck?"

"Lay it dead," said Pickings, anxiously, shaking his head
sympathetically. "The green's a bit fast."

The put ran slowly up to the hole, and stopped four inches short.

"By heavens! why didn't I put over it!" said Booverman, brandishing his
putter. "A thirty-foot put that stops an inch short--did you ever see
anything like it? By everything that's just and fair I should have had a
three. You'd have had it, Picky. Lord! if I only could put!"

"One under three," said Pickings to his fluttering inner self. "He can't
realize it. If I can only keep his mind off the score!"

The seventh tee is reached by a carefully planned, fatiguing flight of
steps to the top of a bluff, where three churches at the back beckon so
many recording angels to swell the purgatory lists. As you advance to
the abrupt edge, everything is spread before you; nothing is concealed.
In the first plane, the entangling branches of a score of apple-trees
are ready to trap a topped ball and bury it under impossible piles of
dry leaves. Beyond, the wired tennis-courts give forth a musical, tinny
note when attacked. In the middle distance a glorious sycamore draws you
to the left, and a file of elms beckon the sliced way to a marsh,
wilderness of grass and an overgrown gully whence no balls return. In
front, one hundred and twenty yards away, is a formidable bunker,
running up to which is a tract of long grass, which two or three times a
year is barbered by a charitable enterprise. The seventh hole itself
lies two hundred and sixty yards away in a hollow guarded by a sunken
ditch, a sure three or--a sure six.

Booverman was still too indignant at the trick fate had played him on
the last green to yield to any other emotion. He forgot that a dozen
good scores had ended abruptly in the swale to the right. He was only
irritated. He plumped down his ball, dug his toes in the ground, and
sent off another long, satisfactory drive, which added more fuel to his
anger.

"Any one else would have had a three on the six," he muttered as he left
the tee. "It's too ridiculous."

He had a short approach and an easy put, plucked his ball from the cup,
and said in an injured tone:

"Picky, I feel bad about that sixth hole, and the fourth, too. I've
lost a stroke on each of them. I'm playing two strokes more than I ought
to be. Hang it all! that sixth wasn't right! You told me the green was
fast."

"I'm sorry," said Pickings, feeling his fingers grow cold and clammy on
the grip.

The eighth hole has many easy opportunities. It is five hundred and
twenty yards long, and things may happen at every stroke. You may begin
in front of the tee by burying your ball in the waving grass, which is
always permitted a sort of poetical license. There are the traps to the
seventh hole to be crossed, and to the right the paralleling river can
be reached by a short stab or a long, curling slice, which the
prevailing wind obligingly assists to a splashing descent.

"And now we have come to the eighth hole," said Booverman, raising his
hat in profound salutation. "Whenever I arrive here with a good score I
take from eight to eighteen, I lose one to three balls. On the contrary,
when I have an average of six, I always get a five and often a four. How
this hole has changed my entire life!" He raised his ball and addressed
it tenderly: "And now, little ball, we must part, you and I. It seems a
shame; you're the nicest little ball I ever have known. You've stuck to
me an awful long while. It's a shame."

He teed up, and drove his best drive, and followed it with a brassy that
laid him twenty yards off the green, where a good approach brought the
desired four.

"Even threes," said Pickings to himself, as though he had seen a ghost.
Now he was only a golfer of one generation; there was nothing in his
inheritance to steady him in such a crisis. He began slowly to
disintegrate morally, to revert to type. He contained himself until
Booverman had driven free of the river, which flanks the entire green
passage to the ninth hole, and then barely controlling the impulse to
catch Booverman by the knees and implore him to discretion, he burst
out:

"I say, dear boy, do you know what your score is?"

"Something well under four," said Booverman, scratching his head.

"Under four, nothing; even threes!"

"What?"

"Even threes."

They stopped, and tabulated the holes.

"So it is," said Booverman, amazed. "What an infernal pity!"

"Pity?"

"Yes, pity. If only some one else could play it out!"

He studied the hundred and fifty yards that were needed to reach the
green that was set in the crescent of surrounding trees, changed his
brassy for his cleek, and his cleek for his midiron.

"I wish you hadn't told me," he said nervously.

Pickings on the instant comprehended his blunder. For the first time
Booverman's shot went wide of the mark, straight into the trees that
bordered the river to the left.

"I'm sorry," said Pickings with a feeble groan.

"My dear Picky, it had to come," said Booverman, with a shrug of his
shoulders. "The ball is now lost, and all the score goes into the air,
the most miraculous score any one ever heard of is nothing but a crushed
egg!"

"It may have bounded back on the course," said Pickings, desperately.

"No, no, Picky; not that. In all the sixty thousand times I have hit
trees, barns, car-tracks, caddies, fences,--"

"There it is!" cried Pickings, with a shout of joy.

Fair on the course, at the edge of the green itself, lay the ball, which
soon was sunk for a four. Pickings felt a strange, unaccountable desire
to leap upon Booverman like a fluffy, enthusiastic dog; but he fought it
back with the new sense of responsibility that came to him. So he said
artfully: "By George! old man, if you hadn't missed on the fourth or the
sixth, you'd have done even threes!"

"You know what I ought to do now--I ought to stop," said Booverman, in
profound despair--"quit golf and never lift another club. It's a crime
to go on; it's a crime to spoil such a record. Twenty-eight for nine
holes, only forty-two needed for the next nine to break the record, and
I have done it in thirty-three--and in fifty-three! I ought not to try;
it's wrong."

He teed his ball for the two-hundred-yard flight to the easy tenth, and
took his cleek.

"I know just what'll happen now; I know it well."

But this time there was no varying in the flight; the drive went true to
the green, straight on the flag, where a good but not difficult put
brought a two.

"Even threes again," said Pickings, but to himself. "It can't go on. It
must turn."

"Now, Pickings, this is going to stop," said Booverman angrily. "I'm not
going to make a fool of myself. I'm going right up to the tee, and I'm
going to drive my ball right smack into the woods and end it. And I
don't care."

"What!"

"No, I don't care. Here goes."

Again his drive continued true, the mashy pitch for the second was
accurate, and his put, after circling the rim of the cup, went down for
a three.

The twelfth hole is another dip into the long grass that might serve as
an elephant's bed, and then across the Housatonic River, a carry of one
hundred and twenty yards to the green at the foot of an intruding tree.

"Oh, I suppose I'll make another three here, too," said Booverman,
moodily. "That'll only make it worse."

He drove with his midiron high in the air and full on the flag.

"I'll play my put carefully for three," he said, nodding his head.
Instead, it ran straight and down for two.

He walked silently to the dreaded thirteenth tee, which, with the
returning fourteenth, forms the malignant Scylla and Charybdis of the
course. There is nothing to describe the thirteenth hole. It is not
really a golf-hole; it is a long, narrow breathing spot, squeezed by the
railroad tracks on one side and by the river on the other. Resolute and
fearless golfers often cut them out entirely, nor are ashamed to
acknowledge their terror. As you stand at the thirteenth tee, everything
is blurred to the eye. Near by are rushes and water, woods to the left
and right; the river and the railroad; and the dry land a hundred yards
away looks tiny and distant, like a rock amid floods.

A long drive that varies a degree is doomed to go out of bounds or to
take the penalty of the river.

"Don't risk it. Take an iron--play it carefully," said Pickings in a
voice that sounded to his own ears unrecognizable.

Booverman followed his advice and landed by the fence to the left,
almost off the fair. A midiron for his second put him in position for