FORE!

BY CHARLES E. VAN LOAN

AUTHOR OF BUCK PARVIN AND THE MOVIES, TAKING THE COUNT, SCORE BY INNINGS, Etc.

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1914, 1916, by P. F. Collier & Son

Copyright, 1917, 1918, by The Curtis Publishing Company

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

My dear Ed. Tufts:—

Once, when a mere child, I strayed as far away from home as Pico Street, and followed that thoroughfare westward until the houses gave way to open country, hedged by a dense forest of real estate signs.

In the midst of that wilderness I chanced upon a somewhat chubby gentleman engaged in the pursuit of a small white ball, which, when he came within striking distance, he beat savagely with weapons of wood and iron. That, sir, was my first sight of you, and my earliest acquaintance with the game of golf. I remember scanning the horizon for your keeper.

Times have changed since then. The old Pico Street course is covered with bungalows and mortgages. Golf clubs are everywhere. The hills are dotted with middle-aged gentlemen who use the same weapons of wood and iron and the same red-hot adjectives. A man may now admit that he commits golf and the statement will not be used against him. Everybody is doing it. The pastime has become popular.

But it took courage to be a pioneer, to listen to the sneers about "Cow-pasture pool" and to remain cool, calm and collected when putting within sight of the country road and within hearing of the comments of the Great Unenlightened. That courage entitles you to this small recognition, and also entitles you to purchase as many copies of this book as you can afford.

Yours as usual,

Charles E. Van Loan

To Mr. Edward B. Tufts of the Los Angeles Country Club.

Los Angeles, Cal., January 17, 1918.

CONTENTS

Gentlemen, You Can't Go Through
Little Poison Ivy
The Major, D.O.S.
A Mixed Foursome
"Similia Similibus Curantur"
A Cure for Lumbago
The Man Who Quit
The Ooley-Cow
Adolphus and the Rough Diamond

Other Fiction

GENTLEMEN, YOU CAN'T GO THROUGH!

I

There has been considerable argument about it—even a mention of ethics—though where ethics figures in this case is more than I know. I'd like to take a flat-footed stance as claiming that the end justified the means. Saint George killed the Dragon, and Hercules mopped up the Augean stables, but little Wally Wallace—one hundred and forty-two pounds in his summer underwear—did a bigger job and a better job when the betting was odds-on-and-write-your-own-ticket that it couldn't be done. I wouldn't mind heading a subscription to present him with a gold medal about the size of a soup plate, inscribed as follows, to wit and viz.:

W. W. Wallace—He Put the Fore in Foursome.

Every golfer who ever conceded himself a two-foot putt because he was afraid he might miss it has sweated and suffered and blasphemed in the wake of a slow foursome. All the clubs that I have ever seen—and I've travelled a bit—are cursed with at least one of these Creeping Pestilences which you observe mostly from the rear.

You're a golfer, of course, and you know the make-up of a slow foursome as well as I do: Four nice old gentlemen, prominent in business circles, church members, who remember it even when they top a tee shot, pillars of society, rich enough to be carried over the course in palanquins, but too proud to ride, too dignified to hurry, too meek to argue except among themselves, and too infernally selfish to stand aside and let the younger men go through. They take nine practice swings before hitting a shot, and then flub it disgracefully; they hold a prayer meeting on every putting green and a post-mortem on every tee, and a rheumatic snail could give them a flying start and beat them out in a fifty-yard dash. Know 'em? What golfer doesn't?

But nobody knows why it is that the four slowest players in every club always manage to hook up in a sort of permanent alliance. Nobody knows why they never stage their creeping contests on the off days when the course is clear. Nobody knows why they always pick the sunniest afternoons, when the locker room is full of young men dressing in a hurry. Nobody knows why they bolt their luncheons and scuttle out to the first tee, nor where that speed goes as soon as they drive and start down the course. Nobody knows why they refuse to walk any faster than a bogged mooley cow. Nobody knows why they never look behind them. Nobody knows why they never hear any one yell "Fore!" Nobody knows why they are so dead set against letting any one through.

Everybody knows the fatal effect of standing too long over the ball, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Everybody knows of the tee shots that are slopped and sliced and hooked; of the indecision caused by the long wait before playing the second; of the change of clubs when the first choice was the correct one; of the inevitable penalty exacted by loss of temper and mental poise. Everybody knows that a slow foursome gives the Recording Angel a busy afternoon, and leaves a sulphurous haze over an entire course. But the aged reprobates who are responsible for all this trouble—do they care how much grief and rage and bitterness simmers in their wake? You think they do? Think again. Golf and Business are the only games they have ever had time to learn, and one set of rules does for both. The rest of the world may go hang! Golf is a serious matter with these hoary offenders, and they manage to make it serious for everybody behind them—the fast-walking, quick-swinging fellows who