Knightsbridge inspires and dignifies its company like the banqueting hall of some ancient castle, I will perhaps agree that the traditions of golf are of no practical effect beyond that of merely preserving the game from vandalism and giving it a place above the others. Often when reflecting thus one feels that in duty to the game one's policy in matters should be "St. Andrews, right or wrong." But yet one could wish that these mighty traditions were not at times invoked for improper purposes. There is too much free and unintelligible talk about them in these modern times. They are wantonly applied to base uses; a man will urge the traditions in his favour and against his opponent when he attempts some vile procedure. When a crafty person is beaten in argument, he cries, "The traditions!" and people who speciously, and with insincerity, condemn what we may call the modern advancements of the game will murmur that the rubber-cored ball and clubs with steel faces are not according to "the traditions." Truly they are not, and those old traditions had nothing to do with gutties either; but Duncan Forbes would have rejoiced in the possession of a modern driver and mashie niblick. It is too often and absurdly assumed that the ancients used the tools they had because they were the best conceivable and most appropriate, just right in practical quality and proper sentiment. They were merely the best that had been discovered up to then. The Stuart kings might have had a happier time had they possessed some rubber Haskells to coax and lead them on.

CHAPTER II

THE UBIQUITY OF THE GAME; WITH AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE COMMUNITY OF GOLFERS, AND A NOTE UPON THE EFFECT OF ST. ANDREWS SPIRITS.

The ubiquity of this game—being the third of the seven wonders—is remarkable, for it is played everywhere by everybody. No other sport has ever achieved such universal favour, and we may be sure that none will ever do so, because, apart from the fascination it exercises upon the people of different countries and different races, it is so strong in its simplicity—the stick, the ball, the mark, and, with them being given, the object plainly suggested. It has already been suggested that, in its essentials golf being obvious, it must have been practised from the earliest times. Everywhere the simpler emotions of man are the same, and so everywhere the game must make the same appeal when it is understood. So here, strange as it is still, we have a nearly satisfying explanation. What is yet wonderful beyond it is the fact that the regulated game with the rules and restrictions that have been agreed upon and codified by the high authorities at St. Andrews are everywhere accepted, and even in such embellishments it is the same game everywhere. Nothing can approach it in this universality. Yet that also is nearly explicable.

By a process of continuous thought and deduction from observation the people of St. Andrews, past and present, have gained a code of regulations which seems most completely to satisfy the requirements of the case. It has often been urged against the numerous and lengthy laws we have that they suffer from too many niceties and too many complications, and that they represent a remarkable evolution of man-made intricacy from the one simple governing principle that the ball shall be struck by the stick, and that if the object be not achieved by the first blow it shall be struck again from the place where it then lies. In that simple principle there is all golf, and by it the game must surely have been played at the beginning. But it is the disposition of man to depart from the most absolute simplicity in the direction of what he regards as improvement upon it, and therefore bare principles get covered up with fancy wrappings, while again there is in the human species an immovable distrust of each other and a tendency towards the setting up of safeguards and protections—laws. When this is done in different places, and by different peoples, the results also are almost certain to be widely different; and with the assistance of time and further development two peoples might at length produce two games which, originating in the same basic principle, might be in appearance, materials, and actions quite dissimilar. Nearly all ball games, indeed, must have had much the same original principle. Golf, as we know it, has had its integrity preserved, and has established its amazing universality because, despite the numerous and lengthy laws, the spirit of the game has been so completely preserved in them. Between absolute simplicity, the one natural law of golf, as we might call it, as just enunciated, and a lengthy, confusing, and sometimes even contradictory code there can be little compromise, and perfection and completeness in golfing law are impossible, because no two courses are alike, no two shots are quite the same, and there can be no end to new situations until there is an end of the world and man. It sometimes seems that St. Andrews, indefatigable, pursues an impossible finality, and thereby makes difficulties for itself. That through ages and generations it has produced a code of laws, and defined the principles of a game that is accepted all over the world, and causes the same game to be played wherever the sun may shine, is not merely an achievement in intelligence and discernment, but something that suggests a grand inspiration. These are times of change, when old systems of the world are being abandoned and new ones being set in their places. It may happen, though it is as unlikely as it is undesirable, that St. Andrews itself as a governing body will fall; but nothing that ever happens to the game in the future can equal the marvel of its foundation and establishment by this authority and its associates.

§

It is not without good reason that they call golf the world game now. It has alighted upon every country, and wherever it has touched it has seized. The yellow man likes it; the black man in some places has to be kept away from it, because it is found that he grows too fond of it. One day when I was golfing at the Country Club, near Boston, they showed me a most primitive kind of club that was kept with some other relics in a glass case. It had been fashioned from the branch of a tree, and with this crude implement a nigger boy in one of the southern states had not long previously driven a ball over two hundred yards. Other games are for their own countries, like the country's foods, and they would neither be suitable nor adaptable elsewhere; but in its nature golf will do for all, and it has the same subtle attraction for everybody, so that what was once thought to be the "golf craze" of the British people only became the craze of the Americans too, then of the French, now of the Germans and others, and of really everybody. Its qualities and conveniences make it the only possible world game. At present in some countries it is confined to a few people of unusual distinction or circumstances, but it has been found in old and recent history that, following a beginning of this kind, the game in a new land has never languished, but that presently it has extended from the pioneers, who were probably from abroad, to the native people, and from the upper classes to the middle, and then to the lower. In France at the present time we see the game being started among the general French, and I have news that the statesmen have begun to play; yet a little while since the golf of Gaul was carried on by British only.

Recently some of us were looking over the map of the world for odd countries that might be golfless, and it appeared then that there were but four: one being the Balkan States, considering