possessed of a perfectly ideal golfing temperament, of a philosophy that seems constantly to have a subtle and most perfect application to the life of the links. Through and through it is the real golfer’s philosophy, that which is the best suited to the intensity of the game, to its deep humanity, and that which serves for the complete appreciation and full joy of the game. You may read all the other poets, from Homer and Virgil to Byron and Tennyson, without ever a thought of the links obtruding upon your study; but it is no evidence of a vagrant mind, or one that is indifferent to the sweetest music of words, that not three consecutive minutes can hardly ever be spent in reaching Shakespearian lines without the fancy being touched by the perfection of the philosophy and sentiment when applied to the peculiar pleasures and pains of the golfer.

Only one other classic writer with whom we are familiar can give such solace to the troubled player, such wise counsel to him who errs or is in doubt, such chastening admonitions to those who have offended against the spirit of the game and whose consciences are disturbed. That is Marcus Aurelius, and we pass on the volume of his rules of life to all those players who from time to time seek their homes at night weary and depressed after a day on the links, when all has been for the worst and despair broods darkly over the soul. After all, the golfer who is indifferent to the ills he sometimes, nay often, suffers, and can in an hour completely forget the tragedies of two rounds, is somewhat too phlegmatic, and there will always be denied to him the higher ecstasies by which the men of finer and more nervous temperament are uplifted. We do not set it against a man that when he has done discredit to his capabilities, he should show many signs of inward turmoil and display much active vexation towards innocent persons and things on seeking his home. He may rail against the arrangements of his household, and he may appear peevish to the members of his family, and find new faults in their manners and conduct. If they are the kind, sympathetic people that they so often are, they will bear with him and wait patiently for the passing of the cloud. On the morrow the good game may be back in all its fulness and richness, and then at eventide there will trip lightly homewards a happy and withal a penitent golfer, who will not be slow to confess his fault and to make a full measure of amends. The colour of life will have changed from the dull grey to the red of roses. And how much thinner and poorer would be the days of our golfing life did they not contain such constant change and yield to us such a variety of emotion! But it is the days of sorrow rather than the days of gladness that teach us the great lessons that all worthy golfers should learn, and they should not neglect the cultivation of the philosophic spirit for which the best opportunities are then afforded. So it is likely the stricken player may find a deep and wholesome contemplation in his lonely privacy at the end of the day, by meditating with Marcus Aurelius on the morals of life and events. He will tell you that “you have suffered a thousand inconveniences from not being contented with performing what your capacity was given you to perform,” and so, by such a little hint as this, he will lead you home to the simple truth that your proper game is not your best game, and that much of the misery that obtains in the world of golf is due to the universal habit of too high appraisement of the quality of one’s play.

But it is Shakespeare who teaches us best to be good golfers, and the secret of the perfect application of his sentiment and philosophy to the golfer’s life is that his writings are so intensely human, and that of all the diversions of man there is none that so much stirs in him the simple instincts, reduces him to the simplest human elements. A round of golf will sometimes bare faults and qualities in a man that have been hidden from the time of their formation in his early years. It is to the man who constantly undergoes this fierce analysis that Shakespeare will most appeal. Let the golfer test his text and see the perfection of the result. The quotation selected for the first day of the year for a Shakespearean calendar that was hung up in a golfer’s den was—