The Salvation of George Mackintosh


The young man came into the club-house. There was a frown on his
usually cheerful face, and he ordered a ginger-ale in the sort of voice
which an ancient Greek would have used when asking the executioner to
bring on the hemlock.

Sunk in the recesses of his favourite settee the Oldest Member had
watched him with silent sympathy.

"How did you get on?" he inquired.

"He beat me."

The Oldest Member nodded his venerable head.

"You have had a trying time, if I am not mistaken. I feared as much
when I saw you go out with Pobsley. How many a young man have I seen go
out with Herbert Pobsley exulting in his youth, and crawl back at
eventide looking like a toad under the harrow! He talked?"

"All the time, confound it! Put me right off my stroke."

The Oldest Member sighed.

"The talking golfer is undeniably the most pronounced pest of our
complex modern civilization," he said, "and the most difficult to deal
with. It is a melancholy thought that the noblest of games should have
produced such a scourge. I have frequently marked Herbert Pobsley in
action. As the crackling of thorns under a pot.... He is almost as bad
as poor George Mackintosh in his worst period. Did I ever tell you
about George Mackintosh?"

"I don't think so."

"His," said the Sage, "is the only case of golfing garrulity I have
ever known where a permanent cure was affected. If you would care to
hear about it----?"

* * * * *

George Mackintosh (said the Oldest Member), when I first knew him, was
one of the most admirable young fellows I have ever met. A handsome,
well-set-up man, with no vices except a tendency to use the mashie for
shots which should have been made with the light iron. And as for his
positive virtues, they were too numerous to mention. He never swayed
his body, moved his head, or pressed. He was always ready to utter a
tactful grunt when his opponent foozled. And when he himself achieved a
glaring fluke, his self-reproachful click of the tongue was music to
his adversary's bruised soul. But of all his virtues the one that most
endeared him to me and to all thinking men was the fact that, from the
start of a round to the finish, he never spoke a word except when
absolutely compelled to do so by the exigencies of the game. And it was
this man who subsequently, for a black period which lives in the memory
of all his contemporaries, was known as Gabby George and became a shade
less popular than the germ of Spanish Influenza. Truly, _corruptio
optimi pessima!_

One of the things that sadden a man as he grows older and reviews his
life is the reflection that his most devastating deeds were generally
the ones which he did with the best motives. The thought is
disheartening. I can honestly say that, when George Mackintosh came to
me and told me his troubles, my sole desire was to ameliorate his lot.
That I might be starting on the downward path a man whom I liked and
respected never once occurred to me.

One night after dinner when George Mackintosh came in, I could see at
once that there was something on his mind, but what this could be I was
at a loss to imagine, for I had been playing with him myself all the
afternoon, and he had done an eighty-one and a seventy-nine. And, as I
had not left the links till dusk was beginning to fall, it was
practically impossible that he could have gone out again and done
badly. The idea of financial trouble seemed equally out of the
question. George had a good job with the old-established legal firm of
Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Cootes, Toots, and Peabody. The
third alternative, that he might be in love, I rejected at once. In all
the time I had known him I had never seen a sign that George Mackintosh
gave a thought to the opposite sex.

Yet this, bizarre as it seemed, was the true solution. Scarcely had he
seated himself and lit a cigar when he blurted out his confession.

"What would you do in a case like this?" he said.

"Like what?"

"Well----" He choked, and a rich blush permeated his surface. "Well, it
seems a silly thing to say and all that, but I'm in love with Miss
Tennant, you know!"

"You are in love with Celia Tennant?"

"Of course I am. I've got eyes, haven't I? Who else is there that any
sane man could possibly be in love with? That," he went on, moodily,
"is the whole trouble. There's a field of about twenty-nine, and I
should think my place in the betting is about thirty-three to one."

"I cannot agree with you there," I said. "You have every advantage, it
appears to me. You are young, amiable, good-looking, comfortably off,
scratch----"

"But I can't talk, confound it!" he burst out. "And how is a man to get
anywhere at this sort of game without talking?"

"You are talking perfectly fluently now."

"Yes, to you. But put me in front of Celia Tennant, and I simply make a
sort of gurgling noise like a sheep with the botts. It kills my chances
stone dead. You know these other men. I can give Claude Mainwaring a
third and beat him. I can give Eustace Brinkley a stroke a hole and
simply trample on his corpse. But when it comes to talking to a girl,
I'm not in their class."

"You must not be diffident."

"But I _am_ diffident. What's the good of saying I mustn't be
diffident when I'm the man who wrote the words and music, when
Diffidence is my middle name and my telegraphic address? I can't help
being diffident."

"Surely you could overcome it?"

"But how? It was in the hope that you might be able to suggest
something that I came round tonight."

And this was where I did the fatal thing. It happened that, just before
I took up "Braid on the Push-Shot," I had been dipping into the current
number of a magazine, and one of the advertisements, I chanced to
remember, might have been framed with a special eye to George's
unfortunate case. It was that one, which I have no doubt you have seen,
which treats of "How to Become a Convincing Talker". I picked up this
magazine now and handed it to George.

He studied it for a few minutes in thoughtful silence. He looked at the
picture of the Man who had taken the course being fawned upon by lovely
women, while the man who had let this opportunity slip stood outside
the group gazing with a wistful envy.

"They never do that to me," said George.

"Do what, my boy?"

"Cluster round, clinging cooingly."

"I gather from the letterpress that they will if you write for the
booklet."

"You think there is really something in it?"

"I see no reason why eloquence should not be taught by mail. One seems
to be able to acquire every other desirable quality in that manner
nowadays."

"I might try it. After all, it's not expensive. There's no doubt about
it," he murmured, returning to his perusal, "that fellow does look
popular. Of course, the evening dress may have something to do with
it."

"Not at all. The other man, you will notice, is also wearing evening
dress, and yet he is merely among those on the outskirts. It is simply
a question of writing for the booklet."

"Sent post free."

"Sent, as you say, post free."

"I've a good mind to try it."

"I see no reason why you should not."

"I will, by Duncan!" He tore the page out of the magazine and put it in
his pocket. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give this thing a trial
for a week or two, and at the end of that time I'll go to the boss and
see how he reacts when I ask for a rise of salary. If he crawls, it'll
show there's something in this. If he flings me out, it will prove the
thing's no good."

We left it at that, and I am bound to say--owing, no doubt, to my not
having written for the booklet of the Memory Training Course advertised
on the adjoining page of the magazine--the matter slipped from my mind.
When, therefore, a few weeks later, I received a telegram from young
Mackintosh which ran:

_Worked like magic,_

I confess I was intensely puzzled. It was only a quarter of an hour
before George himself arrived that I solved the problem of its meaning.

"So the boss crawled?" I said, as he came in.

He gave a light, confident laugh. I had not seen him, as I say, for
some time, and I was struck by the alteration in his appearance. In
what exactly this alteration consisted I could not at first have said;
but gradually it began to impress itself on me that his eye was
brighter, his jaw squarer, his carriage a trifle more upright than it
had been. But it was his eye that struck me most forcibly. The George
Mackintosh I had known had had a pleasing gaze, but, though frank and
agreeable, it had never been more dynamic than a fried egg. This new
George had an eye that was a combination of a gimlet and a searchlight.
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, I imagine, must have been somewhat
similarly equipped. The Ancient Mariner stopped a wedding guest on his
way to a wedding; George Mackintosh gave me the impression that he
could have stopped the Cornish Riviera express on its way to Penzance.
Self-confidence--aye, and more than self-confidence--a sort of sinful,
overbearing swank seemed to exude from his very pores.

"Crawled?" he said. "Well, he didn't actually lick my boots, because I
saw him coming and side-stepped; but he did everything short of that. I
hadn't been talking an hour when----"

"An hour!" I gasped. "Did you talk for an hour?"

"Certainly. You wouldn't have had me be abrupt, would you? I went into
his private office and found him alone. I think at first he would have
been just as well pleased if I had retired. In fact, he said as much.
But I soon adjusted that outlook. I took a seat and a cigarette, and
then I started to sketch out for him the history of my connection with
the firm. He began to wilt before the end of the first ten minutes. At
the quarter of an hour mark he was looking at me like a lost dog that's
just found its owner. By the half-hour he was making little bleating
noises and massaging my coat-sleeve. And when, after perhaps an hour
and a half, I came to my peroration and suggested a rise, he choked
back a sob, gave me double what I had asked, and invited me to dine at
his club next Tuesday. I'm a little sorry now I cut the thing so short.
A few minutes more, and I fancy he would have given me his
sock-suspenders and made over his life-insurance in my favour."

"Well," I said, as soon as I could speak, for I was finding my young
friend a trifle overpowering, "this is most satisfactory."

"So-so," said George. "Not un-so-so. A man wants an addition to his
income when he is going to get married."

"Ah!" I said. "That, of course, will be the real test."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, when you propose to Celia Tennant. You remember you were saying
when we spoke of this before--"

"Oh, that!" said George, carelessly. "I've arranged all that."

"What!"

"Oh, yes. On my way up from the station. I looked in on Celia about an
hour ago, and it's all settled."

"Amazing!"

"Well, I don't know. I just put the thing to her, and she seemed to see
it."

"I congratulate you. So now, like Alexander, you have no more worlds to
conquer."

"Well, I don't know so much about that," said George. "The way it looks to
me is that I'm just starting. This eloquence is a thing that rather grows
on one. You didn't hear about my after-dinner speech at the anniversary
banquet of the firm, I suppose? My dear fellow, a riot! A positive
stampede. Had 'em laughing and then crying and then laughing again and
then crying once more till six of 'em had to be led out and the rest down
with hiccoughs. Napkins waving ... three tables broken ... waiters in
hysterics. I tell you, I played on them as on a stringed instrument...."

"Can you play on a stringed instrument?"

"As it happens, no. But as I would have played on a stringed instrument
if I could play on a stringed instrument. Wonderful sense of power it
gives you. I mean to go in pretty largely for that sort of thing in
future."

"You must not let it interfere with your golf."

He gave a laugh which turned my blood cold.

"Golf!" he said. "After all, what is golf? Just pushing a small ball
into a hole. A child could do it. Indeed, children have done it with
great success. I see an infant of fourteen has just won some sort of
championship. Could that stripling convulse a roomful of banqueters? I
think not! To sway your fellow-men with a word, to hold them with a
gesture ... that is the real salt of life. I don't suppose I shall play
much more golf now. I'm making arrangements for a lecturing-tour, and
I'm booked up for fifteen lunches already."

Those were his words. A man who had once done the lake-hole in one. A
man whom the committee were grooming for the amateur championship. I am
no weakling, but I confess they sent a chill shiver down my spine.

* * * * *

George Mackintosh did not, I am glad to say, carry out his mad project
to the letter. He did not altogether sever himself from golf. He was
still to be seen occasionally on the links. But now--and I know of
nothing more tragic that can befall a man--he found himself gradually
shunned, he who in the days of his sanity had been besieged with more
offers of games than he could manage to accept. Men simply would not
stand his incessant flow of talk. One by one they dropped off, until
the only person he could find to go round with him was old Major
Moseby, whose hearing completely petered out as long ago as the year
'98. And, of course, Celia Tennant would play with him occasionally;
but it seemed to me that even she, greatly as no doubt she loved him,
was beginning to crack under the strain.

So surely had I read the pallor of her face and the wild look of dumb
agony in her eyes that I was not surprised when, as I sat one morning
in my garden reading Ray on Taking Turf, my man announced her name. I
had been half expecting her to come to me for advice and consolation,
for I had known her ever since she was a child. It was I who had given
her her first driver and taught her infant lips to lisp "Fore!" It is
not easy to lisp the word "Fore!" but I had taught her to do it, and
this constituted a bond between us which had been strengthened rather
than weakened by the passage of time.

She sat down on the grass beside my chair, and looked up at my face in
silent pain. We had known each other so long that I know that it was
not my face that pained her, but rather some unspoken _malaise_ of
the soul. I waited for her to speak, and suddenly she burst out
impetuously as though she could hold back her sorrow no longer.

"Oh, I can't stand it! I can't stand it!"

"You mean...?" I said, though I knew only too well.

"This horrible obsession of poor George's," she cried passionately. "I
don't think he has stopped talking once since we have been engaged."

"He _is_ chatty," I agreed. "Has he told you the story about the
Irishman?"

"Half a dozen times. And the one about the Swede oftener than that. But
I would not mind an occasional anecdote. Women have to learn to bear
anecdotes from the men they love. It is the curse of Eve. It is his
incessant easy flow of chatter on all topics that is undermining even
my devotion."

"But surely, when he proposed to you, he must have given you an inkling
of the truth. He only hinted at it when he spoke to me, but I gather
that he was eloquent."

"When he proposed," said Celia dreamily, "he was wonderful. He spoke
for twenty minutes without stopping. He said I was the essence of his
every hope, the tree on which the fruit of his life grew; his Present,
his Future, his Past ... oh, and all that sort of thing. If he would
only confine his conversation now to remarks of a similar nature, I
could listen to him all day long. But he doesn't. He talks politics and
statistics and philosophy and ... oh, and everything. He makes my head
ache."

"And your heart also, I fear," I said gravely.

"I love him!" she replied simply. "In spite of everything, I love him
dearly. But what to do? What to do? I have an awful fear that when we
are getting married instead of answering 'I will,' he will go into the
pulpit and deliver an address on Marriage Ceremonies of All Ages. The
world to him is a vast lecture-platform. He looks on life as one long
after-dinner, with himself as the principal speaker of the evening. It
is breaking my heart. I see him shunned by his former friends. Shunned!
They run a mile when they see him coming. The mere sound of his voice
outside the club-house is enough to send brave men diving for safety
beneath the sofas. Can you wonder that I am in despair? What have I to
live for?"

"There is always golf."

"Yes, there is always golf," she whispered bravely.

"Come and have a round this afternoon."

"I had promised to go for a walk ..." She shuddered, then pulled herself
together. "... for a walk with George."

I hesitated for a moment.

"Bring him along," I said, and patted her hand. "It may be that
together we shall find an opportunity of reasoning with him."

She shook her head.

"You can't reason with George. He never stops talking long enough to
give you time."

"Nevertheless, there is no harm in trying. I have an idea that this
malady of his is not permanent and incurable. The very violence with
which the germ of loquacity has attacked him gives me hope. You must
remember that before this seizure he was rather a noticeably silent
man. Sometimes I think that it is just Nature's way of restoring the
average, and that soon the fever may burn itself out. Or it may be that
a sudden shock ... At any rate, have courage."

"I will try to be brave."

"Capital! At half-past two on the first tee, then."

"You will have to give me a stroke on the third, ninth, twelfth,
fifteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth," she said, with a quaver in her
voice. "My golf has fallen off rather lately."

I patted her hand again.

"I understand," I said gently. "I understand."

* * * * *

The steady drone of a baritone voice as I alighted from my car and
approached the first tee told me that George had not forgotten the
tryst. He was sitting on the stone seat under the chestnut-tree,
speaking a few well-chosen words on the Labour Movement.

"To what conclusion, then, do we come?" he was saying. "We come to the
foregone and inevitable conclusion that...."

"Good afternoon, George," I said.

He nodded briefly, but without verbal salutation. He seemed to regard
my remark as he would have regarded the unmannerly heckling of some one
at the back of the hall. He proceeded evenly with his speech, and was
still talking when Celia addressed her ball and drove off. Her drive,
coinciding with a sharp rhetorical question from George, wavered in
mid-air, and the ball trickled off into the rough half-way down the
hill. I can see the poor girl's tortured face even now. But she
breathed no word of reproach. Such is the miracle of women's love.

"Where you went wrong there," said George, breaking off his remarks on
Labour, "was that you have not studied the dynamics of golf
sufficiently. You did not pivot properly. You allowed your left heel to
point down the course when you were at the top of your swing. This
makes for instability and loss of distance. The fundamental law of the
dynamics of golf is that the left foot shall be solidly on the ground
at the moment of impact. If you allow your heel to point down the
course, it is almost impossible to bring it back in time to make the
foot a solid fulcrum."

I drove, and managed to clear the rough and reach the fairway. But it
was not one of my best drives. George Mackintosh, I confess, had
unnerved me. The feeling he gave me resembled the self-conscious panic
which I used to experience in my childhood when informed that there was
One Awful Eye that watched my every movement and saw my every act. It
was only the fact that poor Celia appeared even more affected by his
espionage that enabled me to win the first hole in seven.

On the way to the second tee George discoursed on the beauties of
Nature, pointing out at considerable length how exquisitely the silver
glitter of the lake harmonized with the vivid emerald turf near the
hole and the duller green of the rough beyond it. As Celia teed up her
ball, he directed her attention to the golden glory of the sand-pit to
the left of the flag. It was not the spirit in which to approach the
lake-hole, and I was not surprised when the unfortunate girl's ball
fell with a sickening plop half-way across the water.

"Where you went wrong there," said George, "was that you made the
stroke a sudden heave instead of a smooth, snappy flick of the wrists.
Pressing is always bad, but with the mashie----"

"I think I will give you this hole," said Celia to me, for my shot had
cleared the water and was lying on the edge of the green. "I wish I
hadn't used a new ball."

"The price of golf-balls," said George, as we started to round the
lake, "is a matter to which economists should give some attention. I am
credibly informed that rubber at the present time is exceptionally
cheap. Yet we see no decrease in the price of golf-balls, which, as I
need scarcely inform you, are rubber-cored. Why should this be so? You
will say that the wages of skilled labour have gone up. True. But----"

"One moment, George, while I drive," I said. For we had now arrived at
the third tee.

"A curious thing, concentration," said George, "and why certain
phenomena should prevent us from focusing our attention---- This brings
me to the vexed question of sleep. Why is it that we are able to sleep
through some vast convulsion of Nature when a dripping tap is enough to
keep us awake? I am told that there were people who slumbered
peacefully through the San Francisco earthquake, merely stirring
drowsily from time to time to tell an imaginary person to leave it on
the mat. Yet these same people----"

Celia's drive bounded into the deep ravine which yawns some fifty yards
from the tee. A low moan escaped her.

"Where you went wrong there----" said George.

"I know," said Celia. "I lifted my head."

I had never heard her speak so abruptly before. Her manner, in a girl
less noticeably pretty, might almost have been called snappish. George,
however, did not appear to have noticed anything amiss. He filled his
pipe and followed her into the ravine.

"Remarkable," he said, "how fundamental a principle of golf is this
keeping the head still. You will hear professionals tell their pupils
to keep their eye on the ball. Keeping the eye on the ball is only a
secondary matter. What they really mean is that the head should be kept
rigid, as otherwise it is impossible to----"

His voice died away. I had sliced my drive into the woods on the right,
and after playing another had gone off to try to find my ball, leaving
Celia and George in the ravine behind me. My last glimpse of them
showed me that her ball had fallen into a stone-studded cavity in the
side of the hill, and she was drawing her niblick from her bag as I
passed out of sight. George's voice, blurred by distance to a
monotonous murmur, followed me until I was out of earshot.

I was just about to give up the hunt for my ball in despair, when I
heard Celia's voice calling to me from the edge of the undergrowth.
There was a sharp note in it which startled me.

I came out, trailing a portion of some unknown shrub which had twined
itself about my ankle.

"Yes?" I said, picking twigs out of my hair.

"I want your advice," said Celia.

"Certainly. What is the trouble? By the way," I said, looking round,
"where is your _fiance_?"

"I have no _fiance_," she said, in a dull, hard voice.

"You have broken off the engagement?"

"Not exactly. And yet--well, I suppose it amounts to that."

"I don't quite understand."

"Well, the fact is," said Celia, in a burst of girlish frankness, "I
rather think I've killed George."

"Killed him, eh?"

It was a solution that had not occurred to me, but now that it was
presented for my inspection I could see its merits. In these days of
national effort, when we are all working together to try to make our
beloved land fit for heroes to live in, it was astonishing that nobody
before had thought of a simple, obvious thing like killing George
Mackintosh. George Mackintosh was undoubtedly better dead, but it had
taken a woman's intuition to see it.

"I killed him with my niblick," said Celia.

I nodded. If the thing was to be done at all, it was unquestionably a
niblick shot.

"I had just made my eleventh attempt to get out of that ravine," the
girl went on, "with George talking all the time about the recent
excavations in Egypt, when suddenly--you know what it is when something
seems to snap----"

"I had the experience with my shoe-lace only this morning."

"Yes, it was like that. Sharp--sudden--happening all in a moment. I
suppose I must have said something, for George stopped talking about
Egypt and said that he was reminded by a remark of the last speaker's
of a certain Irishman-----"

I pressed her hand.

"Don't go on if it hurts you," I said, gently.

"Well, there is very little more to tell. He bent his head to light his
pipe, and well--the temptation was too much for me. That's all."

"You were quite right."

"You really think so?"

"I certainly do. A rather similar action, under far less provocation,
once made Jael the wife of Heber the most popular woman in Israel."

"I wish I could think so too," she murmured. "At the moment, you know,
I was conscious of nothing but an awful elation. But--but--oh, he was
such a darling before he got this dreadful affliction. I can't help
thinking of G-George as he used to be."

She burst into a torrent of sobs.

"Would you care for me to view the remains?" I said.

"Perhaps it would be as well."

She led me silently into the ravine. George Mackintosh was lying on his
back where he had fallen.

"There!" said Celia.

And, as she spoke, George Mackintosh gave a kind of snorting groan and
sat up. Celia uttered a sharp shriek and sank on her knees before him.
George blinked once or twice and looked about him dazedly.

"Save the women and children!" he cried. "I can swim."

"Oh, George!" said Celia.

"Feeling a little better?" I asked.

"A little. How many people were hurt?"

"Hurt?"

"When the express ran into us." He cast another glance around him.
"Why, how did I get here?"

"You were here all the time," I said.

"Do you mean after the roof fell in or before?"

Celia was crying quietly down the back of his neck.

"Oh, George!" she said, again.

He groped out feebly for her hand and patted it.

"Brave little woman!" he said. "Brave little woman! She stuck by me all
through. Tell me--I am strong enough to bear it--what caused the
explosion?"

It seemed to me a case where much unpleasant explanation might be
avoided by the exercise of a little tact.

"Well, some say one thing and some another," I said. "Whether it was a
spark from a cigarette----"

Celia interrupted me. The woman in her made her revolt against this
well-intentioned subterfuge.

"I hit you, George!"

"Hit me?" he repeated, curiously. "What with? The Eiffel Tower?"

"With my niblick."

"You hit me with your niblick? But why?"

She hesitated. Then she faced him bravely.

"Because you wouldn't stop talking."

He gaped.

"Me!" he said. "_I_ wouldn't stop talking! But I hardly talk at
all. I'm noted for it."

Celia's eyes met mine in agonized inquiry. But I saw what had happened.
The blow, the sudden shock, had operated on George's brain-cells in
such a way as to effect a complete cure. I have not the technical
knowledge to be able to explain it, but the facts were plain.

"Lately, my dear fellow," I assured him, "you have dropped into the
habit of talking rather a good deal. Ever since we started out this
afternoon you have kept up an incessant flow of conversation!"

"Me! On the links! It isn't possible."

"It is only too true, I fear. And that is why this brave girl hit you
with her niblick. You started to tell her a funny story just as she was
making her eleventh shot to get her ball out of this ravine, and she
took what she considered the necessary steps."

"Can you ever forgive me, George?" cried Celia.

George Mackintosh stared at me. Then a crimson blush mantled his face.

"So I did! It's all beginning to come back to me. Oh, heavens!"

"_Can_ you forgive me, George?" cried Celia again.

He took her hand in his.

"Forgive you?" he muttered. "Can _you_ forgive _me?_ Me--a
tee-talker, a green-gabbler, a prattler on the links, the lowest form
of life known to science! I am unclean, unclean!"

"It's only a little mud, dearest," said Celia, looking at the sleeve of
his coat. "It will brush off when it's dry."

"How can you link your lot with a man who talks when people are making
their shots?"

"You will never do it again."

"But I have done it. And you stuck to me all through! Oh, Celia!"

"I loved you, George!"

The man seemed to swell with a sudden emotion. His eye lit up, and he
thrust one hand into the breast of his coat while he raised the other
in a sweeping gesture. For an instant he appeared on the verge of a
flood of eloquence. And then, as if he had been made sharply aware of
what it was that he intended to do, he suddenly sagged. The gleam died
out of his eyes. He lowered his hand.

"Well, I must say that was rather decent of you," he said.

A lame speech, but one that brought an infinite joy to both his
hearers. For it showed that George Mackintosh was cured beyond
possibility of relapse.

"Yes, I must say you are rather a corker," he added.

"George!" cried Celia.

I said nothing, but I clasped his hand; and then, taking my clubs, I
retired. When I looked round she was still in his arms. I left them
there, alone together in the great silence.

* * * * *

And so (concluded the Oldest Member) you see that a cure is possible,
though it needs a woman's gentle hand to bring it about. And how few
women are capable of doing what Celia Tennant did. Apart from the
difficulty of summoning up the necessary resolution, an act like hers
requires a straight eye and a pair of strong and supple wrists. It
seems to me that for the ordinary talking golfer there is no hope. And
the race seems to be getting more numerous every day. Yet the finest
golfers are always the least loquacious. It is related of the
illustrious Sandy McHoots that when, on the occasion of his winning the
British Open Championship, he was interviewed by reporters from the
leading daily papers as to his views on Tariff Reform, Bimetallism, the
Trial by Jury System, and the Modern Craze for Dancing, all they could
extract from him was the single word "Mphm!" Having uttered which, he
shouldered his bag and went home to tea. A great man. I wish there were
more like him.