"I remember once," says Mr. Bertram Steer, in "Woman's Life," "when I
was in Northern China, I and some others were laying out a nine-hole
golf-links near a European settlement, with curious results. The
local mandarin was informed by a native that some 'foreign devils'
were doing weird things, and it seems that in that part of the globe
the laying-out of a golf-links is not exactly an everyday occurrence.
Anyhow, that mandarin sent an urgent despatch to the Imperial
Government at Peking calling attention to our dangerous doings, and
asking for immediate instructions as to the measures he should take to
nip our conspiracy in the bud. We were, he reported, busily engaged in
mining a tract of land near the town, and had already sunk nine holes
ready to receive the charges of dynamite."
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