were still confident, but were running no risks. Half a dozen times did
we change our grip. For a full minute we wobbled the club about the
ball, picking out the exact spot where we were going to hit it. Then
slowly we brought the club back, higher and higher. Keeping our eye
glued with maniacal intensity on the globule, we finally made a
tremendous swipe at it and--carefully cut the sand from under it, so
that it came down kerplunk! We had driven it just two inches--straight
down. Bjones said nothing. There are times when silence is more
precious than radium. And the caddy--the caddy was beyond speech.
We don't know how we finally managed to persuade the ball to vacate the
tee and seek the green expanse of the valley below. But we did at last,
and stumbled down the hill after it with vengeance in our eye.
Selecting the ugliest-looking iron club in the bag Bjones had given us,
we remorselessly drove that ball and a number of sods right up to the
edge of the green--in eight, we believe. Or was it eighteen?
"Now, a nice little tap, a wrist-shot," said Bjones, who had holed out
and had smoked half a cigar in the meantime.
It was a nice little tap. Tearing a hole in the flag and just missing
the caddy's head by a fraction of an inch, that perverted pellet plunged
screaming into an oak-forest, where it buried itself and will probably
in the course of time grow into a cork-and-rubber plant.
"Hard luck, old man," Bjones murmured. But there was something very
wistful in his smile. You see, that ball was brand new, and had cost
Bjones just one dollar. The next ball he gave us was not quite so
new--not by several gashes.
We have no intention of going into all the painful details of that game.
Suffice it to state that after three hours of play and seven balls we
had made eight holes. We didn't count our strokes. It would require
one of those patent calculating machines that can add up three columns
of figures at a time. When we hit the ball a good wallop, it invariably
sought refuge in the woods or in a creek. The rest of the time it just
dribbled along.
"Your game isn't so bad," said Bjones in answer to our apologies, "if
you could only get it distributed properly. The trouble seems to be
that you do all your putting from the tee and on the fairway, and all
your driving on the green. If you could only reverse that, you would be
a real winner." But, of course, that was precisely what we couldn't do.
One hole was an especially depressing experience. The tee is on the edge
of a cliff, at the foot of which a little bubbling brook burbles
beauteously. Now, any human being with the full use of one leg could
kick a golf-ball over that stream without the slightest difficulty. So
could we. But we made the mistake of going at it with a driver. We
swung with savage determination, nicked the ball neatly on top, and had
the pleasure of seeing it describe a pretty parabola and plunge with a
gurgle to a watery grave. That, if we remember well, was the fourth
ball. Of course, about thirty or forty pairs went "through" us. That
is, some sixty or eighty gentlemen in more or less mussy garments came
up behind us, watched us cynically, and then with grins more or less
politely disguised went on ahead. Again and again, when we had just
made a wicked drive of several yards, a fat duffer old enough to be one
of our remote ancestors, with a red face and a girth that indicated
years of reckless indulgence in pork and port, would come along, watch
us for a moment, and then, growling apologetically, would drive like a
rifle-bullet straight for the green we wouldn't reach for half an hour.
And we have always rather fancied our lithe and athletic build!--or so
we like to describe it.
Bjones was awfully decent about the whole thing. Bjones is a
thorough-bred. He kept framing excuses for us, blaming the clubs he
loaned us and the clothes he had induced us to wear. He even spoke
harshly of the state of the turf in several places. We must admit that
it did look pretty rough--after we got through with it.
In the end even he fell silent--that was when we had broken the second
club. Unbroken gloom settled like a pall on our soul. We were too
depressed even to swear. Besides, we had used up all the expressions we
had been treasuring up for a time of mental stress, and we ceased to
find consolation in the repetition.
The only sensible thing for us to do was to put the clubs--those that
remained of them--back in the bag and refuse to take another swing. But
no one is ever sensible at golf. We still kept hoping that the next
shot would reveal the superb natural genius for the game that we had
possessed only a few days before. And now and then a shot really would
go right--usually when we lost our temper completely and simply took a
savage swing at the ball without any formalities whatever. But the next
stroke always plunged us into more horrible depths than ever. When we
had finally managed to dribble and stagger our way to the last green, we
felt so sick and lonesome and helpless that we could have lain right
down there on the velvet sward and cried into the little cup--only we
probably would have missed it even with our tears.
The only hole we could have played in really masterly fashion was the
nineteenth--the one they used to keep in the club-house. Only it wasn't
there any more. The Prohibitionists have seen to that. Driving right
on to the green carpet, we would have putted discreetly with our right
hand, and would have holed out with a quart bottle and a glass in two.
Vardon himself couldn't play it any better than we would have done
if--oh, those "ifs!"
We might moralize easily and at great length on this experience of ours,
but what's the use? Besides, the moral is obvious. It is this. Once
you have made a fine drive in a moment of reckless inspiration, either
keep your hands off golf-clubs for the rest of your life, or go away
somewhere and practice in secret for several years with an instructor to
whom you have given hush money, before you display yourself and your
golfing skill on the links. Otherwise, you will fill the caddy's soul
with loathing---we did.
[Illustration: ON KEEPING COOL]
*On Keeping Cool*
The worst of hot spells is that they always occur in the summer. Now a
nice hot spell in the middle of winter or the beginning of March, when
we are all getting sick of the snow and heavy woollens, would be--but
enough of this! We are not the man to fly in the face of Divine
Providence and suggest changes in the climatic arrangements. We leave
that to the parsons.
It is quite possible, of course--in fact, with our usual luck in such
matters, it is highly probable--that by the time this has been printed,
bound, and inflicted on the public, the public will be sitting in front
of a grate-fire with a shawl and a cold in the head, having been caught
in the sleet on the way home from the office. The public will therefore
regard our advice on the best way to keep cool as an impertinence and an
imposition. And we hate to have the public think us a jackanapes or a
darn fool. Of course, the public is bound to find us out some time, but
we would like to postpone the dread day as long as possible.
Whatever the weather may be like at the time of reading, at the time of
writing and for some days back we have been going through a period of
torridity during which keeping cool has been an art--a lost art, we
regret to state. Having devoted to it all the powers of our mind and
all the energy we had left after the business of perspiring, we feel
qualified to speak on the subject with assurance and authority. Not
that we have ever considered it necessary for us to feel qualified
before speaking, but it is just as well.
As soon as the heat-wave hit us in our office-chair, we took off our
coat, vest, collar and tie, and knotting our suspenders around our
editorial waist, we sent out for all the heat-literature that could be
obtained for love or money--preferably for love. And then we plunged
with characteristic impetuosity into the task of mastering this subtle
science or esoteric philosophy or whatever it is. Only we didn't master
it.
We never in all our life became so hot as we did reading the various
directions for keeping cool. When we got through we were stuck to the
back of our chair, the pattern of our shirt had been roughly transferred
to our epidermis, and we had gone into liquidation to the extent of
several pounds--avoirdupois, not sterling. But we had the satisfaction
of feeling that we knew all there was to be known about keeping cool,
all the hints, surmises, suggestions, and epizootic bosh generally.
Advice on how to keep cool, so far as we can find out, usually concerns
itself with clothes, food, rest, and the state of one's mind. The crest
of the heat-wave is always littered with suggestions as to what one
should wear and eat and drink--especially what one shouldn't--how much
one should rest, and how peaceful and serene one's mind, or what one
uses in its place, should always remain. This last is considered very
important. Perhaps if one can only get cool, a cool mind will help one
to keep so. But we never get--not till the hot spell is over.
Concerning clothes we are told that we should wear as little as
possible--as little, that is, as the crossing-policemen will let us get
by with. And what little we do wear should be of silk or linen or thin
flannel, and very light in color, preferably white.
Now, so far as the girls are concerned, this is easy. They have already
at the dictate of fashion removed all the lower strata of clothing,
retaining only the extreme outer layer. And even this they have cut so
low and slit so high, that there is practically no obstacle in the way
of the weakest zephyr that ever zephed. And, as for mosquitoes, a
really sporting mosquito would scorn to take opportunities so easy.
But men are somewhat handicapped. We still retain vestiges of primitive
reticence. Or perhaps it is only that we do not think we would look so
well in transparent garments. The thought of wearing muslin trousers
tastefully slashed to the knee causes us to shrink painfully. Nor would
we like our shirts cut low to display our collar-bone and Adam's-apple.
There is something crude and ungainly about masculine architecture when
exposed in that unabashed way.
Of course, there are linen suits and mohair suits. Now and then one
even sees a silk suit--very seldom, though, for few men are dare-devils
of this unfaltering type. But, though cool enough in a way, there are
disadvantages to all such clothes. We know, for we have tried them.
Five or six years ago, we recall, there was a hot spell of the good old
blast-furnace type. In its tropical glare one's ordinary suit felt like
the winter garb of an Esquiman. Fat men became slim, though not
graceful, in a single afternoon. It was like being rendered in one of
those German plants for producing glycerine.
Personally, we became desperate. Not that we are of a fat or
particularly full-blooded type. But then neither are we a
lightning-rod--not, except in the most figurative sense. We rushed out
to our barber and had him reduce our dome of thought somewhat to the
appearance of a stubble-field. We got a pair of canvas shoes and a
Panama hat. We tried beer. Then we tried ice-cream sodas. Then we
tried beer again--this time we gave it a really good trial. Still no
relief. As a last resort we bought two linen suits. We were desperate,
that's all! The idea in buying two was to wear one while the laundry
was hanging, drawing, and quartering the other.
They were nice suits--not a doubt about it! On the stage they would have
caused matinee-girls to dream about us. But for private life,
especially such a modest and retiring private life as ours, they were
rather pronounced. One of them was made out of a genteel sort of
gunny-sacking; while the other was smooth with hair-line stripes at wide
intervals. But both had the same general color-effect. It suggested a
sick canary--yellow, you know, but not up to its usual form.
The first time we put one of them on, we sneaked out the back way. We
didn't dare step out where the neighbors could see us. Of course, there
would not be the same occasion for nervousness nowadays, when suits of
this airy character have become so much more familiar. But this was
five or six years ago, when masculine tastes were less Arcadian.
While we stood waiting for a street-car--we felt as though we had been
waiting several hours--hot blushes coursed over us from head to foot.
The perspiration fairly sizzled on our cheeks. We couldn't have felt
hotter in a coon coat.
As the car bore down upon us, we noticed that the motorman kept his eye
fixed on us with withering contempt. He fairly snorted with indignation
as he applied the air-brake. We put it down to jealousy. He was
wearing one of those nice serge suits, blue and shiny, made of cloth
weighing half a pound to the square foot, and bound with leather at the
wrists, as is popular in municipal-traction circles. A coat like that
is about as pervious to air as a zinc roof. We tried to persuade
ourself that he envied us.
The conductor, while he held out the box for our yellow ticket--no, we
didn't choose it to match the suit--studied us as though we were a new
and exotic specimen at the local zoo. Then he went up to the front of
the car, and as he went the motorman turned halfway round and said in a
stage-whisper that carried easily the full length of the car: "Fer
gawd's sake, did yuh see what got on?" Then they talked seriously
together for a moment or two. They seemed to be considering whether or
not they ought to throw us off. It was very difficult to look
unconcerned, but we tried.
There are many painful recollections connected with that day. We bore
up against the flood of contumely and ridicule as best we could. But in
the end it was too much for us. We passed a group of boys on a
street-corner. We had passed several such groups during the day, and
had been obliged to listen to many personal remarks of a vulgar
character utterly lacking in true wit. As we went past this last group
the usual derisive comments were made, but we neither slackened nor
hastened our stately progress. Then in the midst of them a shrill voice
suddenly piped up: "Oh, you Votes-for-Women!"
It was too much. Our cup was full--in fact, it was sloshing over our
anguished soul. We hurried home and tore the suit off, and were only
prevented by fear of our landlady from burning it in the corner of our
room. We never wore it again.
As we pointed out before, however, the public attitude towards garments
of this sort has changed very considerably in the past few years. A man
may now clothe himself like the lily--the orange lily, that is--without
causing people on the street to suspect him of being a poet or a
professional fox-trotter. Think of the vogue of the Palm Beach suit in
the past few years!--which reminds us.
We were sitting in the office the other day--a real sizzler, too!--with
the door locked for protection and most of our clothes piled up on the
extra chair. Oh, it's all right. We had arranged with the office-boy
to ring a bell when he saw anyone coming towards our door, so we could
put some of them on again.
Well, we had hastily scrambled into our coat and an expression of alert
dignity when a fat man was ushered in. He is a friend of ours who had
dropped in to show us a nice new Palm-Beach suit he had bought for ten
dollars and a quarter the day before--heaven alone knows what the
quarter was for! In fact, at the first glance we wondered what the ten
dollars was for.
To be perfectly frank--always an interesting and perilous endeavor--we
took a scunner against that suit. In the first place it was so darn
baggy; and then the color! It hung on him in folds like an elephant's
skin--a light tan elephant who had been crossed in love. We wouldn't
wear a suit like that--not, if we had to go around in our pyjamas. But
naturally we didn't tell him so--there is such a thing as tact. We said
all we could for the suit. We remarked that there seemed to be a good
deal of cloth in it for the money, and it would be a nice invisible
shade for sitting around the beach in the evening. Even the sand-flies
would hardly be able to find him.
If we had let the matter rest right there, we would have been all right.
He wasn't flattered exactly, but he was satisfied. Unfortunately, in
our desire for information, we asked him if the waiters in the
better-class restaurants made any objection to serving him.
You should have heard that fat man talk--that is, when he ceased to foam
and his rage became articulate. What he said about us and our clothes
we would hate to admit in the police court, let alone print in cold type
here. He wound up with the statement that the only reason we hadn't
been sun-struck before now was because there was nothing in our noodle
for the sun to strike. And this was flattering compared to some of the
things that went before.
Finally we were forced to remind him that he was exhausting what little
air there was in our office. As a matter of fact, we don't know of
anything that will exhaust the air of an ordinary room so quickly on a
hot day as a fat man in one of those pale, porous suits.
The immediate chill that ensued in our conversation was very grateful to
us. It was the first chill we had had in days, and we were looking for
chills. Night after night we kept hoping some burglar would break into
the house, or a good gruesome ghost start strolling around, so we could
have a few authentic chills chasing one another up and down our spinal
column. But no luck! You couldn't hire a burglar in such weather--not
if you doubled the regular rates of the Burglars' Union. And as for
ghosts--well, they found it cooler, no doubt, even in the place where
the naughty ones are sent.
By way of finishing with the subject of summer clothes, we may as well
confess that we bought a mohair suit once. It was very nice stuff, a
little shiny, but quite cool. All went well till we were caught in a
shower. Then that suit did things we had never before thought possible
for anything but a snake or a contortionist. It tied itself into
incredible knots. The trousers climbed up one leg, and twisted
frantically in an endeavor to break the other. The tails of the coat
curled up, presumably with a view to getting around our neck and
strangling us. It took a couple of our friends to pry the suit off and
restore our circulation. We never felt the same towards it afterwards.
So much for the heat-suggestions about clothes. And the advice they give
you in the matter of food is almost as bad--nothing but milk and eggs
and salads. Spoon-feed and garden truck! Fine stuff to expect a man to
do his work on. Not that we are so set on working that we eat solely
with that end in view. But one must hold one's job, if one is obliged
to have such a thing at all. And holding a job implies, so far as we
are concerned, a certain number of steaks and slices of roast-beef-rare.
"Ah, but, my friend," says the heat-suggester, "you must not over-exert
yourself. You must repose, especially during the heat of the day. You
may do a little work in the early morning and again in the evening. But
from eleven to four--nay, nay, 't is very unwise." And then he proceeds
to dwell at length on that beautiful Southern custom of the siesta.
It is a beautiful custom all right. Far be it from us to deny it. For
years we have been dreaming of nice little siestas out in the
grape-arbor with a bubble-pipe and a couple of senoritas singing Spanish
love-songs to the silvery tinkling of the mandolins. We realize that
the bubble-pipe is not especially Spanish, but it is cool and that is
the principal thing.
We have never dwelt on this ambition to the Managing Editor. We do not
believe he possesses a romantic imagination--not sufficiently romantic,
at any rate. But what do hot-weather tipsters care about managing
editors?--pish-tush and less! What do they care for jobs, or even
positions? They simply refuse to take them into account. All they ever
stop to consider is temperature.
In the same way they take no stock of human infirmities and foibles.
They ruthlessly cut out all the pleasures of life, innocent or
otherwise--especially otherwise, as you might expect, but the innocent
ones, too. For instance, you mustn't smoke. That raises your
blood-pressure! We presume that having one's blood-pressure raised is a
very serious thing, something like having one's taxes raised. Anyway,
we are warned against it.
The same applies to drink--only much more so. God bless us, yes! Of
course, when we say "drink," the reference is to fluid of a sociable and
cheering character, not to iced tea or well-water or such other insipid
means of internal refrigeration. But then the Prohibitionists have cut
drink off, too--and much more effectually, alas!--so the warnings of the
health-cranks find us unresigned but acquiescent. We may even be
soothed by their assurances that "booze" is bad for us in the summer,
though personally we have never found much consolation in reflections of
this nature.
The thing is done, however--at least, for the present, whatever hopes
one may entertain for referendums in the future--and we must accept our
thirsty destiny. So farewell the jovial Collins and the smooth and
voluptuous Gin Fizz, whether silver or golden. No longer must we soar
on the bounding High Ball to celestial regions where the heat-waves
cease from troubling and the mercury is at rest. The pungent and
appetizing Cocktail is not for us, nor the enticing Rickey. Even the
mild and genial Shandy-gaff must we shun, for it contains Beer, and the
name of Beer is anathema in anything but negligible percentages.
Their merry reign is over, and all their kingdom is given up to plebeian
beverages like Sarsaparilla and Soda-Pop. But those of us who are
royalists at heart will still continue to look forward to a restoration
of the old regime. They have gone, but their memory is green in our
hearts--green with sprigs of mint.
[Illustration: BACK TO NATURE IN A LIMOUSINE]
*Back to Nature in a Limousine*
There has been in recent years a good deal of talk about "going back to
nature"--perhaps we should make that a capital "N." Even some of the
highest-class magazines have been devoting to it so much space that we
begin to suspect the advertisers must have asked to be put next to
extra-pure reading matter. It is true that most of it was written at so
much a line or an inch or a column by chaps living in hall-bedrooms, but
it is none the less an indication of a genuine back-to-the-land
movement. We know for we have taken part in it ourself.
Last summer we went back to the land for a week-end. As a result of our
experience we wish to state that we now approve of the land as an
institution. But you have to go back to it right. Everything depends
on that.
Years and years ago when we were younger and foolisher than we will ever
be again, we trust--as a matter of fact, we were fresh out of college,
very fresh--we went back to the land. The experience embittered our
nature for years. We made the mistake of going back to work on the land.
Never, never do that. That way misanthropy lies.
Brutally heedless of our "B.A." and our other scholastic honors, big,
coarse farmers bullied us around from four o'clock in the morning till
ten at night. The rest of the time was our own. We went out at dewy
dawn and hitched two or three imbecile horses to a rusty old plough, and
spent the day tearing irregular gashes in the scenery till it looked
like a crochet pattern, and till our head swam and our knees wobbled.
When we tottered in at twilight, an old and broken man, we had to go and
chase home several festive cows who did the Maxixe and Tango and several
other dances quite unknown to human beings at that time--they are still
unknown to all but dancing professors. It usually took an hour at least
to shoo them into the barn and hog-tie them so they wouldn't kick us
through the pail, or the pail through us--they didn't care which.
We were supposed to be doing this for our health. We had never been
robust, though always very sound as to appetite, and the family said the
fresh air and joyous work of the fields would do us so much good, poor
boy. It nearly did us for good and all. When we got home to mother
after a year of it, with callouses on our hands and on our soul, the
house-dog sat up and howled in anguish of mind, and the town-undertaker
licked his lips and measured our length and breadth--there wasn't much
breadth--with his eye. We could see him wondering whether the family
would stand for solid silver handles or just the plain oxidized kind.
For years afterwards the mere mention of the word "farm" would cause us
to tremble from head to foot and perspire clammily at every pore. We
couldn't look at a cow without wanting to heave a brick at her, or a
hired man without a sudden desire to go over and shake his honest hand
and murmur a few words of sympathy.