who know the game.

Wallace did not tee the ball on any raised inequality of the turf, but
simply placed it on a smooth spot, such as one would select as the
average brassie lie. If I had any lingering doubt as to his ability,
this one preliminary act dispelled it.

Now that I calmly recall this scene in that sheep pasture, its dramatic
grotesqueness rather appeals to me. Here were three young ladies, all of
them pretty, all wealthy and holding high social positions, watching
with bated breath a farmhand of unknown birth in the act of striking a
golf ball. Surely golf is the great leveller! Perhaps it is the hope of
the ultimate democracy; the germ of the ideal brotherhood of man.

I presume Bishop was thinking that Wallace would better be employed in
running a mowing machine.

"The Scotch method of making a full drive," said Wallace, facing his
interested little audience, and speaking with more enthusiasm than was
his wont, "or, if you prefer it, the St. Andrews style, is distinguished
from most types by what might be termed its exaggerated freedom. It is a
full, free swing with an abandoned follow through. It probably comes
from the confidence which has been handed down from generations of
golf-playing people. The Scotch are a conservative and deliberate people
in most things, but the way they seem to hit a golf ball gives to most
observers the impression of carelessness and lack of considered effort.
That, I should say," he concluded, with a droll smile, "is enough for
the preacher."

[Illustration: "I have never seen a more perfect shot"]

I felt mortally certain Wallace would make a failure of that first shot,
and he told me later he was rather nervous, but he took no unnecessary
chances.

He used a three-quarter swing--at least so it appeared to me--such a one
I should employ to drive a low ball about one hundred and fifty yards.
He seemed to put no effort into it, but the result proved there was not
an ounce of misapplied energy. It all seemed unstudied, but I knew that
every muscle and sinew of his lithe and well-proportioned body was
working to the end that the face of his club should not swerve by one
hair's breadth from the course he had planned for it.

It was the ball which we less-favoured golfers dream shall some day be
ours to command; the ball which starts low, rises in a concave curve,
and ends its trajectory in a slight slant to the left--the low, hooked
ball. It was not a phenomenally long