of the question, so we agreed that we must
bore a hole in the centre of the head. The shaft sticks that we chose
and trimmed were made of good thorn, white or black, and when we had
prepared them to our satisfaction we put the poker in the fire and made
it red hot, then bored a hole with it through the head, and tightened
the shaft with wedges until the club was complete. With this primitive
driver we could get what was for our diminutive limbs a really long
ball, or a long taw as one should say. In these later days a patent has
been taken out for drivers with the shaft let into the head, which are
to all intents and purposes the same in principle as those which we used
to make at Grouville.

By and by some of us became quite expert at the making of these clubs,
and we set ourselves to discover ways and means of improving them. The
greater elaboration of such brassies as we had seen impressed us, and we
also found some trouble with our oak heads in that, being green, they
were rather inclined to chip and crack. Ultimately we decided to sheathe
the heads entirely with tin. It was not an easy thing to make a good job
of this, and we were further troubled by the circumstance that our
respective fathers had no sympathy with us, and declined upon any
account to lend us their tools. Consequently we had no option but to
wait until the coast was clear and then surreptitiously borrow the tools
for an hour or two. We called these tin-plated drivers our brassies, and
they were certainly an improvement on our original clubs. Occasionally a
club was made in this manner which exhibited properties superior to
those possessed by any other, as clubs will do even to-day. Forthwith
the reputation of the maker of this club went up by leaps and bounds,
and he was petitioned by others to make clubs for them, a heavy price in
taws and marbles being offered for the service. The club that had
created all this stir would change hands two or three times at an
increasing price until it required the payment of four or five dozen
marbles to become possessed of it. But the boy who owned the treasure
was looked upon as the lord of the manor, and odds were demanded of him
in the matches that we played.

We practised our very elementary kind of golf whenever we could, and
were soon enthusiastic. I remember particularly that many of our best
matches were played in the moonlight. The moon seemed to shine more
clearly at Jersey than in England, and we cou