were of interest in the spring of
1914. But at the state-line, chancing a look out of the window, he saw
the doming billow of blue mountains which marks the entrance to our
Berkshire intervales, and a strange gleam came into his eyes. His
square jaws set. His whole countenance was transformed. Turning back
to me, he half hissed, grimly,--

"I am _not_ going to press this season!"

I knew he was fairly on his way to giving up golf forever.

Of course, when a man hasn't played all winter, but has been engaged
in the mild and harmless exercise of writing a novel, his hands become
soft. Then, when he suddenly begins to play thirty-six holes a day,
and takes a lock-grip on his clubs as tightly as if he supposed
somebody was trying to snatch them away from him, he is apt to develop
certain blisters. To a war correspondent and traveler over the Dawson
Trail, such blisters are nothing. To a golf player they are of
profound importance. The next day, in our foursome, they affected the
war correspondent's game. He became softly querulous.

"I wish you wouldn't talk when I am about to drive," he complained to
a caddie.

"This mashie is too heavy for me," he muttered to himself.

"Every time I make a stroke, that crack on the third finger of my left
hand, above the top joint, opens and pains me," he declared to anybody
who would listen.

His drive from the eighteenth tee went kerplunk into the mud, and
buried itself like a startled woodchuck. He said nothing, but took a
left-handed club from his bag--for he began the game left-handed, and
had switched over the year before, upon hearing our professional say
that no left-handed player could ever become a great golfer. With this
fresh implement, he began to dig. He finished the hole left-handed,
with three perfect shots! We tried to cheer him up, but he was not to
be cheered.

"What's the use!" he wailed. "Here I've spent a year and a fortune
unlearning how to play left-handed. I'm never going to play the
confounded game again!"

And, by way of token, he began to talk about Theodore Roosevelt.

That was his first renunciation for 1914. The next few days the game
went well, and so did work on a new novel he had commenced, fired by
his success in getting off seventeen perfect tee-shots. But he reached
his fourth chapter and an off afternoon on the same fair Saturday.
What a lovely day it was!--you know, one of those early June days that
invariably causes some woman to quote