into the
maelstrom, he paid little attention to his game, and a surprised and,
I fancied, even a slightly disappointed caddie followed him. (He was
always most generous to his caddie when he had most abused him, like
the hero of Goldoni's comedy.)

"I sha'n't see nice, sweet, unscarred green sod again for a long
time," he said, digging up a huge divot with unconscious irony. "I'm
going to my last war, though."

"Gracious," said I, "are you going to give up War forever, too?"

"The world is going to give it up forever, after this one," he
replied.

I have seen him twice since, once when he was still a correspondent,
once more recently when he came back in the uniform of Uncle Sam. And
each time his greeting has been the same:--

"Have you got rid of that hook yet?"

Then he smiled--a wistful, tragic smile, and asked where all the new
traps and bunkers are, how we contrived to lengthen the course,
whether the new sixth green is in play yet, all the pathetically
unimportant little gossip of our eighty acres of green meadow.

"Ah," he said the last time we parted, "some day I'm coming back and
make that 79 at last! Anybody can go over the top, but to break 80 at
Stockbridge--!"

Then he left for the trenches of France.

I have another good friend who, unlike the Major, has never given up
golf forever. This, as he himself admits (or I should not dare offer
the explanation), is because he has never yet really played it. He,
too, is rather well known at his avocation of play-writing; but golf
is his real business in life when the season once gets under way. He
has enabled several professionals to buy motor-cars, he has sent
numerous fore-caddies through the high school, he has practised by the
hour with individual clubs, but still, after almost a quarter of a
century, he has never broken 90 on a first-class course. From my
superior position (I have on three never-to-be-forgotten occasions
broken 80, one of them at Manchester!), I sometimes wonder what keeps
him at the game. Then I play with him, and realize. He has the divine,
inexplicable faculty, once or twice in a round, of tearing off an
astounding drive of 300 yards, by some subtle miracle of timing, which
after hours of rolling finally comes to rest far out beyond any other
ball in the foursome, or even the professional's drive. What does it
matter if he scruffs his approach? What does it matter if he takes
three putts? He has the memory of that drive, the u