the like. No man talked of his own doings or of
those of his friends, for he and his friends did nothing, except perhaps
to spar for an hour or so once or twice a week, or go through
perfunctory gymnastics for their figures' sakes.

Until a dozen years ago the situation had not materially changed. Lawn
tennis had made some headway, but the thing that wrought the revolution
was the coming of golf. It may be doubted if ever in history has any
single sport, pastime, or pursuit so modified the habits, and even the
character, of a people in an equal space of time as golf has modified
those of the people of the United States.

Enough has already been written of the enthusiasm with which the
Americans took up the game itself, of the social prestige which it at
once obtained, of the colossal sums of money that have been lavished on
the making of courses, of the sumptuousness of the club-houses that have
sprung up all over the land. That golf is in itself a fascinating game,
is sufficiently proved in England, where it has drawn so many thousands
of devotees away from cricket, football, lawn tennis, and other sports.
But can we imagine what the result might have been if there had been in
Great Britain no cricket, or football, or other sports, so that all the
game-loving enthusiasm of the nation had been free to turn itself loose
into that one channel? And this is just what did happen in America. Golf
had a clear field and a strenuous sport-loving nation, devoid of
open-air games, at its mercy.

The result was not merely that people took to playing golf and that
young men neglected their offices and millionaires stretched unwonted
muscles in scrambling over bunkers. Golf taught the American people to
play games. It took them out from their great office-buildings and from
their five-o'clock cocktails at the club, into the open air; and they
found that the open air was good. So around nearly every golf club other
sports grew up. Polo grounds were laid out by the side of the links,
croquet lawns appeared on one side of the club-house and lawn-tennis
nets arose on the other, while traps for the clay-pigeon shooters were
placed safely off in a corner.

Golf came precisely at the moment when the people were ready for it.
Just as America, having in a measure completed the exploitation of her
own continent and developed a manufacturing power beyond the resources
of consumption in her people, was commercially ripe for the invasion of