cleek, three abnormal putters, and wore one chamois glove
with air-holes on the back. He never accomplished the course in less
than eighty five and never exceeded ninety four, but, having aimed to
set a correct example rather than to strive vulgarly for professional
records, was always in a state of offensive optimism due to a complete
sartorial satisfaction.

Booverman, on the contrary, had been hailed in his first years as a
coming champion. With three holes eliminated, he could turn in a card
distinguished for its fours and threes; but unfortunately these sad
lapses inevitably occurred. As Booverman himself admitted, his
appearance on the golf-links was the signal for the capricious imps of
chance who stir up politicians to indiscreet truths and keep the Balkan
pot of discord bubbling, to forsake immediately these prime duties, and
enjoy a little relaxation at his expense.

Now, for the first three years Booverman responded in a manner to
delight imp and devil. When standing thirty-four for the first six
holes, he sliced into the jungle, and, after twenty minutes of frantic
beating of the bush, was forced to acknowledge a lost ball and no score,
he promptly sat down, tore large clutches of grass from the sod, and
expressed himself to the admiring delight of the caddies, who favorably
compared his flow of impulsive expletives to the choice moments of their
own home life. At other times he would take an offending club firmly in
his big hands and break it into four pieces, which he would drive into
the ground, hurling the head itself, with a last diabolical gesture,
into the Housatonic River, which, as may be repeated, wriggles its way
through the course as though convulsed with merriment.

There were certain trees into which he inevitably drove, certain waggish
bends of the river where, no matter how he might face, he was sure to
arrive. There was a space of exactly ten inches under the clubhouse
where his balls alone could disappear. He never ran down a long put, but
always hung on the rim of the cup. It was his adversary who executed
phenomenal shots, approaches of eighty yards that dribbled home, sliced
drives that hit a fence and bounded back on the course. Nothing of this
agreeable sort had ever happened or could ever happen to him. Finally
the conviction of a certain predestined damnation settled upon him. He
no longer struggled; his once rollicking spirits settled into a moody
despair. Nothing encouraged him