John Henry Smith | Page 5

unmarked sphere, which has been driven for the
first time.
Carter arrived at the club shortly after our "mixed foursome" had

started out. He took my place, he and Boyd playing Marshall and
Chilvers. Our orbits crossed several times.
Miss Dangerfield found three balls. One of them belonged to Chilvers,
and he saw her find it, but he is a perfect gentleman and did not say a
word. It was the one redeeming incident in the game.
Miss Dangerfield confided to me that she is making a collection of
balls.
"I am awfully lucky," she said, looking critically at Chilvers' ball.
"Whenever I find one I keep it as a memento of the game; that is, of
course, if it is nice and clean like this one."
"As a memento?" I inquired.
"Certainly," she declared. "I have a cute little brush and some water
colours. I paint the date of discovery on the ball and add it to my
collection. Sometimes I paint flowers on the ball, and sometimes birds
and other things. You should see my collection! Don't you think it's a
real cute idea?"
"It is startlingly original," I said, and her bright and innocent smile
showed her appreciation of the compliment. "How many have you in
your collection?"
[Illustration: "Fore there! hay there!!"]
"Oh, lots and lots of them," she said. "I am to have a portrait of myself
done in oil, showing me in a golfing costume just about to knock the
ball as far as I can, and the frame will be composed of golf balls I have
found. Oh, here's another lost ball!" and she started for one which was
lying on the fair green not many yards away. I knew to whom it
belonged.
"Fore! Fore! Hi, hay there; drop it; that's my ball!" yelled a club
member named Pepper, coming on a run from behind a bunker. Pepper
is a married man, near the fifty-year mark, and he is extremely nervous
and even irritable when any one approaches his ball.
"Don't touch it!" shouted Pepper, now on a dead run. "You'll make me
lose the hole! Don't you know the make of the ball you're playing?
Mine is a Kempshall remade."
"Oh, this is not my ball," frankly declared Miss Dangerfield. "My ball
is over there, but I thought this was one which had been lost."
"I pitched it out of that trap a moment ago," insisted Pepper, "and did
not take my eyes off it."

"I am sure I do not want it if it is yours!" haughtily declared Miss
Dangerfield, turning indignantly away.
"Thank you," said Pepper, politely as he knows how, and we went on
our way leaving him to recover his composure as best he could. I
looked back and noted that he fumbled his next shot.
"If I thought as much as that of a mere golf ball I would never play the
game," pouted Miss Dangerfield. "I think he is horrid, and I shall never
speak to him again!"
"If he had lost the ball he would have lost the hole," I explained,
anxious to extenuate Pepper's offense as much as possible.
"Suppose he did lose the old hole!" exclaimed the wronged young lady.
"What does it amount to if you lose one insignificant hole when there
are eighteen in all?"
I could think of nothing else to say, and had the tact to change the
conversation to the unique frame for her portrait with its "lost ball"
border.
"You will save material and secure a more artistic effect," I suggested,
"by having an artisan cut the balls in halves. They will then lie flat to
the frame, and one ball will do the service of two."
Miss Dangerfield was so taken with this idea that she speedily forgot
that brute Pepper.
Coming in we were passed by Marshall, Chilvers, Carter, and Boyd.
How I envied them! We stood and silently watched while each made
ripping long drives. There is nothing which contributes more to a man's
good opinion of himself than to line a ball straight out two hundred
yards when a bevy of pretty girls is watching him.
The tendency of the woman golfer to frankly express her admiration for
the strength and skill of a man who can drive a clean and long ball is
her great redeeming trait when on the links.
The man who is careless of the praise of his male peers is prone to be
raised to the seventh heaven of golf bliss when listening to the
long-drawn chorus of "Oh!" "Wasn't that splendid!" "I could just die if
I could drive like that!" and similar expressions from dainty maidens
who do not know the difference between a follow through and a jigger.
An ideal golf course would be one where