THE CLUB-HOUSE, ST ANDREWS 53 



formance. The last of the matches has left the first teeing ground, for it is 

 nearing noon ; the golfers are already in grips, and for every idle evening 

 boast they are giving, as best they can, some sort of account. We enter 

 the club-house and at once glance round the great smoking-room. It is 

 deserted, save for the waiters who are gathering up the morning papers, 

 which have had but a short perusal, and are placing them in order on 

 the reading table. The scene is familiar to every golfer who remembers 

 his September mornings, and there comes back quickly with this remembrance 

 a figure which will not easily be severed from Golf and from its Fifeshire home. 

 By the south fireplace on its right-hand side sits in the big arm-chair a 

 venerable gentleman who was the oldest boy and the youngest old man we ever 

 knew. The head is bent as the reader's eye glances quickly over the pages of 

 the Saturday or the Nineteenth, his pipe is in his mouth, and by his side on 

 a small table stands a tankard of small ale which he has ordered to make 

 him not altogether forgetful of his Cambridge days. Here, alone in this 

 big room, we would seem to have come across some recluse who would 

 most strenuously oppose our interruption, and by his silence demand his 

 peace. But in a moment the whole man changes ; in a second he re- 

 bounds from sixty to sixteen, and by the mere raising of the head throws 

 off the garment of his years. The head is the head of the scientist, and 

 the brow, not without its furrows, tells of problems solved and yet to be 

 solved. But the eye, though small, twinkles with an unquenchable boyish- 

 ness which will not grow old, and the fullness which lies beneath it proclaims 

 that sense, whether of measure, of words, or of music, which always accom- 

 panies this peculiarity of feature. 



Before we can speak he is laughing ; he greets us heartily, and 

 demands, in order that we may laugh with him, that we read some 

 passage he has just been enjoying. It is a dull passage on some subject 

 we do not understand ; but his eye twinkles when he marks that we 

 detect in the writing some absurd incongruity of expression. " What do 

 you think of that, my boy, from a professor of Philosophy?" he exclaims, 

 and then, as if to be quit of the thing, he rises, shakes himself, knocks the 

 tobacco ash off his waistcoat, and adds : " Well, let's go out and meet 

 Freddie, he will be past the turn by now." We, who were but golfers 

 and fellow-sojourners in a city full of golf and professors, called this boy- 

 man " The Professor," and we loved him. 



J have been asked to add to the content of this biography as it were the 



