RETIRED GOLF 143 



to tell her of a mashie shot which he had for- 

 gotten to mention at dinner, and far into the 

 dawn his voice can be heard explaining to a 

 snoring and unconscious spouse that he would 

 most assuredly have done the fourth hole in 

 six if only he hadn't missed his drive, required 

 three strokes to get out of a bunker, and taken 

 four more to hole out. 



Again, a Rear- Admiral of my acquaintance, 

 the violence of whose language had long ren- 

 dered him an insupportable inmate of any re- 

 spectable household, became a reformed char- 

 acter once he had learnt to play golf. After 

 spending a strenuous day hacking his ball from 

 tussock to tussock in the " rough " at Walton 

 Heath, he would return home so hoarse and 

 exhausted as to be unable to utter a single word 

 of reproof to his family. In the Navy he had 

 been justly considered unique as a master of 

 invective; but on the golf-links he often became 

 inspired by adverse fortune to surpass even his 

 own earlier efforts, and the heights of eloquence 

 to which he soared, the maledictory phrases 

 which he spontaneously coined in his attempts 

 to do justice to his outraged feelings, earned the 

 admiration of local Masters of Hounds, and 

 would have wrung reluctant tributes from the 

 most imaginative fish-porters in Billingsgate. 



