CHAPTER XLI 



A GOSSIP ON GOLF 



Many Englishmen have found in the great Scottish game 

 a delightful mode of combining exercise and amuse- 

 ment without the expenditure of much violent exertion, 

 yet it seems but yesterday that a golf-club was a rare sight 

 in England. Thirty years ago I remember an old friend 

 of mine, a famous Cambridge cricketer, telling me he had 

 joined the Liverpool Golf Club, and found the game far 

 more fascinating than cricket. I smiled sceptically. I had 

 never seen the outlandish pastime, but I could not believe 

 that any sane Englishman could prefer it to cricket. I 

 know better now. And, though I cannot admit that golf 

 stands on the same level as the grand English game, I 

 have found its fascination by experience. 



Few persons nowadays are unfamiliar with the weird 

 nomenclature which used to puzzle and even horrify the un- 

 initiated, as the following anecdote will prove : — 



An English lady travelling from Edinburgh to the North 

 via " the Ferries " (it was before the days of the Forth and 

 Tay Bridges) wrote to a friend describing the journey : 

 " It was pleasant enough till I got to a station called 

 Leuchars, where two strange-looking men got into the 

 carriage. Their clothes were shabby, their whole appear- 

 ance wild and unkempt, and though they spoke good 

 English with little accent, it was mixed with many strange 

 words which I did not understand. Niblick, cleek, 

 stimmie, were some which I remember, and they talked in 

 a horrid way about clearing somebody's nose, and running 

 over somebody's grave ; but the worst of all was when one 

 told the other that he had been in Hell that morning, but 

 his partner had got him out with a spoon. They seemed 



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