But my object here is not merely to warn “Arcturus” of the perilous company he is keeping.  I refer to his bull-dog panegyric also to justify me in enlarging on my own private vanity.  If he is permitted to write to the extent of a column on a bull-dog, I can at least claim the same latitude in regard to a sensible subject like golf.  And I have this advantage over him, that I have a real message.  I have a hint to offer that will mean money in pocket to you.

And first let me say that I have nothing to teach you in the way of play.  I am in that stage of the novitiate that seems sheer imbecility.  When I get a good stroke I stare after it as stout Cortez stared at the Pacific, “with a wild surmise.”  But it is because I am a bad player that I feel I can be useful to you.  For most of my time on the links is spent in looking for lost balls.  Now, I do not object to looking for balls.  I rather enjoy it.  It is a healthy, open-air occupation that keeps the body exercised and the mind fallow.  There are some people who think the spectacle of a grown-up man (with a family) looking in an open field for a ball that isn’t there is ridiculous.  They are mistaken.  It is really, seen from the philosophic angle, a very noble spectacle.  It is the symbol of deathless hope.  It is part of the great discipline of the game.  It is that part of the game at which I do best.  There is not a spinney over the whole course that I do not know by heart.  There is not a bit of gorse that I have not probed and been probed by.  I must have spent hours in the ditches, and I have upon me the scars left by every hedgerow.  And the result is that, while I am worthless as a golfer, I think I may claim to be quite in the first class at finding lost balls.

Now all discoveries hinge upon some sudden illumination.  I had up to a certain point been a sad failure in recovering balls.  I watched them fall with the utmost care and was so sure of them that I felt that I could walk blindfold and pick them up.  But when I came to the spot the ball was not there.  This experience became so common that at last the conclusion forced itself upon me that the golf ball had a sort of impish intelligence that could only be met by a superior cunning.  I suspected that it deliberately hid itself, and that so long as it was aware that you were hunting for it, it took a fiendish delight in dodging you.  If, said I, one could only let the thing suppose it was not being looked for it would be taken off its guard.  I put the idea into operation, and I rejoice to say it works like a charm.

The method is quite simple.  You lose the ball, of course, to begin with.  That is easy enough.  Then you search for it, and the longer you search the deeper grows the mystery of its vanishing.  Your companions come and help you to poke the hedge and stir up the ditch, and you all agree that you have never known such a perfectly ridiculous thing before.  And having clearly proved that the ball isn’t anywhere in the neighbourhood, you take another out of the bag, and proceed with the game.