There looms a Day (I can feel it looming;
    Yes, it will be in a month or less),
  When all the flowers in the world are blooming
    And Nature flutters her fairest dress—­
      Then I, my friends, I too shall wear
      A blazer that will make them stare,
And brush—­this is official:  I shall also brush my hair.

  It is the day that I watch for yearly,
    Never before has it come so late;
  But now I’ve only a month—­no, merely
    A couple of fortnights left to wait;
      And then (to make the matter plain)
      I hold—­at last!—­a bat again: 
Dear Hobbs! the weeks this summer—­think! the weeks
      I’ve lived in vain!

  I see already the first ball twisting
    Over the green as I take my stand,
  I hear already long-on insisting
    It wasn’t a chance that came to hand—­
      Or no; I see it miss the bat
      And strike me on the knee, whereat
Some fool, some silly fool at point, says blandly,
        “How was that?”

  Then, scouting later, I hold a hot-un
    At deep square-leg from the local Fry,
  And at short mid-on to the village Scotton
    I snap a skimmer some six foot high—­
      Or else, perhaps, I get the ball,
      Upon the thumb, or not at all,
Or right into the hands, and then, lorblessme, let it fall.

But what care I?  It’s the game that calls me—­
Simply to be on the field of play;
How can it matter what fate befalls me,
With ten good fellows and one good day?
...  But still,
I rather hope spectators will,
Observing any lack or skill,
Remark, “This is his first appearance.”  Yes, I hope they will.

THE COMPETITION SPIRIT

About six weeks ago a Canadian gentleman named Smith arrived in the Old Country (England).  He knew a man who knew a man who knew a man ... and so on for a bit ... who knew a man who knew a man who knew me.  Letters passed; negotiations ensued; and about a week after he had first set foot in the Mother City (London) Smith and I met at my Club for lunch.

I may confess now that I was nervous.  I think I expected a man in a brown shirt and leggings, who would ask me to put it “right there,” and tell me I was “some Englishman.”  However, he turned out to be exactly like anybody else in London.  Whether he found me exactly like anybody else in Canada I don’t know.  Anyway, we had a very pleasant lunch, and arranged to play golf together on the next day.

Whatever else is true of Canada there can be no doubt that it turns out delightful golfers.  Smith proved to be just the best golfer I had ever met, being, when at the top of his form, almost exactly as good as I was.  Hole after hole we halved in a mechanical eight.  If by means of a raking drive and four perfect brassies at the sixth he managed to get one up for a moment, then at the short seventh a screaming iron and three consummate approaches would make me square again.  Occasionally he would, by superhuman play, do a hole in bogey; but only to crack at the next, and leave me, at the edge of the green, to play “one off eleven.”  It was, in fact, a ding-dong struggle all the way; and for his one-hole victory in the morning I had my revenge with a one-hole victory in the afternoon.