are vulgar flowers, and suggest magnifying glasses and analyses, their spiky petals standing out over-distinctly.

Allison and Fay left the house together, crossed the square silently, and sat down on the steps of the porch in the shadow of Christian Allison's tuberose bushes, which Christian had planted for other purposes.

"Jamie," she said, "I'm going to surprise you."

"You always surprise me. The right attitude of love does not differ very much from surprise." But Fay did not even look bewildered, as she had usually done when Allison defined his enamored condition. She looked determined.

"I want you to go and tell Mrs. Mavering that I am not old enough to be so clever as that. She will understand. Will you?"

"I will do whatever you want me to, of course," he said placidly. "You need n't tell me why. It is a test of faith."

She made a movement of impatience, and went on hurriedly:

"You don't care for me! Not even as you used to! You make believe until you don't know what you mean yourself. You only care for your little game. You make experiments on me. Don't do it any more. I don't think it's good for me. You don't care for me any more than Petrarch did for Laura. You don't! You don't! The only real woman you care for is Mrs. Mavering, and the joke is that she knows it, but it's a dull joke, it's a dull joke."

"Oh, now!" broke in Allison. "Don't drag things around in the dirt! Why do you think that?”

"Because she gave you bad advice." They rose, and Allison said gravely, "That about Mrs. Mavering is neither kind nor true. But then, the rest is n't true either, and that's more cheerful. I love you both ways, Fay, my star, and my girl. Why do you give motives to another woman that you would n't act on yourself?"

Fay laughed.

"Oh, but I would, Jamie! I would!"

She caught her breath with a sob, and added, "There's only one way," and disappeared.

Allison turned back across the square to the Sutton house, and threaded his way among the dancers, chaperons, and such manner of obstruction, in search of Mrs. Mavering. He found her in a corner behind the chrysanthemums, sparring composedly with Thaddeus Bourne.

"I should like Mrs. Mavering," said Allison. "How long have you had her?"

"Well, Jamie," said Thaddeus, "I imagine you've come about the right time. I'm the most interesting person there is for half an hour, but my half hour is nearly up. I shall go and find Mrs. Sutton. She likes my old stories the fortieth time better than the first. I'm a jester, Mrs. Mavering; by profession, a poor, motley Yorick. I jingle my bells and take my leave. But Jamie looks like a melancholy Dane."

And Thaddeus departed, seeking the serene certainty of Mrs. Sutton's approval.

"Have you had a tiff with Dulcinea ?" said Mrs. Mavering, after a long pause.

"That's just it!" groaned Allison. "Am I quixotic? And what then? Look here, Mrs. Mavering! She says, in the first place, she's not old enough to be so clever as that. As what? What does she mean? And what did she want me to tell you that for?"

Mrs. Mavering rested her cheek on one finger, and made no answer.

"In the second place, she says I don't care for her so much as for a little game I'm playing. Now, that is n't so."

"Oh, that is n't so! But was n't that the doctrine?"

"No! In the third place, she says if I'm in love with any actual person, it's you. That is n't so, either."

"Oh, that is n't so, either!"

"Well," said Allison penitently, "wait. a moment. In the fourth place, she says you gave me bad advice. Now, she is wrong; but what I want to know is, has she the right to be wrong that way?"

Mrs. Mavering laughed softly.

"Perhaps she has. She has quick instincts. 'Clever?' Perhaps not. She has been growing capable, at least. The trouble is that she does n't understand herself, and she thinks that I do understand myself - but I don't.”

"In the fifth place," persisted Allison, "she says there's only one way to follow in love. Is n't there? What is the way?" Mrs. Mavering was silent a moment, and then said quietly, "I don't know. I did n't find it."

She rose, and added, "You need n't be down-hearted. She will look for you tomorrow."

Then Mrs. Sutton appeared around the chrysanthemums, saying, "Rachel, your carriage;" and old Thaddeus Bourne followed, to ask if Cinderella would leave a slipper; and Allison departed, wondering what might be the status of his theory now; and each person of the story, as of other stories known to the chrysanthemums that night, went his or her several ways, with his or her several thoughts, and opinions probably wrong.

"The hearth was cold when Cinderella went home," said Mrs. Mavering to Thaddeus Bourne. "She sat down again among the ashes.”

As her carriage drove away Thaddeus stood still on the sidewalk and shook his head thoughtfully.

V

Toward the end of October the shaded streets of Hamilton had a golden glow from the autumn leaves, still hanging, or already lying crimson and yellow on the

sidewalks. It is a cheerful season, for one reason, because, after all, it is only a cool and quiet pause. It closes and locks no door forever.

When the mallow in the croft lies down,
Or the pale parsley or the crisped anise,
Again they grow, another year they flourish;
But we, the great, the valiant and the wise,

when our "youth's sweet-scented manuscript" is closed, cannot see ourselves in happy categories with the mallow, the parsley, and the crisped anise, who will open on another spring their freshly scented manuscripts.

Mrs. Mavering and Thaddeus Bourne came from St. Mary's Church into the street together. The sounds of the Lohengrin March died away behind them. Thaddeus was saying that Jamie would make love to his wife now on an elaborate theory, on several theories, and that it would be an immense success.

"I humbly claim a share in the success. The theory was mine."

Mrs. Mavering did not answer. They passed down the street rustling through the fallen leaves.

"Sadness is disloyalty to life," said the old man at last.

She answered almost inaudibly: "It comes on me suddenly at times. A dream of my own fell to ashes ten years ago. Forgive me. I have been foolish, and now I am tired."

"You had better take me home to lunch with you," said Thaddeus. “I'll jingle my bells to amuse you. I'm superannuated in the useful service of folly. Well, well! My motley is faded, my cap and bauble are worn old things, but they will last my time."

THREE things there are as unfathomable as they are fascinating to the masculine mind: metaphysics; golf; and the feminine heart. The Germans, I believe, pretend to have solved some of the riddles of the first, and the French to have unravelled some of the intricacies of the last; will some one tell us wherein lies the extraordinary fascination of Golf?

I have just come home from my Club. We played till we could not see the flag; the caddies were sent a-head to find the balls by the thud of their fall; and a low large moon threw whispering shadows on the dew-wet grass or ere we trode the home-green. At dinner the talk was of Golf; and for three mortal hours after dinner the talk was - of Golf. Yet the talkers were neither idiots, fools, nor monomaniacs. On the contrary, many of them were grave men of the world. At all events the most monomaniacal of the lot was a prosperous man of affairs, worth I do not know how many thousands, which thousands he had made by the same mental faculties by which this evening he was trying to probe or to elucidate the profundities and complexities of this socalled "game."- Will some one tell us wherein lies its fascination?

There is rampant in the world at the present moment a sort of sporting mania, an international sporting mania; excellent in its way, but very difficult to analyse or account for. Manias of one kind or another are not unknown to history. Such, for example, was the mania for Crusades in the Middle Ages. It had a highly rational basis, namely the defence of Christendom against Islam and the wresting of the Holy Land from its desecrating possessors. But to such lengths did this mania go that in 1212 an army of children once actually set out, with ban

ners and paraphernalia, to conquer some vague, invisible foe; with the result that hundreds died before they had gone any distance, and hundreds were sold into slavery. Such, too, was the Hippodrome mania in the fourth century at Byzantium, when feeling ran so high that society was divided into hostile sections, and money, and even blood, was recklessly spent in contests between the faction of the Green and the faction of the Blue. And such was the tulip mania of Holland in 1637, when, so keen was the rivalry for bulbs, that a whole nation was absorbed in the strife and many a family ruined itself by speculation in rare or mythical roots.

Well, today the western world seems to be labouring under something of the same sort.

Year by year athletics occupy a larger share of the attention, not only of the students, but of the teachers, at our schools and colleges, and year by year the sums spent in intercollegiate and international contests increase. To win a comparatively valueless cup by means of a comparatively unserviceable craft, a single individual spends some millions of sesterces, and two nations look on intent on the race and applaud. Teams without number, of all kinds, cross and re-cross the Atlantic and Pacific; money is poured out like water on race-horses, motor-cars, dirigible balloons, and what-not. - Like the Crusades, there is for all this a highly rational basis, that most laudable one of amicable rivalry in brain or muscle; but, like the Crusades, it is a question whether it is not here and there just a little overdone.

This does not explain the fascination of Golf. No; but it may help to explain its existence. Golf is some hundreds of years old; but only in the last two or three decades has it obtained its extraordinary

footing. The interesting question is, Why is it that, amongst the thousand-and-one games today played by men, women, and children in Europe and America, why is it that Golf commands so large a share of attention, of serious and thoughtful attention? The literature of Golf is now immense, and, much of it, good. Eminent men have devoted to it serious study; mathematicians try to solve its problems; prime ministers play it; multimillionaires resort to it; and grown men the world over jeopardize for it name and fame and fortune. Not even Bridge quite so absorbs its votaries. Cricketers, foot-ballers, tennis-players do not so utterly abandon homes and offices for the crease, the field, or the lawn. Only the Golfer risks everything so he may excel in putting little balls into little holes. - What is the clue to the mystery?

The clue is a complex one. To begin with, it is threefold: physiological; psychological; social. In the first place, no other game has so simple an object or one requiring, apparently, so simple an exertion of muscular effort. To knock a ball into a hole that seems the acme of ease. It is a purely physiological matter of moving your muscles so, thus the tyro argues; and in order to move his muscles so, he expends more time and money and thought and temper than he cares, at the year's end, to compute. Without doubt the ball must be impelled by muscular movement: how to co-ordinate that muscular movement - that is the physiological factor in the fascination of Golf.

In the second place, when the novice begins to give some serious consideration to the game, he discovers that there is such a thing as style in Golf, and that a good style results in good Golf. He begins to think there must be some recondite knack in the game, a knack that has to be learned by the head and taught by the head to the muscles. Accordingly he takes lessons, learns rules, reads books, laboriously thinks out every stroke, and by degrees comes to the conclusion that

mind or brain has as much to do with the game as have hand and eye. — It is here that the psychological factor comes in.

In the third place, having progressed a bit, having learned with a certain degree of skill to manipulate his several clubs; having learned also, and being able with more or less precision to put into practice, certain carefully conned rules as to how he shall stand and how he shall swing, the beginner- for he is still a beginner discovers that he has not yet learned everything. He discovers that the character of his opponent and the quality of his opponent's play exercise a most extraordinary influence over him. Does he go out with a greater duffer than himself, unconsciously he finds himself growing over-confident or careless. Does he go out with a redoubtable player, one whose name on the Club Handicap stands at Scratch, he cannot allay a certain exaltation or trepidation highly noxious to his game. And it is in vain that he attempts to reason these away. Not only so, but even after months of practice, when the exaltation or trepidation is under control, often it will happen that an opponent's idiosyncrasies will so thoroughly upset him that he will vow never to play with that idiosyncratic again. This we may call the social or moral element. It affects the feelings or the emotions; it affects the mind through these feelings or emotions; and, through the mind, it affects the muscles.

Now, I take it that there is no other game in which these three fundamental factors factors the physiological, the psychological, and the social or moral are so extraordinarily combined or so constantly called into play. Some sports, such as football, polo, rowing, call chiefly for muscular activity, judgement, and nerve; others, such as chess, draughts, backgammon, call upon the intellect only. In no other game that I know of is, first, the whole anatomical frame brought into such strenuous yet delicate action at every stroke; or, second, does the mind play so

important a part in governing the actions of the muscles; or, third, do the character and temperament of your opponent so powerfully affect you as they do in Golf. To play well, these three factors in the game must be most accurately adjusted, and their accurate adjustment is as difficult as it is fascinating.

However, after all this abstruse metaphysical disquisition, shall we essay to discover practically what it is at bottom makes a man play well and what it is makes a man play ill; and what it is makes a man one day play well, and the next day ill? Ah! he who could answer such queries would tear the veil from Maia: Some men there be, of course, who will never play Golf: either they have a poor "eye;" or their muscular sense is but imperfectly developed; or their keenness in sport is nil; or they are too much taken up with the things of this world; or they are men wrapt up in the contemplation of so-called higher things. University professors I have known who, when they ought to have had their eye upon the ball, had their eye upon the clouds, and their minds farther off still. Other men I have known to whom a round of Golf was so casual and frivolous a pass-time that they would seek to relieve the taedium of the game (and perhaps entertain you!) by the narration between strokes of interminable and pointless anecdotes. Never by such men will the Antient and Royal Game be properly played. By such men Golf may be given up at once and for ever. For, despite all appearances to the contrary, Golf is one of the most serious of sports. As well try to study metaphysics indifferently, or to attack the feminine heart indiscreetly, as try to play Golf spiritlessly. One cannot serve Golf and Mammon. Golf is the most jealous of mistresses. Are you worried and distrait; are you in debt and expecting a dun; are stocks unsteady and your margin small; is a note falling due; or has a more than ordinarily delicate feminine entanglement gone somewhat awry? Go not near the links. Take a

...

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country walk, or go for a ride; drop into the Club and ask numerous friends to assuage their thirst; - do anything rather than attempt the simple task of putting a little ball into a little hole. For to put that little ball into that little hole or rather into those eighteen little holes - requires Requires what? Alas! so many things, so many unthought-of things. It requires, in the first place, a mind absolutely imperturbed, imperturbable. You may play chess or bridge or polo or poker on the eve of bankruptcy; I defy you to play Golf on the eve of a curtain lecture. It takes a strong character to play strong Golf. Golf is as accurate an ethical criterion of a man as is the Decalogue. Perhaps this is why your rigid and puritanical Scots Presbyterian plays so admirably. An eminent Scots philosopher once told me that the eminence of Scottish philosophy (note the Scottish appraisal of things Scottish, an you will) was due to the fact that Scots philosophers were brought up on the Shorter Catechism. I venture to think he might have extended his axiom to the St. Andrew's game. But, not to beat about the bush, this much is certain: Golf is a game in which attitude of mind counts for incomparably more than mightiness of muscle. Given an equality of strength and skill, the victory in Golf will be to him who is captain of his soul. Give me a clear eye, a healthy liver, a strong will, a collected mind, and a conscience void of offence both toward God and toward men, and I will back the pigmy against the giant. Golf is a test, not so much of the muscle, or even of the brain and nerves of a man, as it is a test of his inmost veriest self; of his soul and spirit; of his whole character and disposition; of his temperament; of his habit of mind; of the entire content of his mental and moral nature as handed down to him by unnumbered multitudes of ancestors. Does his pedigree date back to Romantic heroes - Frankish horsemen or Provençal Knights? Let him see to it that he curbs his impulsive Southern ardour. Does he trace his descent to the