Penguin Persons & Peppermints Part 6

"Gracious," said I, "are you going to give up War forever, too?"

"The world is going to give it up forever, after this one," he replied.

I have seen him twice since, once when he was still a correspondent, once more recently when he came back in the uniform of Uncle Sam. And each time his greeting has been the same:--

"Have you got rid of that hook yet?"

Then he smiled--a wistful, tragic smile, and asked where all the new traps and bunkers are, how we contrived to lengthen the course, whether the new sixth green is in play yet, all the pathetically unimportant little gossip of our eighty acres of green meadow.

"Ah," he said the last time we parted, "some day I'm coming back and make that 79 at last! Anybody can go over the top, but to break 80 at Stockbridge--!"

Then he left for the trenches of France.

I have another good friend who, unlike the Major, has never given up golf forever. This, as he himself admits (or I should not dare offer the explanation), is because he has never yet really played it. He, too, is rather well known at his avocation of play-writing; but golf is his real business in life when the season once gets under way. He has enabled several professionals to buy motor-cars, he has sent numerous fore-caddies through the high school, he has practised by the hour with individual clubs, but still, after almost a quarter of a century, he has never broken 90 on a first-cla.s.s course. From my superior position (I have on three never-to-be-forgotten occasions broken 80, one of them at Manchester!), I sometimes wonder what keeps him at the game. Then I play with him, and realize. He has the divine, inexplicable faculty, once or twice in a round, of tearing off an astounding drive of 300 yards, by some subtle miracle of timing, which after hours of rolling finally comes to rest far out beyond any other ball in the foursome, or even the professional's drive. What does it matter if he scruffs his approach? What does it matter if he takes three putts? He has the memory of that drive, the unexpected, thrilling feel of it in arms and body, the tingling vision of the day when he will find out how he did it, and be able to repeat at will!

That keeps him going--that, and a trophy he once achieved by winning the beaten eight division of the sixth sixteen. It was a little pocket match-safe, but it is more precious in his eyes than pearls, aye, than much fine gold or his reputation as perhaps the deftest writer of dialogue on the American stage. It represents definite achievement in the game of Golf.

You may suppose, dear Reader, if by some miracle you are not a golfer, that I have been pressing the essayist's privilege and indulging in an attempt at whimsicality. Nothing, I a.s.sure you, could be farther from the fact. I am, in this chapter, a realist. All I have here set down is a record of actuality. Nay, I have erred on the other side. I have said nothing whatever about my own reasons for giving up golf forever.

Nor have I told the story of the elderly gentlemen at a course near Boston, whom I once observed in an exhibition of renunciation that perhaps deserved recording.

This course was of nine holes (it is now the site of several apartment houses), and the last hole called for a carry over a little pond, to a green immediately in front of the club-house. The somewhat elderly and irascible gentleman in question, playing in a foursome, had reached this ninth tee on the sh.o.r.e of the pond, and even from the club veranda it was evident that his temper was not of the best. Things had not been going right for him. His three companions carried the pond.

Then he teed up, and drove--splas.h.!.+--into the water. A remark was wafted through the still air. He teed again--another splash. Then followed an exhibition which I fear my wife would describe as childish. First this elderly gentleman spoke, in a loud, vexed voice.

Then he hurled his driver into the pond. Then he s.n.a.t.c.hed his bag of clubs from the caddie's shoulder, seized a stone from the pond side, stuffed it into the bag, grasped the strap as a hammer-thrower the handle of his weight, swung the bag three times around his head, and let it fly far out over the water. It hit with a great splash, and sank from sight. His three companions, respecting his mood, discreetly continued their game, while he came up to the club-house, sought a far corner of the veranda, and with a face closely resembling a Greek mask of Tragedy, sank down huddled into a chair.

On the veranda, too, his grief was respected. No one spoke to him. In fact, I think no one dared. We were careful that even our mirth did not reach his ears. He was alone with his thoughts. The afternoon waned. His three companions again reached the ninth tee, drove the pond, and came into the club-house to dress. The caddies were about to depart. Then a strange thing happened; at its first intimation we tiptoed to a window to observe. He roused himself, leaned over the rail, and called a caddie.

"Boy," we heard him say, in a deep, tragic voice, "can you swim?"

"Yes, sir," the caddie replied.

"All right. About thirty feet out in front of the ninth tee there's a bag at the bottom of the pond. Go get it for me, and I'll give you five dollars."

The caddie ran, peeling his garments as he went. Modestly retaining his tattered underclothes, he splashed in from the tee, while the somewhat elderly golf player gesticulated directions on the bank.

Presently the boy's toes detected something, and he did a pretty surface dive, emerging with the bag strap in his right hand. He also rescued the floating driver, and we saw the promised bill pa.s.sed to him, and watched him drag on his clothes over his wet undergarments.

Slowly, even tenderly, the somewhat elderly gentleman emptied the water and the stone from his bag, and wiped the clubs on his handkerchief. With the wet, dripping burden over his shoulder he came across the foot-bridge and into the locker room, while we hastened to remove our faces from the door and windows, and attempted to appear casual.

He entered in silence, and strode to his locker. The silence grew painful. Somebody simply had to speak, or laugh. Finally somebody did speak, which was probably the safer alternative.

"Decided to try again, eh?"

The somewhat elderly gentleman wheeled upon the a.s.semblage, his dripping bag still hanging from his shoulder.

"Yes, d.a.m.n it!" he thundered.

Well, I have never thrown my clubs into a pond, and I am sure you have never done anything so childish, either. But how many times have you and I both given up golf forever, and then returned to links the following day--"d.a.m.n it"! We do not play for the exercise, we do not play because it "keeps us out in the open air." Neither motive would hold a man for a week to the tantalizing, costly, soul-racking, nerve- and temper-destroying game. We play it because there is some diabolical--or celestial--fascination about the thing; some will-o'-the-wisp of hope lures us over swamp and swale, through pit and pasture, toward the smooth haven of the putting green; some subtle, mysterious power every now and then coordinates our muscles and lets us achieve perfection for a single stroke, whereafter we tingle with remembrance and thrill with antic.i.p.ation. Golf is the quest of the unattainable, it is a manifestation of the Divine Unrest, it spreads before us the soft green pathway down which we follow the Gleam. That is why you and I shall be giving it up forever on our eightieth birthday.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_"Grape-Vine" Erudition_

You may recall that Mr. Ezra Barkley acquired a great reputation for learning by imparting to the spinsters of Old Chester such astonis.h.i.+ng facts as the approximate number of roe contained in a shad. His sister-in-law, in her ignorance, supposed there were only two hundred!

Ezra also knew who first kept bees, and many other important things, usually of a statistical nature. I cannot recall that Mrs. Deland has told us where Ezra acquired his erudition, and I used at one time to wonder. But now I know. He read the "grape-vine" in the first editions of our daily papers.

Perhaps you don't know what "grape-vine" is? I rejoice in my ability to tell you. It is the name given by newspaper men to the jokes and squibs and bits of information clipped by the busy exchange reader, and put into type, making short paragraphs of varying lengths, which are dropped in at the bottom of a column to fill up the vacant s.p.a.ce when the need arises. This need most often arises in preparing the first edition, the one which catches the early trains for the country. By the time the city edition goes to press sufficient news of battles, carnage, and sudden death, of politics and stock exchanges, has been prepared to fill every inch of available s.p.a.ce.

The city reader, therefore, sees little of this "grape-vine." Thus we have a new argument for country life.

I am now a resident of the country, one hundred and fifty miles removed from New York and as far from Boston; and I am by way of becoming nearly as erudite as Ezra Barkley. I am, indeed, almost bewildered with the ma.s.s of information I am acquiring. This morning I read a column about the European war, all of which I have now forgotten. But how can I ever forget the two lines of "grape-vine" at the very bottom which filled out an otherwise vacant quarter inch? I am permanently a wiser man.

"Many Filipino women catch and sell fish for a living."

Amid a world at war, too, how peaceful and soothing is this tabloid idyl of piscatorial toil!

After the acquisition of this morsel of learning I set diligently to work on the day's papers, both the morning editions and those "evening" editions which come to us here by a train leaving the city early in the afternoon, to see how much erudition I could acc.u.mulate in one sun's span. I think you of the cities will be astonished. I was myself. In a few weeks I shall read the encyclopaedia advertis.e.m.e.nts with scorn instead of longing. For instance, I have learned that "A new tooth-brush is cylindrical and is revolved against the teeth by a plunger working through its spirally grooved handle." Obviously, just the implement for boys interested in motor-cars (as all boys are).

They will play they are grinding valves and run joyously to brush their teeth.

I have learned that "In the last five years our national and state lawmaking bodies have pa.s.sed 62,550 laws." The surprising thing about this information is that the number is so small!

I have learned that "Russia has ten thousand lepers, taken care of by twenty-one inst.i.tutions."

I have acquired these valuable bits of ornithological lore: "The frigate-bird is capable of getting up a speed of ninety-six miles an hour with hardly a movement of its wings. The greater part of its life is spent in the air." "The swallow has a larger mouth in proportion to its size than any other bird."

I have, from the bottom of a single column, gleaned these three items of incalculable value: "By harnessing a fly to a tiny wagon an English scientist found it could draw one hundred and seventy times its own weight over smooth surfaces."

"Missouri last year produced 195,634 tons of lead, a fairly heavy output."

"The United States has five hundred and seventeen b.u.t.ton-factories."

The New York _Times_ staggers me with this statistical line: "One Paris motion-picture plant produces an average of three million feet of films weekly." (This strikes me as a kind of "French frightfulness.")

The New York _Evening Post_ contributes to my welfare and domestic comfort this item: "Both an electric range and a refrigerator are included in a new kitchen cabinet, but are hidden from view by doors when not in use."

I am certainly a wiser man for knowing that "The Mexican seacoast on the Pacific and the Gulf of California is 4,575 miles." And I am at least interested in the fact that "An Englishman has invented a cover for hatchways on vessels that operates on the principle of a roll-top desk." If this hatchway operates on the principle of the only roll-top desk I ever possessed, G.o.d help the poor sailors when the storm breaks!

Such items as these disclose to me the extent of my previous ignorance:--

"Bolivia is producing about one-third of the world's output of tin."

"Records disclose that for several centuries an infusion of nutgalls treated with sulphate of iron composed the only known ink."

"The first job held by William G. McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury, was that of a newsboy selling the Macon _Morning Telegraph_. His next job was that of a farm laborer."

"There are 2,500,000 freight-cars in the country, and their average life is somewhere about twenty years."

"Since gold was discovered in the Auckland province, in 1852, there has been exported from that district gold to the value of $116,796,000."

I should, to be sure, be more completely educated if I could find somewhere, under the sporting news, or at the base of the obituaries, a statement of where Auckland is. But perhaps that information will come to-morrow.