Chapter 2

I took the mashie, because I distrusted my ability to carry the bunker with another telegraph pole. That mashie would have been about the right length for me if I could have stood on a chair while making my stroke. As it was it entered the ground two feet behind the ball and emerged, with a superb divot, just in front.

"Aren't there _any_ short clubs in the bag, Mabel?" I asked. She handed me a straight-faced putter ...

Five strokes later I picked my ball up out of the bunker.

"I'm over-exerting myself," I said. "We'll call that hole a half."

Neither of us was satisfied with his tee shot at the next hole. I picked my ball out of a gorse-bush, and Haynes rescued his from a drain. Then we strolled amicably towards the third tee. Our caddies, unused to such methods, followed reluctantly.

"Was that 'ole 'alved, too, Sir?" piped Mabel with anxious interest.

"It's a nice point. I hardly know. Why?"

She hung her head and blushed. A sudden suspicion struck me.

"Mabel," I said sternly, "are you--_can_ you be--_betting_ on this game?"

"Yes, Sir," she answered with a touch of defiance. "Boys always does."

I told Haynes, who appeared profoundly shocked.

"Good G----! I mean, _Mon dieu!_" he exclaimed. "What are we doing?"

"Surely you can't hold us responsible? The child's parents ..."

"I don't mean _that_, you ass. Here we have the innocent public putting its money on our play, and we're treating the whole thing as a joke. This has got to be a match, after all. A woman's fortune hangs upon the issue--doesn't it, Lucy?"

"Yes, Sir," she answered without comprehension.

From this point the game became a grim struggle. I won the third hole in seventeen, but Haynes took the fourth in nineteen to my twenty-two.

At the fifth I noticed a pond guarding the green. I carefully circumvented this with my faithful putter and holed out in my smallest score of the round so far.

"Hi!" shouted Haynes. "How many?" He had been having a little hockey practice by himself in the rough, and was now preparing to play an approach shot across the pond.

"Twelve!"

"Then I've this for the hole," he yelled, and topped his ball gently into the water ...

So it went on--what the papers call a ding-dong struggle. Suffice it to say that at the twelfth I was dormy one and in a state of partial collapse.

The thirteenth is a short hole. You drive from a kind of pulpit, and the green is below you, protected by large stiff-backed bunkers like pews.

"Last hole, thank Heaven," panted Haynes. "I couldn't bear much more. I'm all of a dither as it is."

Mabel, twittering with excitement, teed up. I looked at the green lying invitingly below and took that gigantic putter. The ball, struck with all my little remaining strength, flew straight towards the biggest bunker, scored a direct hit on the top of it, bounced high in the air--and trickled on to the green.

Haynes invoked the Deity (even at that stressful moment, to his eternal credit, in French) and took his miniature driver. His ball, hit much too hard, pitched in the same bunker, crossed it, climbed up the face of it, and joined mine on the green. Utterly unnerved, we toddled down and took our putts. Haynes, through sheer luck (as he admits), laid his ball stone dead; I had a brain-storm and over-ran the hole, leaving myself a thirty-foot putt for the match. I took long and careful aim, but my hands were shaking pitifully. The ball started on a grotesquely wrong line, turned on a rise in the ground, cannoned off a worm-cast and plopped into the tin. Mabel gave a shriek of joy, and Lucy--well, I regret to say that Lucy made use of a terse expression the French equivalent of which her employer had been at great pains to remember. Haynes and I lay flat on the ground, overcome as much by emotion as by our physical weakness.

At last I struggled to a sitting posture.

"Mabel," I croaked, "I shall want at least ten per cent. commission for that. How much have you won?"

"Please, Sir," she cooed happily, "a 'a'p'ny, Sir."

* * * * *

THE MERRY WIDOW (GRASS).

"Mother's help, to assist lady; husband away; happy home."--_Birmingham Daily Post_.

* * * * *

"A St. Cleather man, who had planted a wastrel, is to be invited to attend the next meeting."--_Western Morning News_.

Surely they don't want the wastrel dug up again.

* * * * *

* * * * *

A NEW USE FOR LATIN.

BY OUR CLASSICAL EXPERT.

"Greek is in the last ditch," writes Sir HENRY NEWBOLT in his _New Study of English Poetry_; "Latin is trembling at sight of the thin edge of the wedge." Still a hope of saving Latin--within limits--yet remains, if the appeal of "Kismet" in _The Spectator_ meets with a sympathetic response. He asks the readers of that journal "to render into Latin in two or three words the old cricket adjuration, 'Play the game.'" He has already had some suggestions, including "_Lude ludum_," from "an eminent scholar," but, like the late Mr. TOOLE in one of his most famous songs, still he is not happy.

In rendering colloquial phrases into the lapidary style of ancient Rome, I confess it is often hard to improve on the brevity of the vernacular, though the admonition "to keep your end up" can be condensed from four words to two in "_sursum cauda_." Again the familiar eulogy, "Stout fellow," can be rendered in a single word by the Virgilian epithet "_bellipotens_." A distinguished Latinist recalls in this context the sentiment of the writer, Pomponius Caninus:--

_Rebus in adversis comitem sors prospera pinguem_ _Det mihi._

And to the same authority I am indebted for the following version of "Don't speak to the man at the wheel:"--

_O silete, circumstantes_ _Nautas rotam operantes._

Though Latin is tottering at our schools it occasionally pops up in unexpected places. For example, not very long ago I heard a popular comedian introduce his family motto and translate it for the benefit of a music-hall audience. Latin quotations, even from HORACE, have gone out of fashion in the Houses of Parliament. Perhaps they will revive on the stage. The unfair preference for Greek shown by doctors in the nomenclature of disease is perhaps to be explained by the value of unintelligibility. Did not DAN O'CONNELL, in his famous vituperative contest with a Dublin washer-woman, triumph in the long-run by calling her an unprincipled parallelopiped?

Meanwhile I appeal to the Editor of _The Westminster Gazette_, who, in his Saturday edition, has done so much to maintain the practice of classical composition, to offer a prize in one of his periodical competitions for the best Latin version, of "to buck up," "to stick it out," "a bit thick," "talking through one's hat," "I don't think," "blighter," "rotter," and "not 'arf."

* * * * *

ECCLESIASTICAL INTELLIGENCE.

"Mr. Zangwill (the Chief Rabbi) also spoke."--_Daily News_.

Following the appointment (recently announced by Mr. Punch) of Mr. H.G. WELLS as Chaplain to the Forces.

* * * * *

From a cattle-auction advertisement:--

"NOTE.--Pigs and Calves are requested to be forward by 11 o'clock."--_Kirkendbrightshire Advertiser_.

_Vive la politesse!_

* * * * *

"The hereditary privilege of remaining covered in the presence of the Monarch was granted by Henry VIII. to John Forester of Watling Street, in 1570."--_Observer_.

We wonder what GOOD QUEEN BESS thought about this posthumous interference on the part of her papa.

* * * * *

From Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S latest novel:--

"It was, indeed, something of an achievement to get on terms of confidence with those alien children ... many of whom had acquired a precocious suspicion of Greeks bearing gifts. That sense of _caveat donor_ was perhaps their most pathetic characteristic."

Timeo Danaos et dona accipientes! Which may be roughly rendered: "I suspect TINO, even when he's in receipt of a subsidy."

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* * * * *

LAVENDER.

I'm tickled by a pansy, wot's called an 'Appy Thought; I'm gone on yaller "Glories" of the proper smelly sort; And once I 'eld gerani-ums was grander than the rest, But now I likes the lavender, the simple-lookin' lavender, A little bit o' lavender the best.

My mate 'e'd been a gardener; 'is roses wasn't beat; 'Is marrers was a marvel and 'is strorberries a treat; But w'en 'e leave 'is corliflow'rs an' lettuce to enlist, 'E said it was the lavender, 'is blinkin' bit o' lavender, A silly patch o' lavender 'e missed.

In France I used to foller 'im to gather up the bits; 'E "'adn't 'eard" o' snipers and 'e "wasn't 'eedin'" Fritz; Till in a slip o' garden by the Convent 'e was copped, And dahn among the lavender, the trodden sodden lavender, The bloody muddy lavender 'e dropped.

A job it was to fix 'im up and do a double bunk, But 'e was chattin' casual while I was oozin' funk; 'E yarned abaht the bits o' things 'e used to see at Kew, An' told me of the lavender, the tidy lot of lavender, The leagues an' leagues o' lavender 'e grew.

They book 'im through to Blighty and 'e drop a line from 'ome, Comparin' clay in Flanders with the proper British loam; "An' w'en you gets yer seven days, you come along an' see The roses an' the lavender, the lavender, the lavender ... You oughter see the lavender!" says 'e.

My mate 'e 'ad a sister, w'ich I didn't even guess Till I was at the wicker-gate an' see 'er cotton dress; 'Er face was sweet as summer-time an' pretty as a tune; 'Er eyes was like the lavender, the blue bewitchin' lavender, As lovely as the lavender in June.

She bid me welcome kindly, an' as quiet as you please, An' fust we talk o' battlefields an' then we talk o' bees; But, though the 'olly'ocks was aht an' all the roses red, I only see the lavender, the patch o' purple lavender; "I'm pleased you likes the lavender," she said.

I'm tickled by a pansy, wot's called an 'Appy Thought; I'm gone on yaller "Glories" of the proper smelly sort; An' once I 'eld gerani-ums was gayer than the rest, But now I likes the lavender, a little sprig o' lavender, I likes a bit o' lavender the best.

* * * * *

AN INFANT PRODIGY.

"Sir Frederick Smith, the Attorney-General, is 5, but does not look it for he keeps a full thatch and a fresh complexion, and has features so softly contoured that as a baby he must have been the pride of the family."--_Yorkshire Evening Post_.

* * * * *

ASIA IN EUROPE.

"Serbia has been crushed, and, with the exception of Salonika and the regions temporarily held by the British in Palestine and Mesopotamia, Germany holds command of Middle Europe.

"That becomes quite obvious when one looks at the map."

_Mr. ROBERT BLATCHFORD in "The Sunday Chronicle."_

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* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

_Monday, December 3rd._--No further publicity is to be given to Lord LANSDOWNE'S letter if the Government can help it. But the author is not to be prosecuted and the rumour that Lansdowne House has been raided by the police and its noble owner's type writer confiscated lacks confirmation.

A long and complicated answer by Mr. CLYNES, describing and defending the new sugar-cards, was not altogether satisfying. Sir F. BANBURY'S inquiry, "Does the hon. gentleman think that anybody will get any sugar after this?" was prompted, no doubt, by anxiety for the future of his famous cakes; but it expressed the general doubt.

Lord ROBERT CECIL, who has hitherto stoutly denied that the Allies have given ex-KING CONSTANTINE a retiring allowance, admitted that the Greek Government might make him some payment, and that the Allies furnished Greece with money. In other words, Greece has given TINO a penny to play in the next street, and the Allies have lent her the penny.

Asked by Mr. GEORGE LAMBERT whether the labour expended on fitting gas-bags to motor cars could not be more usefully employed, the MINISTER OF NATIONAL SERVICE replied as follows: "The questions involved in the use of gas-bags, _including that raised by the hon. Member_, are being considered." And Mr. LAMBERT is now wondering whether Sir AUCKLAND GEDDES intended to be personal.

_Tuesday, December 4th._--In answer to a question as to what steps the Board of Agriculture was taking to replant districts denuded of trees, Sir RICHARD WINFREY replied that "surplus nursery stock" would be transplanted by "gangs of women." Evidently surprised by the laughter which followed, he whispered to his neighbour, "Have I said anything very funny?"

At the end of a long catechism by Mr. KING regarding the literature issued by the War Aims Committee, Mr. OUTHWAITE inquired if it could be sent to Members of the House. Major GUEST was quite ready to oblige. In his opinion some Members, including Mr. OUTHWAITE himself, would be much the better for its perusal.

Mr. PRATT is about the last Minister whom I should have suspected of cynicism, but I have my doubts about him now. By his admission the British Pharmacopoeia (war edition) contains "Glycerins devoid of glycerin and syrups free from sugar." "But," he added, "it does not materially lessen their value as medicines."

Upon the House being asked to recommit the Representation of the People's Bill in respect of the provisions dealing with conscientious objectors and redistribution in Ireland, Mr. REDMOND, naturally anxious lest the House should imagine that Ireland's objection to military service was conscientious, requested the SPEAKER to divide the debate into water-tight compartments. No artificial restraints, however, could keep Mr. HEALY within bounds. He ranged at large over Irish history, and declared that the decision to impose on Ireland a (more or less) equitable system of representation was an outrage only to be compared with the breach of the Treaty of Limerick.

As a humourist on this occasion Mr. HEALY had to yield the palm to a colleague. The CHIEF SECRETARY incidentally referred to the arrangement that no contentious business should be taken during the War. "Except by agreement," interjected Mr. NUGENT.

_Wednesday, December 5th._--Not long ago Lord ROBERT CECIL referred to a rumour that the German Government intended to encourage polygamy. Mr. KING, shocked to discover that this charge rested upon a statement in a neutral newspaper, protested against the practice of making speeches "on such miserable foundations." As the bulk of the hon. Member's own utterances have a similar basis the retort was almost too obvious; and Mr. BALFOUR in making it must have felt as if he had shot his bird sitting.

The courage of the hero who took up the challenge: "Whoever shall these boots displace, must meet Bombastes face to face," was comparatively nothing to that of Mr. H.W. FORSTER, who in the interests of economy has promised to limit the height of women's boots. There will be much stamping of lofty heels at this ukase. Sir JOHN REES thought another order lengthening skirts was the logical corollary, and so it is if the Government really want "to make both ends meet." But Mr. FORSTER showed no disposition to embark upon petticoat government.

Irish Nationalists worked themselves into seven different kinds of fury over the decision of the Government to apply the rules of arithmetic to the redistribution of seats in their beloved country. Mr. DILLON threatened the House with the possibility that at the next General Election he and his colleagues might be wiped out of existence. Scared by this awful prospect so many Liberals voted against the closure that the Government only escaped defeat by 29.

_Thursday, December 6th._--The prospect of an all-night sitting rendered the House unusually irritable. Mr. HEALY fulminated at Sir E. CARSON (who was not present) in language that reminded Colonel SHARMAN-CRAWFORD of "a low police-court." Mr. DILLON'S high top note was ceaselessly employed in emitting adjectives more remarkable, as Mr. BONAR LAW icily observed, for their strength than for their novelty. At one time it looked as if there was to be a first-class Irish row. But wiser counsels ultimately prevailed. The House as a whole was in no mood for protracted discussion in which non-Irish moonlighters might participate.

At last there is hope that the instructions of the FOOD-CONTROLLER will have some practical result. To-day in reply to a question Mr. CLYNES said, "The order about to be issued will contain provisions ..." Ah! if it only will.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE LOST LEADER.

The Hillsbury Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Lastshire Volunteers were being inspected for efficiency by a Captain of the Grenadier Guards, who had graciously come down and devoted his Sunday afternoon to this purpose. Forty "A" men had obeyed their country's call and turned up on parade, and among the officers was Alfred Herbert, who was a second-lieutenant of the mature age of fifty. He was enthusiastic, but a slow learner, always confusing himself and his men. Still, he was obviously doing his best, and the men forgave him and did _their_ best to cover up his faults.

"Mr. Herbert," said the inspecting officer sharply, "be good enough to take the company out and move them about for a few minutes."

Herbert's heart began to beat at the double. He had known that this ordeal might come, but he had hoped against hope that, if he made himself small and meek, he would be overlooked. All was in vain; his time had come. "Drill them as a company of two platoons," said the stern Guardsman.

"Yes, Sir," said Herbert. "Shall I--"

"Take them out at once, Sir. We have no time to waste."

It was at this moment that Herbert's first dream, or I should rather say the first phase of his treble dream, began. He dreamt that he called the company to attention, caused them to slope arms, and moved them to the right in fours.

So far so good.

Now they were in columns of fours and marching gaily.

"This is a good dream," thought Herbert. "I will get them into line. On the right, form company!" he shouted at the top of his voice.

He had done it. He had got the rear rank in front, and this is a terrible state of affairs, leading to the most frightful complications--at any rate in the Lastshire Volunteers.

"Move to the right in fours!" he commanded; and then the trouble began.

In less than half a minute, forty deserving men, including N.C.O.'s, were tied up into a series of terrifically complicated knots, in the midst of which the Company Sergeant-Major bobbed about, an angry cork on a stormy ocean of desperate men.

"Very good, Mr. Herbert, oh, very good indeed," said the Inspecting Officer.

At this point Herbert passed into his second phase and dreamed that it was all a dream.

But the question remained: what was he to do?

"Double!" he shouted, and himself gave the example. And as he ran he passed into his third phase and dreamed it was all true; and he woke up with a start at the orderly room, and found that it _was_ true.

That very evening he resigned his commission, "owing," as he wrote, "to an incurable habit of getting the rear rank in front."

What happened to the men I cannot say with certainty. I think they are still struggling.

* * * * *

* * * * *

MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS O'REILLY.

ON THE DANGER OF POPULARITY.

_The Ballybun Binnacle_ has ceased publication--I hope temporarily, for I have had to fall back on _The Times_. The latter is the better paper for wrapping things in, and they seem to use a good kind of ink which does not come off on the butter, but it's a bit weak on its advertising side. It was O'Mullins across the road who pointed this out to me first. He had, he says, an advertisement a whole week in _The Times_ for a total abstainer to make himself otherwise useful and to mend his stable door; but no apparent notice was taken of it. The same advertisement had not been a couple of hours in _The Binnacle_ before three tinkers tried to steal his horse.

I have heard people speak well of the editorials in our chief London rival, but they are not thought much of in Ballybun; they haven't the flavour. Our paper used to be strongly political, but the increase in the number of subscribers did not pay for the libel actions, and so of late we have been cultivating an open mind and advertisements. It is true that even so it was impossible for Casey, our editor, to steer wholly clear of vexed political questions, but his latest manner was admirably statesmanlike. He would summarise the opposing views of our eight or nine parties and then state boldly that he agreed with most of them, and as for the rest he would not shrink to declare, in the face of the world if necessary, that they were full of an intellectual Zeitgeist, unfortunately only too sporadic. He would then sum up by drawing attention to the bargain sale of white goods at the Ballybun Emporium. Everybody liked this, and the Ballybun Bon Marché would send in its advertisement for our next week's issue.

_The Binnacle_ has ceased publication, of course, before. When the editor took his summer holiday or went to a friend's wedding in the country he would often leave the bringing of it out to his staff. The latter used normally to edit the sporting and fashionable columns and was called Flannagan, but had only one eye and was somewhat eccentric. Flannagan couldn't be bothered sometimes and sometimes he would go fishing. Still, although the paper would not come out just when we expected, Flannagan might relent and bring it out two or three days later, and at all events he always told us the news whenever he met us in the street.

Thus we could not strictly say that we had no local newspaper. But now, I fear, the case is altered, and _The Binnacle_ has been killed solely by its own popularity.

It doesn't do for an editor to be too popular. People used to drop in on Casey at all hours of the day and lend a hand and smoke his tobacco and try to borrow money. His sanctum became the fashionable lounge of the Ballybun _élite_. A great gap was caused in the front of the paper amongst the best paying advertisements by Kelly's trying to clean his pipe with part of the linotype machine. Casey noticed this, and further attributed the matter to the Censor, whom he attacked vigorously in a leading article for trying to throttle the safety-valve of trade by inoculating the thin end of the wedge; he will do this again, he added, at his own peril. He also told Kelly the same.