Quotes -30/11/09

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
           -- Fred Allen

 Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
           -- Russell Baker

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
           -- Robert Frost

A hotel isn't like a home, but it's better than being a house guest.
           -- William Feather

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.
           -- Woody Allen, Without Feathers (1976)

Life is a long lesson in humility.
           -- James M. Barrie

The only sure thing about luck is that it will change.
           -- Bret Harte

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
           -- Peter Ustinov

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
           -- George Carlin

The Bet - Anton Chekhov

I
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from corner to
corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave in the
autumn fifteen years before. There were many clever people at the
party and much interesting conversation. They talked among other
things of capital punishment. The guests, among them not a few
scholars and journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital
punishment. They found it obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted
to a Christian State and immoral. Some of them thought that capital
punishment should be replaced universally by life-imprisonment.
"I don't agree with you," said the host. "I myself have experienced
neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may judge
_a priori_, then in my opinion capital punishment is more moral and
more humane than imprisonment. Execution kills instantly,
life-imprisonment kills by degrees. Who is the more humane
executioner, one who kills you in a few seconds or one who draws the
life out of you incessantly, for years?"
"They're both equally immoral," remarked one of the guests, "because
their purpose is the same, to take away life. The State is not God. It
has no right to take away that which it cannot give back, if it should
so desire."
Among the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five. On
being asked his opinion, he said:
"Capital punishment and life-imprisonment are equally immoral; but if
I were offered the choice between them, I would certainly choose the
second. It's better to live somehow than not to live at all."
There ensued a lively discussion. The banker who was then younger and
more nervous suddenly lost his temper, banged his fist on the table,
and turning to the young lawyer, cried out:
"It's a lie. I bet you two millions you wouldn't stick in a cell even
for five years."
"If you mean it seriously," replied the lawyer, "then I bet I'll stay
not five but fifteen."
"Fifteen! Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two millions."
"Agreed. You stake two millions, I my freedom," said the lawyer.
So this wild, ridiculous bet came to pass. The banker, who at that
time had too many millions to count, spoiled and capricious, was
beside himself with rapture. During supper he said to the lawyer
jokingly:
"Come to your senses, young roan, before it's too late. Two millions
are nothing to me, but you stand to lose three or four of the best
years of your life. I say three or four, because you'll never stick it
out any longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary
is much heavier than enforced imprisonment. The idea that you have the
right to free yourself at any moment will poison the whole of your
life in the cell. I pity you."
And now the banker, pacing from corner to corner, recalled all this
and asked himself:
"Why did I make this bet? What's the good? The lawyer loses fifteen
years of his life and I throw away two millions. Will it convince
people that capital punishment is worse or better than imprisonment
for life? No, no! all stuff and rubbish. On my part, it was the
caprice of a well-fed man; on the lawyer's pure greed of gold."
He recollected further what happened after the evening party. It was
decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the
strictest observation, in a garden wing of the banker's house. It was
agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right to
cross the threshold, to see living people, to hear human voices, and
to receive letters and newspapers. He was permitted to have a musical
instrument, to read books, to write letters, to drink wine and smoke
tobacco. By the agreement he could communicate, but only in silence,
with the outside world through a little window specially constructed
for this purpose. Everything necessary, books, music, wine, he could
receive in any quantity by sending a note through the window. The
agreement provided for all the minutest details, which made the
confinement strictly solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to remain
exactly fifteen years from twelve o'clock of November 14th, 1870, to
twelve o'clock of November 14th, 1885. The least attempt on his part
to violate the conditions, to escape if only for two minutes before
the time freed the banker from the obligation to pay him the two
millions.
During the first year of imprisonment, the lawyer, as far as it was
possible to judge from his short notes, suffered terribly from
loneliness and boredom. From his wing day and night came the sound of
the piano. He rejected wine and tobacco. "Wine," he wrote, "excites
desires, and desires are the chief foes of a prisoner; besides,
nothing is more boring than to drink good wine alone," and tobacco
spoils the air in his room. During the first year the lawyer was sent
books of a light character; novels with a complicated love interest,
stories of crime and fantasy, comedies, and so on.
In the second year the piano was heard no longer and the lawyer asked
only for classics. In the fifth year, music was heard again, and the
prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him said that during the
whole of that year he was only eating, drinking, and lying on his bed.
He yawned often and talked angrily to himself. Books he did not read.
Sometimes at nights he would sit down to write. He would write for a
long time and tear it all up in the morning. More than once he was
heard to weep.
In the second half of the sixth year, the prisoner began zealously to
study languages, philosophy, and history. He fell on these subjects so
hungrily that the banker hardly had time to get books enough for him.
In the space of four years about six hundred volumes were bought at
his request. It was while that passion lasted that the banker received
the following letter from the prisoner: "My dear gaoler, I am writing
these lines in six languages. Show them to experts. Let them read
them. If they do not find one single mistake, I beg you to give orders
to have a gun fired off in the garden. By the noise I shall know that
my efforts have not been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and
countries speak in different languages; but in them all burns the same
flame. Oh, if you knew my heavenly happiness now that I can understand
them!" The prisoner's desire was fulfilled. Two shots were fired in
the garden by the banker's order.
Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his
table and read only the New Testament. The banker found it strange
that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite volumes,
should have spent nearly a year in reading one book, easy to
understand and by no means thick. The New Testament was then replaced
by the history of religions and theology.
During the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an
extraordinary amount, quite haphazard. Now he would apply himself to
the natural sciences, then he would read Byron or Shakespeare. Notes
used to come from him in which he asked to be sent at the same time a
book on chemistry, a text-book of medicine, a novel, and some treatise
on philosophy or theology. He read as though he were swimming in the
sea among broken pieces of wreckage, and in his desire to save his
life was eagerly grasping one piece after another.
II
The banker recalled all this, and thought:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he receives his freedom. Under the
agreement, I shall have to pay him two millions. If I pay, it's all
over with me. I am ruined for ever ..."
Fifteen years before he had too many millions to count, but now he was
afraid to ask himself which he had more of, money or debts. Gambling
on the Stock-Exchange, risky speculation, and the recklessness of
which he could not rid himself even in old age, had gradually brought
his business to decay; and the fearless, self-confident, proud man of
business had become an ordinary banker, trembling at every rise and
fall in the market.
"That cursed bet," murmured the old man clutching his head in
despair... "Why didn't the man die? He's only forty years old. He will
take away my last farthing, marry, enjoy life, gamble on the Exchange,
and I will look on like an envious beggar and hear the same words from
him every day: 'I'm obliged to you for the happiness of my life. Let
me help you.' No, it's too much! The only escape from bankruptcy and
disgrace--is that the man should die."
The clock had just struck three. The banker was listening. In the
house every one was asleep, and one could hear only the frozen trees
whining outside the windows. Trying to make no sound, he took out of
his safe the key of the door which had not been opened for fifteen
years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house. The garden was
dark and cold. It was raining. A damp, penetrating wind howled in the
garden and gave the trees no rest. Though he strained his eyes, the
banker could see neither the ground, nor the white statues, nor the
garden wing, nor the trees. Approaching the garden wing, he called the
watchman twice. There was no answer. Evidently the watchman had taken
shelter from the bad weather and was now asleep somewhere in the
kitchen or the greenhouse.
"If I have the courage to fulfil my intention," thought the old man,
"the suspicion will fall on the watchman first of all."
In the darkness he groped for the steps and the door and entered the
hall of the garden-wing, then poked his way into a narrow passage and
struck a match. Not a soul was there. Some one's bed, with no
bedclothes on it, stood there, and an iron stove loomed dark in the
corner. The seals on the door that led into the prisoner's room were
unbroken.
When the match went out, the old man, trembling from agitation, peeped
into the little window.
In the prisoner's room a candle was burning dimly. The prisoner
himself sat by the table. Only his back, the hair on his head and his
hands were visible. Open books were strewn about on the table, the two
chairs, and on the carpet near the table.
Five minutes passed and the prisoner never once stirred. Fifteen
years' confinement had taught him to sit motionless. The banker tapped
on the window with his finger, but the prisoner made no movement in
reply. Then the banker cautiously tore the seals from the door and put
the key into the lock. The rusty lock gave a hoarse groan and the door
creaked. The banker expected instantly to hear a cry of surprise and
the sound of steps. Three minutes passed and it was as quiet inside as
it had been before. He made up his mind to enter.
Before the table sat a man, unlike an ordinary human being. It was a
skeleton, with tight-drawn skin, with long curly hair like a woman's,
and a shaggy beard. The colour of his face was yellow, of an earthy
shade; the cheeks were sunken, the back long and narrow, and the hand
upon which he leaned his hairy head was so lean and skinny that it was
painful to look upon. His hair was already silvering with grey, and no
one who glanced at the senile emaciation of the face would have
believed that he was only forty years old. On the table, before his
bended head, lay a sheet of paper on which something was written in a
tiny hand.
"Poor devil," thought the banker, "he's asleep and probably seeing
millions in his dreams. I have only to take and throw this half-dead
thing on the bed, smother him a moment with the pillow, and the most
careful examination will find no trace of unnatural death. But, first,
let us read what he has written here."
The banker took the sheet from the table and read:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock midnight, I shall obtain my freedom and
the right to mix with people. But before I leave this room and see the
sun I think it necessary to say a few words to you. On my own clear
conscience and before God who sees me I declare to you that I despise
freedom, life, health, and all that your books call the blessings of
the world.
"For fifteen years I have diligently studied earthly life. True, I saw
neither the earth nor the people, but in your books I drank fragrant
wine, sang songs, hunted deer and wild boar in the forests, loved
women... And beautiful women, like clouds ethereal, created by the
magic of your poets' genius, visited me by night and whispered to me
wonderful tales, which made my head drunken. In your books I climbed
the summits of Elbruz and Mont Blanc and saw from there how the sun
rose in the morning, and in the evening suffused the sky, the ocean
and lie mountain ridges with a purple gold. I saw from there how above
me lightnings glimmered cleaving the clouds; I saw green forests,
fields, rivers, lakes, cities; I heard syrens singing, and the playing
of the pipes of Pan; I touched the wings of beautiful devils who came
flying to me to speak of God... In your books I cast myself into
bottomless abysses, worked miracles, burned cities to the ground,
preached new religions, conquered whole countries...
"Your books gave me wisdom. All that unwearying human thought created
in the centuries is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I know
that I am cleverer than you all.
"And I despise your books, despise all worldly blessings and wisdom.
Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive as a mirage. Though
you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the
face of the earth like the mice underground; and your posterity, your
history, and the immortality of your men of genius will be as frozen
slag, burnt down together with the terrestrial globe.
"You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You take falsehood for truth and
ugliness for beauty. You would marvel if suddenly apple and orange
trees should bear frogs and lizards instead of fruit, and if roses
should begin to breathe the odour of a sweating horse. So do I marvel
at you, who have bartered heaven for earth. I do not want to
understand you.
"That I may show you in deed my contempt for that by which you live, I
waive the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise, and
which I now despise. That I may deprive myself of my right to them, I
shall come out from here five minutes before the stipulated term, and
thus shall violate the agreement."
When he had read, the banker put the sheet on the table, kissed the
head of the strange man, and began to weep. He went out of the wing.
Never at any other time, not even after his terrible losses on the
Exchange, had he felt such contempt for himself as now. Coming home,
he lay down on his bed, but agitation and tears kept him a long time
from sleeping...
The next morning the poor watchman came running to him and told him
that they had seen the man who lived in the wing climb through the
window into the garden. He had gone to the gate and disappeared. The
banker instantly went with his servants to the wing and established
the escape of his prisoner. To avoid unnecessary rumours he took the
paper with the renunciation from the table and, on his return, locked
it in his safe.

lincoln ejects a visitor

In today's encore excerpt - the
portrait artist Francis Bicknell Carpenter
(1830-1900), who used the White House as a
studio while painting Abraham Lincoln,
studied and painted Lincoln for nearly six
months. On at least one notable occasion, he
saw the forceful side of Lincoln's
personality. He wrote:



"It has been the business of my life to study
the human face, and I have said repeatedly to
friends that Mr. Lincoln had the saddest face
I ever attempted to paint. During some of the
dark days of the spring and summer of 1864, I
saw him at times when his care-worn, troubled
appearance was enough to bring the tears of
sympathy into the eyes of his most bitter
opponents. I recall particularly one day,
when, having occasion to pass through the
main hall of the domestic apartments, I met
him alone, pacing up and down a narrow
passage, his hands behind him, his head bent
forward upon his breast, heavy black rings
under his eyes, showing sleepless
nights--altogether such a picture of the
effects of sorrow and care as I have never
seen! ...



"A great deal has been said of the uniform
meekness and kindness of heart of Mr.
Lincoln, but there would sometimes be
afforded evidence that one grain of sand too
much would break even this camel's back.
Among the callers at the White House one day
was an officer who had been cashiered from
the service. He had prepared an elaborate
defense of himself, which he consumed much
time in reading to the President. When he had
finished, Mr. Lincoln replied that even upon
his own statement of the case, the facts
would not warrant executive interference.
Disappointed, and considerably crestfallen,
the man withdrew. ...



"[However, the man returned on two additional
occasions and presented the same case in its
entirety, and was twice again dismissed]
Turning very abruptly, the officer said:
'Well, Mr. President, I see you are fully
determined not to do me justice!' This was
too aggravating, even for Mr. Lincoln.
Manifesting, however, no more feeling than
that indicated by a slight compression of the
lips, he very quietly arose, laid down a
package of papers he held in his hand, and
then suddenly seized the defunct officer by
the coat-collar, he marched him forcibly to
the door, saying, as he ejected him into the
passage: 'Sir, I gave you fair warning never
to show yourself in this room again. I can
bear censure, but not insult!' In a whining
tone the man begged for his papers, which he
had dropped. 'Begone, sir,' said the
President, 'your papers will be sent to you.
I never wish to see your face again.' "



Harold Holzer, Lincoln as I Knew Him,
Algonquin, Copyright 1999 by Harold Holzer,
pp. 193-195.

Universal laws

1. Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to pee.

2. Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

3. Law of Probability -The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

4. Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal and someone always answers.

5. Law of the Alibi - If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.

6. Variation Law - If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now (works every time).

7. Law of the Bath - When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

8. Law of Close Encounters -The probability of meeting someone you know increases dramatically when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

9. Law of the Result - When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will.

10. Law of Biomechanics - The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

11. Law of the Theater and Hockey Arena - At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle arrive last and they are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the toilet and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over while those in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and who stay to the bitter end of the performance and beyond.. The aisle people also are very surly folk.

12. The Starbucks Law - As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

13. Murphy's Law of Lockers - If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

14. Law of Physical Surfaces - The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor covering are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet/rug.

15. Law of Logical Argument - Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

16. Brown's Law of Physical Appearance - If the clothes fit, they're ugly.

17. Oliver's Law of Public Speaking - A closed mouth gathers no feet.

18. Wilson's Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

19. Doctors' Law - If you don't feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you'll feel better. Don't make an appointment and you'll stay sick..

how did they make this clip?

http://office-humour.co.uk/item/13194/

Stephen Leacock

FOR some years past a rising tide of lecturers and literary men
from England has washed upon the shores of our North American
continent. The purpose of each one of them is to make a new discovery
of America. They come over to us travelling in great simplicity,
and they return in the ducal suite of the Aquitania. They carry
away with them their impressions of America, and when they reach
England they sell them. This export of impressions has now been
going on so long that the balance of trade in impressions is all
disturbed. There is no doubt that the Americans and Canadians have
been too generous in this matter of giving away impressions. We
emit them with the careless ease of a glow worm, and like the
glow-worm ask for nothing in return.
But this irregular and one-sided traffic has now assumed such great
proportions that we are compelled to ask whether it is right to
allow these people to carry away from us impressions of the very
highest commercial value without giving us any pecuniary compensation
whatever. British lecturers have been known to land in New York,
pass the customs, drive uptown in a closed taxi, and then forward
to England from the closed taxi itself ten dollars' worth of
impressions of American national character. I have myself seen an
English literary man,--the biggest, I believe: he had at least the
appearance of it; sit in the corridor of a fashionable New York
hotel and look gloomily into his hat, and then from his very hat
produce an estimate of the genius of Amer ica at twenty cents a
word. The nice question as to whose twenty cents that was never
seems to have occurred to him.
I am not writing in the faintest spirit of jealousy. I quite admit
the extraordinary ability that is involved in this peculiar
susceptibility to impressions. I have estimated that some of these
English visitors have been able to receive impressions at the rate of
four to the second; in fact, they seem to get them every time they
see twenty cents. But without jealousy or complaint, I do feel that
somehow these impressions are inadequate and fail to depict us as we
really are.
Let me illustrate what I mean. Here are some of the impressions of
New York, gathered from visitors' discoveries of America, and
reproduced not perhaps word for word but as closely as I can remember
them. "New York", writes one, "nestling at the foot of the Hudson,

gave me an impression of cosiness, of tiny graciousness: in short, of
weeness." But compare this--"New York," according to another
discoverer of America, "gave me an impression of size, of vastness;
there seemed to be a big ness about it not found in smaller places."
A third visitor writes, "New York struck me as hard, cruel, almost
inhuman." This, I think, was because his taxi driver had charged him
three dollars. "The first thing that struck me in New York," writes
another, "was the Statue of Liberty." But, after all, that was only
natural: it was the first thing that could reach him.
Nor is it only the impressions of the metropolis that seem to fall
short of reality. Let me quote a few others taken at random here
and there over the continent.
"I took from Pittsburg," says an English visitor, "an impression
of something that I could hardly define--an atmosphere rather than
an idea."
All very well, But, after all, had he the right to take it? Granted
that Pittsburg has an atmosphere rather than an idea, the attempt
to carry away this atmosphere surely borders on rapacity.
"New Orleans," writes another visitor, "opened her arms to me and
bestowed upon me the soft and languorous kiss of the Caribbean."
This statement may or may not be true; but in any case it hardly
seems the fair thing to mention it.
"Chicago," according to another book of discovery, "struck me as a
large city. Situated as it is and where it is, it seems destined to
be a place of importance."
Or here, again, is a form of "impression" that recurs again and
again-"At Cleveland I felt a distinct note of optimism in the air."
This same note of optimism is found also at Toledo, at Toronto--in
short, I believe it indicates nothing more than that some one gave
the visitor a cigar. Indeed it generally occurs during the familiar
scene in which the visitor describes his cordial reception in an
unsuspecting American town: thus:
"I was met at the station (called in America the depot) by a member
of the Municipal Council driving his own motor car. After giving me
an excellent cigar, he proceeded to drive me about the town, to
various points of interest, including the municipal abattoir, where
he gave me another excellent cigar, the Carnegie public library, the

First National Bank (the courteous manager of which gave me an
excellent cigar) and the Second Congregational Church where I had the
pleasure of meeting the pastor. The pastor, who appeared a man of
breadth and culture, gave me another cigar. In the evening a dinner,
admirably cooked and excellently served, was tendered to me at a
leading hotel." And of course he took it. After which his statement
that he carried away from the town a feeling of optimism explains
itself: he had four cigars, the dinner, and half a page of
impressions at twenty cents a word.

Nor is it only by the theft of impressions that we suffer at the
hands of these English discoverers of America. It is a part of the
system also that we have to submit to being lectured to by our
talented visitors. It is now quite understood that as soon as an
English literary man finishes a book he is rushed across to America
to tell the people of the United States and Canada all about it, and
how he came to write it. At home, in his own country, they don't care
how he came to write it. He's written it and that's enough. But in
America it is different. One month after the distinguished author's
book on The Boyhood of Botticelli has appeared in London, he is seen
to land in New York very quietly out of one of the back portholes of
the Olympic. That same afternoon you will find him in an armchair in
one of the big hotels giving off impressions of America to a group of
reporters. After which notices appear in all the papers to the effect
that he will lecture in Carnegie Hall on "Botticelli the Boy". The
audience is assured beforehand. It consists of all the people who
feel that they have to go because they know all about Botticelli and
all the people who feel that they have to go because they don't know
anything about Botticelli. By this means the lecturer is able to rake
the whole country from Montreal to San Francisco with "Botticelli the
Boy". Then he turns round, labels his lecture "Botticelli the Man",
and rakes it all back again. All the way across the continent and
back he emits impressions, estimates of national character, and
surveys of American genius. He sails from New York in a blaze of
publicity, with his cordon of reporters round him, and a month later
publishes his book "America as I Saw It". It is widely read--in
America.

quotes

How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.

           -- Norman Douglas

A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.

           -- William James

Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God's final word on where your lips end.

           -- Jerry Seinfeld

In a mad world only the mad are sane.

           -- Akira Kurosawa

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

           -- Paul Valery, 1895

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

           -- Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

           -- Pablo Picasso

Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter because nobody listens.

           -- Nick Diamos

Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.

           -- Robert Orben

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

           -- Will Durant

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

           -- Sir William Osler

When I meet a man I ask myself, 'Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?'

           -- Rita Rudner

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.

           -- Louis Pasteur

There's no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn't tell you about it?

           -- Kin Hubbard

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

           -- Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973) "Emotions"

wodehouse - the clicking of cuthbert

The young man came into the smoking-room of the clubhouse, and flung
his bag with a clatter on the floor. He sank moodily into an arm-chair
and pressed the bell.
"Waiter!"
"Sir?"
The young man pointed at the bag with every evidence of distaste.
"You may have these clubs," he said. "Take them away. If you don't want
them yourself, give them to one of the caddies."
Across the room the Oldest Member gazed at him with a grave sadness
through the smoke of his pipe. His eye was deep and dreamy--the eye of
a man who, as the poet says, has seen Golf steadily and seen it whole.
"You are giving up golf?" he said.
He was not altogether unprepared for such an attitude on the young
man's part: for from his eyrie on the terrace above the ninth green he
had observed him start out on the afternoon's round and had seen him
lose a couple of balls in the lake at the second hole after taking
seven strokes at the first.
"Yes!" cried the young man fiercely. "For ever, dammit! Footling game!
Blanked infernal fat-headed silly ass of a game! Nothing but a waste of
time."
The Sage winced.
"Don't say that, my boy."
"But I do say it. What earthly good is golf? Life is stern and life is
earnest. We live in a practical age. All round us we see foreign
competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing
golf! What do we get out of it? Is golf any _use_? That's what I'm
asking you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this
pestilential pastime has done a man any practical good?"
The Sage smiled gently.
"I could name a thousand."
"One will do."
"I will select," said the Sage, "from the innumerable memories that
rush to my mind, the story of Cuthbert Banks."
"Never heard of him."
"Be of good cheer," said the Oldest Member. "You are going to hear of
him now."

* * * * *
It was in the picturesque little settlement of Wood Hills (said the
Oldest Member) that the incidents occurred which I am about to relate.
Even if you have never been in Wood Hills, that suburban paradise is
probably familiar to you by name. Situated at a convenient distance
from the city, it combines in a notable manner the advantages of town
life with the pleasant surroundings and healthful air of the country.
Its inhabitants live in commodious houses, standing in their own
grounds, and enjoy so many luxuries--such as gravel soil, main
drainage, electric light, telephone, baths (h. and c.), and company's
own water, that you might be pardoned for imagining life to be so ideal
for them that no possible improvement could be added to their lot. Mrs.
Willoughby Smethurst was under no such delusion. What Wood Hills needed
to make it perfect, she realized, was Culture. Material comforts are
all very well, but, if the _summum bonum_ is to be achieved, the
Soul also demands a look in, and it was Mrs. Smethurst's unfaltering
resolve that never while she had her strength should the Soul be handed
the loser's end. It was her intention to make Wood Hills a centre of
all that was most cultivated and refined, and, golly! how she had
succeeded. Under her presidency the Wood Hills Literary and Debating
Society had tripled its membership.
But there is always a fly in the ointment, a caterpillar in the salad.
The local golf club, an institution to which Mrs. Smethurst strongly
objected, had also tripled its membership; and the division of the
community into two rival camps, the Golfers and the Cultured, had
become more marked than ever. This division, always acute, had attained
now to the dimensions of a Schism. The rival sects treated one another
with a cold hostility.
Unfortunate episodes came to widen the breach. Mrs. Smethurst's house
adjoined the links, standing to the right of the fourth tee: and, as
the Literary Society was in the habit of entertaining visiting
lecturers, many a golfer had foozled his drive owing to sudden loud
outbursts of applause coinciding with his down-swing. And not long
before this story opens a sliced ball, whizzing in at the open window,
had come within an ace of incapacitating Raymond Parsloe Devine, the
rising young novelist (who rose at that moment a clear foot and a half)
from any further exercise of his art. Two inches, indeed, to the right
and Raymond must inevitably have handed in his dinner-pail.
To make matters worse, a ring at the front-door bell followed almost
immediately, and the maid ushered in a young man of pleasing appearance
in a sweater and baggy knickerbockers who apologetically but firmly
insisted on playing his ball where it lay, and, what with the shock of
the lecturer's narrow escape and the spectacle of the intruder standing
on the table and working away with a niblick, the afternoon's session
had to be classed as a complete frost. Mr. Devine's determination, from
which no argument could swerve him, to deliver the rest of his lecture
in the coal-cellar gave the meeting a jolt from which it never
recovered.
I have dwelt upon this incident, because it was the means of
introducing Cuthbert Banks to Mrs. Smethurst's niece, Adeline. As
Cuthbert, for it was he who had so nearly reduced the muster-roll of
rising novelists by one, hopped down from the table after his stroke,
he was suddenly aware that a beautiful girl was looking at him
intently. As a matter of fact, everyone in the room was looking at him
intently, none more so than Raymond Parsloe Devine, but none of the
others were beautiful girls. Long as the members of Wood Hills Literary
Society were on brain, they were short on looks, and, to Cuthbert's
excited eye, Adeline Smethurst stood out like a jewel in a pile of
coke.
He had never seen her before, for she had only arrived at her aunt's
house on the previous day, but he was perfectly certain that life, even
when lived in the midst of gravel soil, main drainage, and company's
own water, was going to be a pretty poor affair if he did not see her
again. Yes, Cuthbert was in love: and it is interesting to record, as
showing the effect of the tender emotion on a man's game, that twenty
minutes after he had met Adeline he did the short eleventh in one, and
as near as a toucher got a three on the four-hundred-yard twelfth.
I will skip lightly over the intermediate stages of Cuthbert's
courtship and come to the moment when--at the annual ball in aid of the
local Cottage Hospital, the only occasion during the year on which the
lion, so to speak, lay down with the lamb, and the Golfers and the
Cultured met on terms of easy comradeship, their differences
temporarily laid aside--he proposed to Adeline and was badly stymied.
That fair, soulful girl could not see him with a spy-glass.
"Mr. Banks," she said, "I will speak frankly."
"Charge right ahead," assented Cuthbert.
"Deeply sensible as I am of----"
"I know. Of the honour and the compliment and all that. But, passing
lightly over all that guff, what seems to be the trouble? I love you to
distraction----"
"Love is not everything."
"You're wrong," said Cuthbert, earnestly. "You're right off it.
Love----" And he was about to dilate on the theme when she interrupted
him.
"I am a girl of ambition."
"And very nice, too," said Cuthbert.
"I am a girl of ambition," repeated Adeline, "and I realize that the
fulfilment of my ambitions must come through my husband. I am very
ordinary myself----"
"What!" cried Cuthbert. "You ordinary? Why, you are a pearl among
women, the queen of your sex. You can't have been looking in a glass
lately. You stand alone. Simply alone. You make the rest look like
battered repaints."
"Well," said Adeline, softening a trifle, "I believe I am fairly
good-looking----"
"Anybody who was content to call you fairly good-looking would describe
the Taj Mahal as a pretty nifty tomb."
"But that is not the point. What I mean is, if I marry a nonentity I
shall be a nonentity myself for ever. And I would sooner die than be a
nonentity."
"And, if I follow your reasoning, you think that that lets _me_
out?"
"Well, really, Mr. Banks, _have_ you done anything, or are you
likely ever to do anything worth while?"
Cuthbert hesitated.

"It's true," he said, "I didn't finish in the first ten in the Open,
and I was knocked out in the semi-final of the Amateur, but I won the
French Open last year."
"The--what?"
"The French Open Championship. Golf, you know."
"Golf! You waste all your time playing golf. I admire a man who is more
spiritual, more intellectual."
A pang of jealousy rent Cuthbert's bosom.
"Like What's-his-name Devine?" he said, sullenly.
"Mr. Devine," replied Adeline, blushing faintly, "is going to be a
great man. Already he has achieved much. The critics say that he is
more Russian than any other young English writer."
"And is that good?"
"Of course it's good."
"I should have thought the wheeze would be to be more English than any
other young English writer."
"Nonsense! Who wants an English writer to be English? You've got to be
Russian or Spanish or something to be a real success. The mantle of the
great Russians has descended on Mr. Devine."
"From what I've heard of Russians, I should hate to have that happen to
_me_."
"There is no danger of that," said Adeline scornfully.
"Oh! Well, let me tell you that there is a lot more in me than you
think."
"That might easily be so."
"You think I'm not spiritual and intellectual," said Cuthbert, deeply
moved. "Very well. Tomorrow I join the Literary Society."

Even as he spoke the words his leg was itching to kick himself for
being such a chump, but the sudden expression of pleasure on Adeline's
face soothed him; and he went home that night with the feeling that he
had taken on something rather attractive. It was only in the cold, grey
light of the morning that he realized what he had let himself in for.
I do not know if you have had any experience of suburban literary
societies, but the one that flourished under the eye of Mrs. Willoughby
Smethurst at Wood Hills was rather more so than the average. With my
feeble powers of narrative, I cannot hope to make clear to you all that
Cuthbert Banks endured in the next few weeks. And, even if I could, I
doubt if I should do so. It is all very well to excite pity and terror,
as Aristotle recommends, but there are limits. In the ancient Greek
tragedies it was an ironclad rule that all the real rough stuff should
take place off-stage, and I shall follow this admirable principle. It
will suffice if I say merely that J. Cuthbert Banks had a thin time.
After attending eleven debates and fourteen lectures on _vers libre_
Poetry, the Seventeenth-Century Essayists, the Neo-Scandinavian
Movement in Portuguese Literature, and other subjects of a similar
nature, he grew so enfeebled that, on the rare occasions when he had
time for a visit to the links, he had to take a full iron for his mashie
shots.
It was not simply the oppressive nature of the debates and lectures
that sapped his vitality. What really got right in amongst him was the
torture of seeing Adeline's adoration of Raymond Parsloe Devine. The
man seemed to have made the deepest possible impression upon her
plastic emotions. When he spoke, she leaned forward with parted lips
and looked at him. When he was not speaking--which was seldom--she
leaned back and looked at him. And when he happened to take the next
seat to her, she leaned sideways and looked at him. One glance at Mr.
Devine would have been more than enough for Cuthbert; but Adeline found
him a spectacle that never palled. She could not have gazed at him with
a more rapturous intensity if she had been a small child and he a
saucer of ice-cream. All this Cuthbert had to witness while still
endeavouring to retain the possession of his faculties sufficiently to
enable him to duck and back away if somebody suddenly asked him what he
thought of the sombre realism of Vladimir Brusiloff. It is little
wonder that he tossed in bed, picking at the coverlet, through
sleepless nights, and had to have all his waistcoats taken in three
inches to keep them from sagging.

This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous Russian
novelist, and, owing to the fact of his being in the country on a
lecturing tour at the moment, there had been something of a boom in his
works. The Wood Hills Literary Society had been studying them for
weeks, and never since his first entrance into intellectual circles had
Cuthbert Banks come nearer to throwing in the towel. Vladimir
specialized in grey studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened
till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit
suicide. It was tough going for a man whose deepest reading hitherto
had been Vardon on the Push-Shot, and there can be no greater proof of
the magic of love than the fact that Cuthbert stuck it without a cry.
But the strain was terrible and I am inclined to think that he must
have cracked, had it not been for the daily reports in the papers of
the internecine strife which was proceeding so briskly in Russia.
Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the
rate at which the inhabitants of that interesting country were
murdering one another, the supply of Russian novelists must eventually
give out.
One morning, as he tottered down the road for the short walk which was
now almost the only exercise to which he was equal, Cuthbert met
Adeline. A spasm of anguish flitted through all his nerve-centres as he
saw that she was accompanied by Raymond Parsloe Devine.
"Good morning, Mr. Banks," said Adeline.
"Good morning," said Cuthbert hollowly.
"Such good news about Vladimir Brusiloff."
"Dead?" said Cuthbert, with a touch of hope.
"Dead? Of course not. Why should he be? No, Aunt Emily met his manager
after his lecture at Queen's Hall yesterday, and he has promised that
Mr. Brusiloff shall come to her next Wednesday reception."
"Oh, ah!" said Cuthbert, dully.
"I don't know how she managed it. I think she must have told him that
Mr. Devine would be there to meet him."
"But you said he was coming," argued Cuthbert.

"I shall be very glad," said Raymond Devine, "of the opportunity of
meeting Brusiloff."
"I'm sure," said Adeline, "he will be very glad of the opportunity of
meeting you."
"Possibly," said Mr. Devine. "Possibly. Competent critics have said
that my work closely resembles that of the great Russian Masters."
"Your psychology is so deep."
"Yes, yes."
"And your atmosphere."
"Quite."
Cuthbert in a perfect agony of spirit prepared to withdraw from this
love-feast. The sun was shining brightly, but the world was black to
him. Birds sang in the tree-tops, but he did not hear them. He might
have been a moujik for all the pleasure he found in life.
"You will be there, Mr. Banks?" said Adeline, as he turned away.
"Oh, all right," said Cuthbert.
When Cuthbert had entered the drawing-room on the following Wednesday
and had taken his usual place in a distant corner where, while able to
feast his gaze on Adeline, he had a sporting chance of being overlooked
or mistaken for a piece of furniture, he perceived the great Russian
thinker seated in the midst of a circle of admiring females. Raymond
Parsloe Devine had not yet arrived.
His first glance at the novelist surprised Cuthbert. Doubtless with the
best motives, Vladimir Brusiloff had permitted his face to become
almost entirely concealed behind a dense zareba of hair, but his eyes
were visible through the undergrowth, and it seemed to Cuthbert that
there was an expression in them not unlike that of a cat in a strange
backyard surrounded by small boys. The man looked forlorn and hopeless,
and Cuthbert wondered whether he had had bad news from home.
This was not the case. The latest news which Vladimir Brusiloff had had
from Russia had been particularly cheering. Three of his principal
creditors had perished in the last massacre of the _bourgeoisie_,
and a man whom he owed for five years for a samovar and a pair of
overshoes had fled the country, and had not been heard of since. It was
not bad news from home that was depressing Vladimir. What was wrong
with him was the fact that this was the eighty-second suburban literary
reception he had been compelled to attend since he had landed in the
country on his lecturing tour, and he was sick to death of it. When his
agent had first suggested the trip, he had signed on the dotted line
without an instant's hesitation. Worked out in roubles, the fees
offered had seemed just about right. But now, as he peered through
the brushwood at the faces round him, and realized that eight out of
ten of those present had manuscripts of some sort concealed on their
persons, and were only waiting for an opportunity to whip them out
and start reading, he wished that he had stayed at his quiet home in
Nijni-Novgorod, where the worst thing that could happen to a fellow
was a brace of bombs coming in through the window and mixing
themselves up with his breakfast egg.
At this point in his meditations he was aware that his hostess was
looming up before him with a pale young man in horn-rimmed spectacles
at her side. There was in Mrs. Smethurst's demeanour something of the
unction of the master-of-ceremonies at the big fight who introduces the
earnest gentleman who wishes to challenge the winner.
"Oh, Mr. Brusiloff," said Mrs. Smethurst, "I do so want you to meet Mr.
Raymond Parsloe Devine, whose work I expect you know. He is one of our
younger novelists."
The distinguished visitor peered in a wary and defensive manner through
the shrubbery, but did not speak. Inwardly he was thinking how exactly
like Mr. Devine was to the eighty-one other younger novelists to whom
he had been introduced at various hamlets throughout the country.
Raymond Parsloe Devine bowed courteously, while Cuthbert, wedged into
his corner, glowered at him.
"The critics," said Mr. Devine, "have been kind enough to say that my
poor efforts contain a good deal of the Russian spirit. I owe much to
the great Russians. I have been greatly influenced by Sovietski."
Down in the forest something stirred. It was Vladimir Brusiloff's mouth
opening, as he prepared to speak. He was not a man who prattled
readily, especially in a foreign tongue. He gave the impression that
each word was excavated from his interior by some up-to-date process of
mining. He glared bleakly at Mr. Devine, and allowed three words to
drop out of him.
"Sovietski no good!"
He paused for a moment, set the machinery working again, and delivered
five more at the pithead.
"I spit me of Sovietski!"
There was a painful sensation. The lot of a popular idol is in many
ways an enviable one, but it has the drawback of uncertainty. Here
today and gone tomorrow. Until this moment Raymond Parsloe Devine's
stock had stood at something considerably over par in Wood Hills
intellectual circles, but now there was a rapid slump. Hitherto he had
been greatly admired for being influenced by Sovietski, but it appeared
now that this was not a good thing to be. It was evidently a rotten
thing to be. The law could not touch you for being influenced by
Sovietski, but there is an ethical as well as a legal code, and this it
was obvious that Raymond Parsloe Devine had transgressed. Women drew
away from him slightly, holding their skirts. Men looked at him
censoriously. Adeline Smethurst started violently, and dropped a
tea-cup. And Cuthbert Banks, doing his popular imitation of a sardine
in his corner, felt for the first time that life held something of
sunshine.
Raymond Parsloe Devine was plainly shaken, but he made an adroit
attempt to recover his lost prestige.
"When I say I have been influenced by Sovietski, I mean, of course,
that I was once under his spell. A young writer commits many follies. I
have long since passed through that phase. The false glamour of
Sovietski has ceased to dazzle me. I now belong whole-heartedly to the
school of Nastikoff."
There was a reaction. People nodded at one another sympathetically.
After all, we cannot expect old heads on young shoulders, and a lapse
at the outset of one's career should not be held against one who has
eventually seen the light.
"Nastikoff no good," said Vladimir Brusiloff, coldly. He paused,
listening to the machinery.

"Nastikoff worse than Sovietski."
He paused again.
"I spit me of Nastikoff!" he said.
This time there was no doubt about it. The bottom had dropped out of
the market, and Raymond Parsloe Devine Preferred were down in the
cellar with no takers. It was clear to the entire assembled company
that they had been all wrong about Raymond Parsloe Devine. They had
allowed him to play on their innocence and sell them a pup. They had
taken him at his own valuation, and had been cheated into admiring him
as a man who amounted to something, and all the while he had belonged
to the school of Nastikoff. You never can tell. Mrs. Smethurst's guests
were well-bred, and there was consequently no violent demonstration,
but you could see by their faces what they felt. Those nearest Raymond
Parsloe jostled to get further away. Mrs. Smethurst eyed him stonily
through a raised lorgnette. One or two low hisses were heard, and over
at the other end of the room somebody opened the window in a marked
manner.
Raymond Parsloe Devine hesitated for a moment, then, realizing his
situation, turned and slunk to the door. There was an audible sigh of
relief as it closed behind him.
Vladimir Brusiloff proceeded to sum up.
"No novelists any good except me. Sovietski--yah! Nastikoff--bah! I spit
me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G.
Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any
good except me."
And, having uttered this dictum, he removed a slab of cake from a
near-by plate, steered it through the jungle, and began to champ.
It is too much to say that there was a dead silence. There could never
be that in any room in which Vladimir Brusiloff was eating cake. But
certainly what you might call the general chit-chat was pretty well
down and out. Nobody liked to be the first to speak. The members of the
Wood Hills Literary Society looked at one another timidly. Cuthbert,
for his part, gazed at Adeline; and Adeline gazed into space. It was
plain that the girl was deeply stirred. Her eyes were opened wide, a
faint flush crimsoned her cheeks, and her breath was coming quickly.
Adeline's mind was in a whirl. She felt as if she had been walking
gaily along a pleasant path and had stopped suddenly on the very brink
of a precipice. It would be idle to deny that Raymond Parsloe Devine
had attracted her extraordinarily. She had taken him at his own
valuation as an extremely hot potato, and her hero-worship had
gradually been turning into love. And now her hero had been shown to
have feet of clay. It was hard, I consider, on Raymond Parsloe Devine,
but that is how it goes in this world. You get a following as a
celebrity, and then you run up against another bigger celebrity and
your admirers desert you. One could moralize on this at considerable
length, but better not, perhaps. Enough to say that the glamour of
Raymond Devine ceased abruptly in that moment for Adeline, and her most
coherent thought at this juncture was the resolve, as soon as she got
up to her room, to burn the three signed photographs he had sent her
and to give the autographed presentation set of his books to the
grocer's boy.
Mrs. Smethurst, meanwhile, having rallied somewhat, was endeavouring to
set the feast of reason and flow of soul going again.
"And how do you like England, Mr. Brusiloff?" she asked.
The celebrity paused in the act of lowering another segment of cake.
"Dam good," he replied, cordially.
"I suppose you have travelled all over the country by this time?"
"You said it," agreed the Thinker.
"Have you met many of our great public men?"
"Yais--Yais--Quite a few of the nibs--Lloyid Gorge, I meet him. But----"
Beneath the matting a discontented expression came into his face, and
his voice took on a peevish note. "But I not meet your real great
men--your Arbmishel, your Arreevadon--I not meet them. That's what
gives me the pipovitch. Have _you_ ever met Arbmishel and
Arreevadon?"
A strained, anguished look came into Mrs. Smethurst's face and was
reflected in the faces of the other members of the circle. The eminent
Russian had sprung two entirely new ones on them, and they felt that
their ignorance was about to be exposed. What would Vladimir Brusiloff
think of the Wood Hills Literary Society? The reputation of the Wood
Hills Literary Society was at stake, trembling in the balance, and
coming up for the third time. In dumb agony Mrs. Smethurst rolled her
eyes about the room searching for someone capable of coming to the
rescue. She drew blank.
And then, from a distant corner, there sounded a deprecating, cough,
and those nearest Cuthbert Banks saw that he had stopped twisting his
right foot round his left ankle and his left foot round his right ankle
and was sitting up with a light of almost human intelligence in his
eyes.
"Er----" said Cuthbert, blushing as every eye in the room seemed to fix
itself on him, "I think he means Abe Mitchell and Harry Vardon."
"Abe Mitchell and Harry Vardon?" repeated Mrs. Smethurst, blankly. "I
never heard of----"
"Yais! Yais! Most! Very!" shouted Vladimir Brusiloff, enthusiastically.
"Arbmishel and Arreevadon. You know them, yes, what, no, perhaps?"
"I've played with Abe Mitchell often, and I was partnered with Harry
Vardon in last year's Open."
The great Russian uttered a cry that shook the chandelier.
"You play in ze Open? Why," he demanded reproachfully of Mrs.
Smethurst, "was I not been introducted to this young man who play in
opens?"
"Well, really," faltered Mrs. Smethurst. "Well, the fact is, Mr.
Brusiloff----"
She broke off. She was unequal to the task of explaining, without
hurting anyone's feelings, that she had always regarded Cuthbert as a
piece of cheese and a blot on the landscape.
"Introduct me!" thundered the Celebrity.
"Why, certainly, certainly, of course. This is Mr.----."
She looked appealingly at Cuthbert.
"Banks," prompted Cuthbert.
"Banks!" cried Vladimir Brusiloff. "Not Cootaboot Banks?"
"_Is_ your name Cootaboot?" asked Mrs. Smethurst, faintly.
"Well, it's Cuthbert."
"Yais! Yais! Cootaboot!" There was a rush and swirl, as the
effervescent Muscovite burst his way through the throng and rushed to
where Cuthbert sat. He stood for a moment eyeing him excitedly, then,
stooping swiftly, kissed him on both cheeks before Cuthbert could get
his guard up. "My dear young man, I saw you win ze French Open. Great!
Great! Grand! Superb! Hot stuff, and you can say I said so! Will you
permit one who is but eighteen at Nijni-Novgorod to salute you once
more?"
And he kissed Cuthbert again. Then, brushing aside one or two
intellectuals who were in the way, he dragged up a chair and sat down.
"You are a great man!" he said.
"Oh, no," said Cuthbert modestly.
"Yais! Great. Most! Very! The way you lay your approach-putts dead from
anywhere!"
"Oh, I don't know."
Mr. Brusiloff drew his chair closer.
"Let me tell you one vairy funny story about putting. It was one day I
play at Nijni-Novgorod with the pro. against Lenin and Trotsky, and
Trotsky had a two-inch putt for the hole. But, just as he addresses the
ball, someone in the crowd he tries to assassinate Lenin with a
rewolwer--you know that is our great national sport, trying to
assassinate Lenin with rewolwers--and the bang puts Trotsky off his
stroke and he goes five yards past the hole, and then Lenin, who is
rather shaken, you understand, he misses again himself, and we win the
hole and match and I clean up three hundred and ninety-six thousand
roubles, or fifteen shillings in your money. Some gameovitch! And now
let me tell you one other vairy funny story----"

Desultory conversation had begun in murmurs over the rest of the room,
as the Wood Hills intellectuals politely endeavoured to conceal the
fact that they realized that they were about as much out of it at this
re-union of twin souls as cats at a dog-show. From time to time they
started as Vladimir Brusiloff's laugh boomed out. Perhaps it was a
consolation to them to know that he was enjoying himself.
As for Adeline, how shall I describe her emotions? She was stunned.
Before her very eyes the stone which the builders had rejected had
become the main thing, the hundred-to-one shot had walked away with the
race. A rush of tender admiration for Cuthbert Banks flooded her heart.
She saw that she had been all wrong. Cuthbert, whom she had always
treated with a patronizing superiority, was really a man to be looked
up to and worshipped. A deep, dreamy sigh shook Adeline's fragile form.
Half an hour later Vladimir and Cuthbert Banks rose.
"Goot-a-bye, Mrs. Smet-thirst," said the Celebrity. "Zank you for a
most charming visit. My friend Cootaboot and me we go now to shoot a
few holes. You will lend me clobs, friend Cootaboot?"
"Any you want."
"The niblicksky is what I use most. Goot-a-bye, Mrs. Smet-thirst."
They were moving to the door, when Cuthbert felt a light touch on his
arm. Adeline was looking up at him tenderly.
"May I come, too, and walk round with you?"
Cuthbert's bosom heaved.
"Oh," he said, with a tremor in his voice, "that you would walk round
with me for life!"
Her eyes met his.
"Perhaps," she whispered, softly, "it could be arranged."
* * * * *
"And so," (concluded the Oldest Member), "you see that golf can be of
the greatest practical assistance to a man in Life's struggle. Raymond
Parsloe Devine, who was no player, had to move out of the neighbourhood
immediately, and is now, I believe, writing scenarios out in California
for the Flicker Film Company. Adeline is married to Cuthbert, and it
was only his earnest pleading which prevented her from having their
eldest son christened Abe Mitchell Ribbed-Faced Mashie Banks, for she
is now as keen a devotee of the great game as her husband. Those who
know them say that theirs is a union so devoted, so----"
* * * * *
The Sage broke off abruptly, for the young man had rushed to the door
and out into the passage. Through the open door he could hear him
crying passionately to the waiter to bring back his clubs.