My dear Ed. Tufts:—
Once, when a mere child, I strayed as far away from home as Pico Street, and followed that thoroughfare westward until the houses gave way to open country, hedged by a dense forest of real estate signs.
In the midst of that wilderness I chanced upon a somewhat chubby gentleman engaged in the pursuit of a small white ball, which, when he came within striking distance, he beat savagely with weapons of wood and iron. That, sir, was my first sight of you, and my earliest acquaintance with the game of golf. I remember scanning the horizon for your keeper.
Times have changed since then. The old Pico Street course is covered with bungalows and mortgages. Golf clubs are everywhere. The hills are dotted with middle-aged gentlemen who use the same weapons of wood and iron and the same red-hot adjectives. A man may now admit that he commits golf and the statement will not be used against him. Everybody is doing it. The pastime has become popular.
But it took courage to be a pioneer, to listen to the sneers about "Cow-pasture pool" and to remain cool, calm and collected when putting within sight of the country road and within hearing of the comments of the Great Unenlightened. That courage entitles you to this small recognition, and also entitles you to purchase as many copies of this book as you can afford.
Yours as usual,
Charles E. Van Loan
To Mr. Edward B. Tufts of the Los Angeles Country Club.
Los Angeles, Cal., January 17, 1918.
CONTENTS
[Gentlemen, You Can't Go Through]
[Little Poison Ivy]
[The Major, D.O.S.]
[A Mixed Foursome]
["Similia Similibus Curantur"]
[A Cure for Lumbago]
[The Man Who Quit]
[The Ooley-Cow]
[Adolphus and the Rough Diamond]
[Other Fiction]
GENTLEMEN, YOU CAN'T GO THROUGH!
I
There has been considerable argument about it—even a mention of ethics—though where ethics figures in this case is more than I know. I'd like to take a flat-footed stance as claiming that the end justified the means. Saint George killed the Dragon, and Hercules mopped up the Augean stables, but little Wally Wallace—one hundred and forty-two pounds in his summer underwear—did a bigger job and a better job when the betting was odds-on-and-write-your-own-ticket that it couldn't be done. I wouldn't mind heading a subscription to present him with a gold medal about the size of a soup plate, inscribed as follows, to wit and viz.:
W. W. Wallace—He Put the Fore in Foursome.
Every golfer who ever conceded himself a two-foot putt because he was afraid he might miss it has sweated and suffered and blasphemed in the wake of a slow foursome. All the clubs that I have ever seen—and I've travelled a bit—are cursed with at least one of these Creeping Pestilences which you observe mostly from the rear.