DEAR JACK,—Bon joor! That's French for how are you. It's wonderful how quick you get the hang of a language. We haven't been here more than a week, and I find myself thinking in French. When I waked up this morning the first thing I said was voilà, and when I got down to breakfast and the waiter brought me a chop with mushrooms on it, without having to think at all I said kerskersay, which is French for what on earth's that. What's more, I dream in French. I drempt the other night that Napoleon came back to life again and asked me to take dinner with him, and I went and kept up a conversation all through the evening with him in his own language. He kept calling me Mussoo Bobbee and I'd call him M. le General. He told me all about his battles, how he ran across the bridge of Lody with bullets just raining all about him, and lots of awful funny things about himself that made me roar with laughter. But the queer part of it all is that while I understood him perfectly well while I was asleep, the minute I waked up I couldn't translate a thing he'd said to me. That's the worst of dreams, but I'm glad I had that one, because I really feel now as if I'd met Napoleon.
I tell you, Jack, he was a great man that Napoleon. He wasn't big, but he covered the ground. Pop says he was the greatest man that ever lived except me and George Washington. He wasn't a Frenchman at all, only a Corsican. And he was a fighter right from the start. He used to make snow forts at school, and when it came to a snowball fight, Pop says he wasn't out of it a minute. He was fearfully brave, and if it hadn't been for the weather he'd never have been beaten at Waterloo. Somehow or other he couldn't fight in the wet, and every time he had the elements against him he got beaten. When he got to Moscow the Russians set fire to the town, and that beat him, and on the way back the snow just regularly froze him out, and then it rained at Waterloo, and that finished him.
They keep his memory very green here though, which I am glad of because he deserved it. He's got a tomb that's worth dying for to get. It's out back of the Hotel des Invalides under a great big dome, and it's so arranged that when the sun shines through two big stained yellow glass windows at the back it looks as if great rivers of glory were being poured on it; and all around it are the battle flags with cannon-ball holes in them, and altogether it makes you feel as if little chills were playing tag up and down your back.
Jules says it was a pity he didn't have two or three boys like me. That was all he needed, he said, to make France the biggest nation in the world. He says I'm very much like Napoleon in several ways. One is I wasn't born in France, another is that I don't seem to be able to keep still two minutes in succession, and always want to be doing something, but I guess he was only trying to be complimentary and make me feel good.
After we'd seen the tomb of Napoleon we went up the Eiffel Tower. It's a funny-looking thing, and I'd hate to have it fall while I was on top of it, because it's a thousand feet high, which is no fun if you're tumbling. Pop says it wasn't built according to rules. The rule is that there's plenty of room at the top, but with the Eiffel Tower there's hardly any; but, my, what a view you get! It was awful funny to look down on the city of Paris from that fearful height. The people looked like lady-bugs crawling along the sidewalk, and the one-horse fakirs looked for all the world like beetles, and it's given me a very different idea about birds from what I used to have. I used to wonder why birds were such fraid-cats, but I know now why it is. It must scare a bird like everything to be soring way up there in the sky and think he sees a nice fat luscious beetle for breakfast crawling along the street, and then pounce down on it and find out it's a horse and wagon worth fifty cents an hour. It really takes an eagle to stand a surprise like that. Pop bought some souvenirs on top of the tower, and I'll bring you home one of 'em when I come. It's a brass medal with a picture of the tower on it, and it cost two dollars. Pop says that's two cents for the medal and the rest for souvenir. When I asked him to buy it he said isn't that rather expensive? Not for me if you buy it, I said, and that made a man laugh, and he said to Pop that's a bright boy of yours, and Pop felt so proud he bought two of 'em. There was an artist on the first floor of the tower that drew your picture while you waited, for five francs. Pop had him make one of me, and it's fine. Aunt Sarah says there isn't much art in it, but Pop thinks differently. He says it's really a wonderful picture, it's so like somebody else considering I sat for it.
The elevators in the Eiffel Tower are wonderful. They run right up its legs, the way ants do us at picnics, only inside, and glorious to say they were made not only in the United States, but in Yonkers, where I was born, and going up in 'em makes you feel as if you were at sea, because they can't go up straight, the legs being bandy. At one time you'd have thought I was lying on the floor when I was only standing up straight, it got off the perpendicular so far. Pop asked why it was they didn't have a sign up telling people that these elevators came from Yonkers, and a man that knew all about it said it wouldn't do any good because the French people didn't know where Yonkers was, and besides they were exciteable, and wouldn't ride in a machine they thought wasn't French. "Let 'em walk then," said Pop. "It's too high up," said the man. "Well," said Pop, "as a walk it may be high up, but as a trick it's low down." And the man agreed with him, but he said: "It isn't my fault. Mr. Eiffel built the tower, I didn't. I'm only a green-grocer at Leamington." And then we all laughed, but Pop's kind of mad about it yet, because he's proud of Yonkers, and thinks people that do things ought to get credit for 'em.
After we came down from the tower I wanted Pop to take me up in a balloon they had flying about a mile away, but he wouldn't. He thought we'd had high living enough for one day, and, besides, Jules advised us not to go. He said every once in a while the balloon broke loose and landed in the desert of Sahara, which is very awkward to those who can't go a week without water and don't eat sand. And the walking is bad, so we didn't go.
To-morrow we are going out to the palace at Versailles in a big coach, and if I see anything worth telling about I'll drop you another line.
Yours ever
Bob.
[PRACTICAL GOLF.]
BY W. G. van TASSEL SUTPHEN.
(In Five Papers.)
II.—DRIVING.
All golf is divided into three parts—driving, approaching, and holing out—and of these three, driving, or free hitting, either with wood or iron, is by far the most pleasing. It is a delightful sensation to feel the ball slip away almost by itself as the club head swings through, and then to watch it describing its graceful curve of, say, one hundred and fifty yards through the air, or skimming like a swallow, straight and low over that dreaded bunker. Without driving, indeed, there would be very little golf, and happy is the man who may always count upon being both far and sure.
Now although style cannot drive a ball, there is still a right and a wrong way of going at the problem, and the first thing is to clearly understand the conditions of that problem. Let the player imagine himself at the centre of a circle, the radius of which is the length of his arms plus the club shaft, and upon whose circumference is resting the ball that is to be swept away. Remember, too, that it is to be a swing and not a hit, that the club head should be treated as though it were a bit of lead attached to a string, and consequently dependent for its effectiveness on speed and not on weight. Obviously, if the circle in which it swings is not perfect, if at any point the string is suddenly lengthened or shortened, the ball will either be missed altogether or the force will be imperfectly applied, resulting in a loss of power. Take a piece of lead and a bit of string, and try the experiment for yourself. It will at least show you how clearly distinct the golf swing is from the hit of a baseball bat, and how speed may become equivalent to weight.
It is customary to advise beginners to use clubs with very stiff shafts, but I am inclined to think that the reformed baseball-player will do better with a springy driver. With a very stiff club there is an irresistible inclination to hit at the ball, and this is exactly what you must not do. You must be able to feel the club head swinging at the end of the shaft, as though it were really the bit of lead on a string. The instant that you attempt to hurry that swing you throw it out of time and true, and the result is failure. Weight and brute strength may drive a baseball, but for the golf-ball it is speed and accuracy that are needed.