LEAVES FROM THE HIGHLAND JOURNAL OF TOBY, M.P.
FIRST LEAF.—THE THING TO DO IN SCOTLAND.
Quiverfield, Haddingtonshire, Monday.—You can't spend twenty-four hours at Quiverfield without having borne in upon you the truth that the only thing to do in Scotland is to play goff. (On other side of Tweed they call it golf. Here we are too much in a hurry to get at the game to spend time on unnecessary consonant.) The waters of what Victor Hugo called "The First of the Fourth" lave the links at Quiverfield. Blue as the Mediterranean they have been in a marvellous autumn, soon to lapse into November. We can see the Bass Rock from the eighth hole, and can almost hear the whirr of the balls skimming with swallow flight over the links at North Berwick.
Prince Arthur here to-day, looking fully ten years younger than when I last saw him at Westminster. Plays through live-long day, and drives off fourteen miles for dinner at Whittinghame, thinking no more of it than if he were crossing Palace Yard. Our host, Waverley Pen, is happy in possession of links at his park gates. All his own, for self and friends. You step through the shrubbery, and there are the far-reaching links; beyond them the gleaming waters of the Forth. Stroll out immediately after breakfast to meet the attendant caddies; play goff till half-past one; reluctantly break off for luncheon; go back to complete the fearsome foursome; have tea brought out to save time; leave off in bare time to dress for dinner; talk goff at dinner; arrange matches after dinner; and the new morning finds the caddies waiting as before.
Decidedly the only thing to do in Scotland is to play goff.
Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Wednesday.—Fingen, M.P., once told an abashed House of Commons that he "owned a mountain in Scotland." Find, on visiting him in his ancestral home, that he owns a whole range. Go up one or two of them; that comparatively easy; difficulty presents itself when we try to get down. Man and boy, Fingen has lived here fifty years; has not yet acquired knowledge necessary to guide a party home after ascending one of his mountains. Walking up in cool of afternoon, we usually get home sore-footed and hungry about midnight.
Fingen's Finger.