Of course, when a man hasn't played all winter, but has been engaged in the mild and harmless exercise of writing a novel, his hands become soft. Then, when he suddenly begins to play thirty-six holes a day, and takes a lock-grip on his clubs as tightly as if he supposed somebody was trying to snatch them away from him, he is apt to develop certain blisters. To a war correspondent and traveler over the Dawson Trail, such blisters are nothing. To a golf player they are of profound importance. The next day, in our foursome, they affected the war correspondent's game. He became softly querulous.
“I wish you wouldn't talk when I am about to drive,” he complained to a caddie.
“This mashie is too heavy for me,” he muttered to himself.
“Every time I make a stroke, that crack on the third finger of my left hand, above the top joint, opens and pains me,” he declared to anybody who would listen.
His drive from the eighteenth tee went kerplunk into the mud, and buried itself like a startled woodchuck. He said nothing, but took a left-handed club from his bag—for he began the game left-handed, and had switched over the year before, upon hearing our professional say that no left-handed player could ever become a great golfer. With this fresh implement, he began to dig. He finished the hole left-handed, with three perfect shots! We tried to cheer him up, but he was not to be cheered.
“What's the use!” he wailed. “Here I've spent a year and a fortune unlearning how to play left-handed. I'm never going to play the confounded game again!”
And, by way of token, he began to talk about Theodore Roosevelt.
That was his first renunciation for 1914. The next few days the game went well, and so did work on a new novel he had commenced, fired by his success in getting off seventeen perfect tee-shots. But he reached his fourth chapter and an off afternoon on the same fair Saturday. What a lovely day it was!—you know, one of those early June days that invariably causes some woman to quote Lowell. But the famous war correspondent saw no charm in the leafy luxury around him, in the blue sky, the lush grass. He heard no pipe of birds nor whisper of the breeze. His driver wasn't working right. Then his over-worked mashie went back on him. By the fourth green he was taking three putts, and by the eighth he was picking up. His face was a thundercloud; his vocabulary disclosed a richness gleaned from camp and field which was a revelation even to our caddies; and that is no insignificant accomplishment.
Our tenth hole in those days was close to the club-house, and the tee was but 195 yards away—a good iron to the green. By the time we reached this tee, the war correspondent had very nearly exhausted even the stock of expletives he had acquired on the Dawson Trail, and had declared seven times that he was through, yes, forever!
“Oh, come on and play just this hole—keep going to the club-house anyway,” we pleaded.