But by degrees it became evident that there was a choice: that one really was distinctly better than the other two. Certainly there was a while, just before he had to go to a health resort, with a threatening of tuberculosis, when Harry Vardon was in a class by himself. For a while he was, I think, two strokes in the round better than either Taylor or Braid, and, I believe, better than any other man that we have seen. He was the first professional I ever saw play in knickerbockers, and with the flower at his button-hole he set a mode of gaiety and smartness to the rest which younger men were not slow to follow. There was a gay _insouciance_ about his whole manner of addressing himself to the game which was very attractive. It was as different, as their styles were different, from the imperturbability of Braid or again from the tense and highly strung temperament of Taylor. The three great men provided a striking contrast in every particular. But they had this in common, that they all took the game earnestly and kept themselves very fit and well, in order to do their best in it; therein marking a new point of departure from the usual mode of the Scottish professional of old days, who was a happy-go-lucky fellow, not taking all the care of himself that he should if he was to excel in such a strenuous game as golf. And the example of these men was infectious, so that we have now arrived at the date of the coming of the great army of English professionals. CHAPTER XXVI THE REVOLT OF THE AMAZONS Lord Moncrief (then Wellwood) writing in the Badminton Book on Golf, had said that ladies were relegated and restricted to a species of "Jew's quarter" where they were graciously permitted to play with a single club, the putter, those little strokes which we all of us are fond of saying are the most important in the game of golf, but which we all feel to be the least interesting. It was either in 1892 or 1893 that Lord Eldon asked me to stay with him at his Gloucestershire place, Stowell Park, on the Cotswolds, and there, incidentally, I received quite a new impression as to the possibilities of feminine golf. I had already played on the long links at Prestwick in foursome matches with the Misses Whigham--Johnny Laidlay being the man on the other side, and taking one of the sisters as his partner, while I took the other; but they had not then come to their full golfing due. They were rather in the phase which would now be known as the "flapper stage." Still, they played remarkably well. But the most remarkable thing, as we thought then, was not that they should play the long game so well, but that they should play it at all. It was like Dr. Johnson's comment about the dancing dogs. They played, and we as their partners played, with all consciousness that we were guilty things, doing that which we ought not to do. It was an enormity for ladies to play on the long links at all.