At the moment of writing it is most unlikely, according to all the doctors say, that I shall ever play, properly or improperly, again; but it would not do for me to grumble. I have had a very full and pleasant golfing day--much interrupted, it is true, by illness, but still as extensive as a reasonable man could ask. And if all active part in the game is to be denied in the future, at all events I can still take interest undiminished in the work and play of others. Golf is not only the best of games to play: it is also, in many respects, the best to look on at. You cannot sit still, it is true, in the comfort of the pavilion, nor are aeroplanes as yet fitted with silencers so efficient that a match can be watched from them without discomposure of the golfer's nerves, but in the very fact that you must walk, and even run, if you are to see much of the game--such a meteor as Duncan is not to be caught without much sprinting--there are compensations. Watching a modern golf match means a good deal of healthful exercise and produces a more hearty appetite than sitting in the pavilion at Lords. As for the rival merits of the games, I need not raise so vexatious a question now at the very finish of the long round which the reader may have been patient enough to endure with me. Let it suffice to say that, whatever other games may be, golf is good enough. If golf, taken sanely and considered in all its various aspects, fails to satisfy us, we must be hard to please; and I will ask you to note, as one of the aspects worth considering, the very striking growth of the game in favour during the half-century over which this record runs. So the last stroke is played. Or is it, of a certainty, the last stroke after all?