Fifty Years of GolfHutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
History
Fifty Years of Golf
Hutchinson, Horace G. (Horace Gordon)
Golf
Also, there was Old Tom Morris--"born in the purple of equable temper
and courtesy," as Lord Moncrieffe, I think it is, well describes him. It
would be a mistake to picture Old Tom as a witty man, or even as a
clever man, unless a tact and temper that never fail be the very best
kind of cleverness. But we do not find any very witty or pungent sayings
attributed to Old Tom. It was his rich nature, with its perfect
kindliness and charity, that made him so lovable, and such a valuable
possession to St. Andrews in reconciling the golfing interests, which
ran with counter currents, of the Town and of the Club. As a peacemaker
he had no equal. I, deeming myself wronged by some infringement of
golfing rule or etiquette on part of another, might go to Tom--would go
to him as a matter of natural course--and pour out my woes. He would
listen with a charming smile in his old eyes under their bushily arching
grey eye-brows, and when I had done he would take his pipe out of his
mouth and say, "Ou aye." That was all, but it was enough to convince of
his perfect sympathy. Then, from the big window of the club, or from
Logan White's house on the links, I would see that wicked man, my late
opponent, go up to the old man--for the scene was always that eighteenth
green, just before Tom's house, where he would usually stand and smoke
his old clay pipe after his two daily rounds were played--and there I
would see exactly the same smile of sympathy for my opponent's
recounting of his woes likewise, and at the end the pipe being withdrawn
from the mouth; and I might know, though I might not hear, that
precisely the same two words were being given for his sufficient
consolation likewise--"Ou aye." So we both went away from him greatly
comforted and in a disposition to make it all up again before the sun
should go down on our wrath.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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