This course at Eastbourne, be it understood, was technically of the "inland" kind, though at the seaside. It was of the chalk-down soil; and it was among the first of the new supply of inland courses which the ever spreading vogue of golf demanded. Still we looked on these inland greens as giving us at best only a poor substitute for the real game. We had yet to learn of what inland soil, cleverly treated with an eye to golf, might be capable. The only inland Club which was at this time of any weight in the general golfing councils was the Royal Wimbledon, which had seceded from the London Scottish, building itself a club-house at the opposite end of the common. Some of the golfing leaders of the day, such as Henry Lamb and Purves and others, made this their headquarters, and there they were already hatching schemes which were ultimately to lead to all that great development of golf in the East Neuk, so to say, of Kent, and at first were to take form in the St. George's Club and links, at Sandwich. Purves, with characteristic, energy, was scouring the coast of England in these years, looking for links as by Nature provided, and it was here, at this point, that he had his great success. Of course there was much palaver and indecision, as well as prolonged negotiations with the landowner--or his trustees, seeing that Lord Guildford was then a minor--before any real move could be made; but when it was made it meant a very great deal for London golfers and gave an immense drive forward to the already fast booming boom of English golf. In 1886 Mr. Du Maurier, the _Punch_ artist, was at St. Andrews, already, as I remember, in large goggles and having trouble with his eyes, and he then drew a picture of "the Golf Stream," as he called it--a succession of pilgrims of all sorts, sexes and sizes, making their way to St. Andrews. Will it be believed that this was the first golfing picture in _Punch_; that it was the very first mention, as I think, of golf in a comic paper? What would _Punch_ do to-day, we may ask with wonder and dismay, if all the humorous opportunities which golf gives its artists and its writers were withdrawn from them? They would feel impoverished indeed. A year or two later, when I was editing the Badminton Book on Golf, Mr. Harry Furniss showed me a letter he had just received from Mr. Frank Burnand, then staying at Westward Ho! and then editing _Punch_. Harry Furniss was, and is, a golfer; Frank Burnand was not. "I think you would like this place," wrote the author of _Happy Thoughts_--"there are fine golfing sands (_sic_) here." Therein he expressed an even happier thought than he knew, for Westward Ho! at that moment happened to be suffering from a considerable drought, and a heavy gale had scattered the dry sand far and wide out of the bunkers, so that "golfing sands" gave rather an apt description.