In those days Professor Tait used to be a great deal at St. Andrews, in the intervals, which were wide, of his professional duties in Edinburgh. He used to play a round of golf, generally by himself, generally talking to the ball all the time, as if asking it why it behaved as it did, and very frequently laughing at it--for he was essentially a laughing philosopher--long before the ordinary golfer had his breakfast. Six o'clock, it was said, was his hour for starting, and the rest of the day, when he came back, he had at his own command for study, of which he did an enormous amount, for tobacco, of which he consumed a mighty deal, and for chaff and talk, of which he was most genially fond. He was a lover of humanity, and not even the biggest fool on the links (which is a liberal order) was made conscious of his folly when it came up against the Professor's learning. He used to let me come into his laboratory in Edinburgh, and in return used to employ me in driving balls at a revolving plate of clay and all sorts of experiments. Poor young Freddie was not yet of the stature to drive very fiercely, though he was already fiercely keen. He was at school at Sedbergh, in Yorkshire, where Fred Lemarchand, who had been at Oxford with me, was a master. Lemarchand putted the weight for the University, being a very strong fellow, and developed into a very useful golfer. And he, apparently, made it his business to get "rises" out of young Freddie, telling him in chaff that the Scots did not know how to play golf: that Johnny Ball and I were better than their best amateurs, and so on. I have always wondered whether this chaff helped to incite Freddie to become the great golfer that he was. Golf, to be sure, was bred in him--his eldest brother Jack was a fine player--but perhaps Lemarchand's chaff gave him an added zeal. I remember him first as a stalwart, very cheery little boy hitting a ball about with very slight respect for human life or limb. It was about this time that I moved a resolution at a general meeting of the Royal and Ancient Club that their local rules, such as that touching the dreary palisaded cabbage patch magniloquently styled the Stationmaster's Garden, should be taken out of the body of the rules and be printed under a separate heading, in order that the many Clubs which were being established in divers places might adapt more easily for their own use the rules capable of universal employment, and might make their own separate local rules besides. This was passed, and was a useful move for those other Clubs, which heretofore had included in their own rules regulations dealing with a Stationmaster's Garden, a railway and other "amenities" which had no existence at all on their courses.