As far back as my earliest acquaintance with the royal and ancient game, the Old Guard was an institution of the Yavapai Golf and Country Club--a foursome cemented by years and usage, an association recognised as permanent, a club within the club--four eighteen-handicap men, bound by the ties of habit and hopeless mediocrity. The young golfer improves his game and changes his company, graduating from Class B into Class A; the middle-aged golfer is past improvement, so he learns his limitations, hunts his level and stays there. Peter Miller, Frank Woodson, Henry Peacock and Sam Totten were fixtures in the Grand Amalgamated Order of Dubs, and year in and year out their cards would have averaged something like ninety-seven. They were oftener over the century mark than below it. Every golf club has a few permanent foursomes, but most of them are held together by common interests outside the course. For instance, we have a bankers' foursome, an insurance foursome and a wholesale-grocery foursome, and the players talk shop between holes. We even have a foursome founded on the ownership of an automobile, a jitney alliance, as Sam Totten calls it; but the Old Guard cannot be explained on any such basis, nor was it a case of like seeking like. Peter Miller, senior member, is grey and silent and as stiff as his own putter shaft. He is the sort of man who always lets the other fellow do all the talking and all the laughing, while he sits back with the air of one making mental notes and reservations. Peter is a corporation lawyer who seldom appears in court, but he loads the gun for the young and eloquent pleader and tells him what to aim at and when to pull the trigger. A solid citizen, Peter, and a useful one. Frank Woodson, alias Jumbo, big and genial and hearty, has played as Miller's partner for years and years, and possesses every human quality that Peter lacks. They say of Frank--and I believe it--that in all his life he never hurt a friend or lost one. Frank is in the stock-raising business at present, and carries a side line of blue-blooded dogs. He once made me a present of one, but I am still his friend. A year ago I would have set against Henry Peacock's name the words "colourless" and "neutral." A year ago I thought I knew all about him; now I am quite certain that there is something in Henry Peacock's nature that will always baffle me. Waddles swears that Peacock was born with his fingers crossed and one hand on his pocketbook, but that is just his extravagant way of putting things. Henry has shown me that it is possible to maintain a soft, yielding exterior, and yet be hard as adamant inside. He has also demonstrated that a meek man's pride is a thing not lightly dismissed. I have revised all my estimates of H. Peacock, retired capitalist.