TAYLOR--or was it JAMES BRAID?--begins one of his classic and illuminating chapters with the quotation "_Ex pede Herculem_," nor can even we of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society venture to differ from so eminent an authority or grudge him so apt a phrase. _Verb. sap._ and, let me add, _sat_. To those, few perhaps in actual reckoning (though I, wearing of right the wine-dark vesture--were there half Blues in HOMER'S time?--cannot compete with JOHN LOW _et hoc genus omne_, Cantabs confessed, in the prestidigitation of numerals and weird signs of values)--to those, then, few, but of many parts appreciative, who followed a certain foursome at Addington last week, my premiss should be intrinsically incontrovertible. Partner, whom I had "made" with a drive well and truly apportioned--_ex carne ictum_--partner, after much self-searching and mental recursion to the maxims of TOM MORRIS and LA ROUCHEFOUCAULD, took his ball on the--_O horribile dictu_ (or shall I say _horresco referens_?)--well, to be meticulously exact, partner shanked it. And it is just here that those who have also enjoyed a University education will pick up--even as partner failed to do--what I, who write, am driving at. Remembering how dear old W.G.--in those halcyon days when Gloucester was worthy of the cheese whereof she is now so chary a producer--used to score with that heavy cut between point and cover, I too, greatly daring, cut it and laid it (the ball, not the cheese) dead. _De mortuis_ ... For assuredly it _was_ good. The one adornment of this episode should have been a quotation from ARISTOPHANES. It is not, however, given to all men always to remember. _Non cuivis_, in fact. OF IMPACT. It was at the ensuing consumption of Bohea, or of its substitute as provided by a paternal Government, that one of the party, with the rashness of a _d'Artagnan_, reverted to the question of weight of clubs. ABE MITCHELL'S driver, of course, gave him a handle; but himself he, unaided, gave away. For it is not to be boasted by every man that he has been blessed with an _Alma Mater_, and that consequently logic is to him even as hair and teeth--save only that these twain be not false. For, said this unhappy wight, increase the weight and the corollary is length increased. Then arose a certain justly eminent author, whose list of tales is equalled only by the tale of his handicap, and demonstrably discounted weight without pace. It was then agreed that a test _ad hominem_ should be applied, and that the result of such test should determine the individuality of him who should settle with our Ganymede. Partner and I pushed--_gemitu et fremitu_--a bulky sideboard against a paper ball. The inertia of the object was barely overcome. Then the man of letters flicked it across the room with finger and thumb. And the original theorist became the poorer by the commercial estimate of four teas and jam. PUTTING.