But when I told them, all agog, My aunt, a lean and acid spinster, Snapped out "the doctor's yellow dog"; And nothing I could say convinced her. "'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour--" Since HOMER, HANNIBAL or STRONGBOW, Men of outstanding mental power Are charged with drawing of the long bow. Great travellers--not your GRANTS or SPEKES-- Who lived with dwarfs, or tamed gorillas, Or scaled imaginary peaks Upon the backs of pink chinchillas, Or in some languorous lagoon Bestrode the awe-inspiring turtle, Or in the Mountains of the Moon Saw rocs athwart the zenith hurtle-- All, all have had their fame aspersed By rude Town Clerks or senior wranglers; But those who have been treated worst Are the heroic tribe of anglers. * * * * * THE NEW GOLF. "Let's go and play the new golf," said James. Now as I understand it there are four kinds of golf. First, the ordinary golf, as played by all people who are not quite right in their heads; second, the ideal golf, to be played by me (but not till I get to heaven) on a bowling-green with a croquet-mallet, the holes being sixty-six feet apart and both cutting-in and going-through strictly prohibited; third, the absurd golf, as played by James in pre-war days on his private nine-hole course; and fourth, it seemed, the new golf, such as James would be liable to create during a recovery from shell-shock. James is one of those people who, possessing what _Country Life_ would call one of the lesser country-houses of England, has an indeterminate bit of ground beyond the garden, called, according to choice of costume, "the rock-garden," "the home-farm," "the grouse moor," or "no rubbish may be shot here." James calls his own particular nettle-bed (or slag heap) "the golf-course." When anyone went to stay with James, he was adjured to "bring-your-golf-clubs-old-man-as-I-can-give -you-a-bit-of-a-game-on-my-own-course-only-a-nine-hole-one-you understand." And when James went--far more willingly--to stay opposite the Germans, until an interesting visit was short-circuited by shell-shock, he showed himself so wonderfully at home in dug-outs and shell-holes and mine-craters, so completely undisturbed by the weariful lack of any green on the course over which his battalion was playing, that he rose from Second-Lieutenant to Lieutenant with almost unheard-of celerity in the space of two years and nine months. And now the absurd figure-of-eight nine-hole course, the third hole of which was also the seventh, and the first the ninth, had been complicated into a war kitchen-garden, and James, bored with ordinary difficulties and discomforts, had evolved the new golf. "Come on," said he, burning with the zeal of a martyr-burner, "I'll show you the ground." "Can't I see it by standing up in the hammock?" I protested.