"Kent, sir--everybody knows Kent--apples, cherries, hops and women," observed Mr. Jingle, and to-day he might properly add "and golf courses"; but now we must leave Kent and cross the Sussex border to get to =Rye=--and there are surely few pleasanter places to get to. It looks singularly charming as the train comes sliding in on a long curve, with the sullen flat marshes on the left and the tall cliff on the right, while straight in front are the red roofs of the town huddled round the old church. We have only a few yards to walk along a narrow little street; then we twist round to the right up a steep little hill and under the Land Gate and we are at the Dormy House, old and red and overgrown with creepers. Rye is such a friendly, quiet spot; never in a hurry, and never with the least appearance of being full, save, perhaps, for a short time in the summer, when it is infested with artists. It is the ideal place for the golfer who is wearied out with a fortnight's fruitless balloting at St. Andrews, which has resulted in his once drawing a time, and that at 12.30. [Illustration: RYE _The fifteenth green_] At Rye we just loaf down, without the least anxiety, to the little steam tram which is to carry us--with a prodigious deal of panting and snorting--out to the links at Camber. This, indeed, is the one disadvantage of Rye, that the golf is not at our front door-step. Rye still stands upon a cliff, but it is a cliff that the waters have long ceased to trouble, and Camber, where the links are, is two miles away. However, when we do get there, the golf is as good, or very nearly as good, as is to be found anywhere. The two great features of golf at Rye are the uniformly fiendish behaviour of the wind and the fascinating variety of the stances. The wind presumably blows no harder than it does anywhere else, but the holes are so contrived that the prevailing wind, which comes off the sea, is always blowing across us. With a typical Rye wind blowing, it may be said that there is but one hole where it blows straight in our teeth, and one--and that a short one--where it is straight behind us. At the other sixteen holes the enemy persists in making a flanking attack upon us, and we never have a perfectly straightforward shot to play. For the few who are artists in using the wind, Rye is a paradise; for the majority who are not, it is a place of trial and disillusionment. Disillusioned too will be they who imagine that they know all that there is to be known about wooden clubs, because they have attained to some certainty in hitting a ball that lies teed on a smooth, level plain. At Rye they must be prepared to hit brassey shots--and long, straight brassey shots, too--with one foot on a hummock and the other in a pit. If they cannot do it, they must be content to take five far more often than they like.