The other day there was a little house-party of golfers for a week-end, and it was a most delightful gathering in all respects--fine weather, a rattling good seaside links, with putting greens that inspired the soul of the player to fine flights of genius, and a host of the very best golfing type, in whom is embodied all the best traditions and sportsmanship of the game. Sternly contested singles in the morning of the first day, with the yellow autumn sun shining and that pleasant nip in the air that braces the golfer to great efforts when he takes the wood out of his bag; a hard-fought foursome in the afternoon; and then as they dressed to go down for dinner on the evening of the first day, they reflected upon the magnificent opportunities of the golfing life and the poor state of those who were not such as they were then. Dinner, the glass of old port, piquant stories of the links and the recounting of brave deeds in fine matches, and then by and by the testing of various putting theories on the carpet--O! the happy, happy golfer. Forty years upon the links had one by one only served to increase the host’s enthusiasm for the game of games. In all things he was the golfer first and the ordinary individual afterwards. Like all experienced players, he was inclined to be dogmatic and, as some would say, old-fashioned. But when you say that a golfer is old-fashioned you are paying him a very high compliment; you are placing his portrait in an exclusive gallery of the old masters of the game who built it up and endowed it with traditions such as are the envy of all others. The old-fashioned golfer nearly always belongs to the best type of the fine old English or Scottish gentleman. But this host had still original ideas of his own, and sometimes within the walls of his own house he will tell of them, or let them slip by accident, which he might very much fear to do when in the company of his colleagues of the Royal and Ancient on the occasion of his bi-annual pilgrimages to St. Andrews. So on the second morning, when the party was at breakfast and eager to arrange the matches of the day, its curiosity was somewhat stirred by the remark that he made to madame as she was lading the blue cups with tea, that last night he “went round in 78.” The lady of the house nodded and smiled, asked sympathetically if he had had any luck at the short holes, and was assured that he had taken 3 to one and 4 to the other, but had got his 78 by the aid of a grand--yes, by gad, a really corking 3 at the last hole! On the whole, it was gathered he was driving well, but his iron play was not all that it might have been--putting splendid. Now nothing had been heard before of any such fine performance as this, as surely there would have been if, as it appeared, it was of such recent date. The company was stirred with a desire for knowledge as to the when and the how, so that they might not be laggard in their