Now the beginning and the continuation of a match-book is a serious
matter, and the golfer will do well to come to an understanding with
himself beforehand as to the policy that he will pursue in regard to it.
It is essential that the strictest truth, and all the essential truth,
should at all times be set down, and it is only a simple extension of
the principle involved that if any matches are to be recorded they must
all be so. The chronicler of the time must not consider himself as
historian, and set himself to discriminate between what is important and
what is trivial; for, as in all things, it will be many years hence,
when the matters have been well sifted in the cold recollection of the
mind, before such a determination can be accurately made. Therefore it
is the duty of the chronicler to state the full facts, that is to say,
as full as he determined they should ever be according to his system of
match-book keeping, and he must leave it to himself in after years,
when, the chronicler now exalted to the student of his own history, he
can ponder over the statements in his leisure and make such judgments
upon them as he is disposed. Thus it is of the essence of the proper
making of such match-books that no fault of the maker at any time or in
any game shall be in any way extenuated, and that nothing to the
discredit of the opponent shall be set down maliciously, so that in days
to come, when the player shall have advanced many more seasons towards
the end of his golf, in turning over these pages and with their honest
help fighting his matches over again, he shall truly behold “the bright
countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.”
So it seems that the best match-book should rightly be a strictly
private thing; if it were meant as a book for the table or any other
place where it might be exposed to the gaze of the curious, there might
at some time come a reluctance to the owner to state in full the truth
of the day’s play, since the honest criticism of a partner in a foursome
or of an opponent, to some who did not understand, might not appear so
necessary as was actually the case. This faithful record should be kept
under lock and key, and it should be taken with him when the golfer goes
far afield for play which is to last more than a day, and the entries
should be made on the night of each day. It will be soon enough for
others to pry into this confessional when the golfer who whispered into
it at nights is no more. That such present labour will afford a rich
sequence of future pleasure there can be no doubt. Just as there are no
friends like the old friends, and no wine like the old wine, so one is
sometimes disposed to fancy that there is no golf like the old golf that
is now indeed but a memory, and one often much too dim at that. The
match-book will refresh the mind to the recollection of dear friends
with whom one is no longer associated, and of fine sport that one had
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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