In the centre there will be three statues grouped together. One of them
will be sculptured on an Athenian model. It will show a fine player at
the finish of his drive, and there will be on the base the simple
inscription “Style.” That will be Harry Vardon. Another will show a man
of stern countenance with thick wrists tightened upon a mashie, and that
will be named “Accuracy.” The man is Taylor. And the third of these
figures will show a man of solemn look, like that upon some ancient
busts. That will be “Perseverance,” and surely the people will know that
it is James Braid that is meant. The famous Triumvirate! Those future
golfers will walk their way through these halls and through the gallery
of the Temple of Golf that will be raised, and a great awe of the game
will come upon them. It is as if generations, ages of great golfers will
look hard but not unkindly at these passers-by, and will seem to cry
aloud, “We made it! We made it! Preserve it! Preserve it!” Not the game
alone, but its glory--its tradition.
II
There are many full-blooded golfers who, if in the light of knowledge
and experience they could have their choice to live their golfing lives
over again, with the special advantage of picking their own period and
place for play, would hold up their hands for Leith and the closing
years of the seventeenth century. They could be greatly earnest about
their golf in those days, and there was colour and richness about it.
Here it was that King Charles was playing his game when the news came to
him, according to famous tradition, of the insurrection and rebellion in
Ireland. And another future King of England is generally believed to
have played great games on Leith links, and perhaps the most interesting
monument of ancient golf that remains to us to-day is still to be found
in Edinburgh, commemorating a great game that was once played, in which
James, Duke of York, afterwards James II., had a hand. This house is
that old one in Canongate which is numbered 77, on the north side a
little above Queensberry House. On the wall above what at one time was
the doorway of this house there is a stone bearing this inscription in
Latin: “Cum victor ludo scotis qui proprius esset ter tres victores post
redimitus avos patersonus humo tunc educebat in altum hanc quae victores
tot tulit una domum”; and, separately, there is the line in English, “I
hate no person,” which effectually settles the name of the man most
concerned, as the letters of these words are nothing more than an
anagrammatical transposition of the letters of the name of John
Patersone, who is the hero of the story of the great game. High up, near
the top of this five-storey building, is another tablet bearing a coat
of arms, on which there are three pelicans and three mullets, while for
crest there is a dexter hand grasping a golf club, and the motto is “Far
and sure.” The point of the story is that this house was built by a poor
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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