Even if one be but a drinker of tea and ginger ale, there is some interest in reading of the exploits of the old-time golfers of Edinburgh and Musselburgh. In the “bett book” of the Honourable Company, under date of 4th January 1766, there is the rule entered: “Each person who lays a Bett in the Company of the Golfers, and shall fail to play it on the day appointed, shall forfeit to the Company a pint of wine for each guinea, unless he give a sufficient excuse to their satisfaction”; and a most interesting entry in the minutes of 16th November 1776 tells us that “this day Lieutenant James Dalrymple, of the 43rd Regiment, being convicted of playing five different times at Golf without his uniform, was fined only in Six Pints, having confessed the heinousness of his crime.” To this minute, signed by the captain, there is appended a codicil, stating, “at his own request he was fined of Three Pints more.” Always pints, and never pounds or guineas. The Company even thought that it was a proper thing for it to pass a formal resolution adopting certain liquors as the club drink, just in the same way as they would adopt a uniform. Thus, on 11th December 1779, the sentiment of Christmas being already abroad, it was resolved and duly entered on the minutes, that “Port and Punch shall be the ordinary Drink of the Society, unless upon these days when the Silver Club and Cups are played for. At those meetings Claret or any other Liquor more agreeable will be permitted.” O, say some, for the days of famous Jamie Balfour, secretary and treasurer of the Company in 1793! Never was jollier golfer. And never a man more honest, more deservedly popular, and loved by all his contemporaries than he, as witness the fact that when, alas! he went to the links of Valhalla before he reached the age of sixty, the company mourned for him as golfers had never mourned before. They met at a special meeting and dinner in the most solemn mourning, with the Captain in the chair and Sir James Stirling, Baronet, Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, beside him, and drank to Balfour’s memory in the most solemn of toasts. Jamie looked upon the wine when it was red; he could see no virtue in self-denial. He liked the sound of the drawn cork. When he heard one drawn in any house that he happened to be in, which gave an unusually sharp report, he would call out, “Lassie, gie me a glass o’ that!” not troubling to ask what the wine was, but taking it for granted that for such a report it must needs be good of its class.