The fact is that the conditions of springtime are rather made up of a set of contradictions of a very aggravating character, and they often play the devil with the game of this Average Golfer, the system of which is not too firmly consolidated. This person, one takes it, is a man of medium young to middle age, a great enthusiast, of good means, one more or less constantly engaged in business, having a fair number of social obligations to attend to in evenings, and a golfing handicap of somewhere between six and twelve. This man is possibly afflicted with a troublesome liver, and this organ has a peculiar and most aggravating way of asserting itself in the springtime as it has at no other season. Then it is up to all kinds of tricks, the entire physical system of the man is disarranged and thrown out of gear, and the result is that when all Nature is smiling and the larks are piping as though their little throats would burst with the fulness of their melody, the erstwhile hopeful golfer is in a wretched state of mind, trying new stances for his drive, new ways of gripping, a swing much longer or much shorter than usual, and manœuvring with his strokes in all other kinds of ways, in the vain hope that he might be permitted to drive at least as well as he did in January, instead of foundering one ball in three and lifting up one of the others high towards the heavens. But there is compensation in the increased hopefulness of spring. The game may be poor, weaker than it was hoped to be. But it will mend; it will surely mend. MEN AND THINGS I