for the strokes that are to come. If he succeeds his hope but increases. Does he play the tee shot badly, and his hopes go forward to a great recovery with the second shot of the game. If that should fail, vexatiously, there may still be the chance of a wonderful approach, and though the approach be not so wonderful, is there not the possibility that the gods may be so kind as to steer a very long putt into the hole? These are exactly the alternating sentiments; and if the fulfilment of the hope be denied to the last putt, and the hole be lost, at the second tee there is hope again that the indifferent start will be succeeded by a flash of brilliance as shall restore the position and the complete equanimity of the player. And so it is from shot to shot and from hole to hole all the way round the course, and “_Spero meliora_” is the eternal motto, even though the present state be happy. If the whole round be weak and the result of it adverse, there is the hope of the afternoon; and at the end of the day the unfortunate golfer, moved almost to despair by his failures, soon recovers again that optimism which is his constant succour, and then his hopes are of the morrow. Does he not know now what it was that he was “doing wrong,” the golfing sin that he committed all the day? To-morrow the fault shall be corrected, and the swings that are made in after-hours now give fair promise of a great change. A well-prepared heart has the golfer, the like of which, as Horace says, hopes in the worst fortune, and in prosperity fears a change in the chances. Give it that the man has golfed above his true ability, and how he does fear that the next game may put him back again; but here again there is buoyant hope in evidence, and when the evening is filled with the exaltation of it, how sweet it is to wander a little over the resting, deserted links and mark the places where balls were pitched, and the lines along which fine putts were made, and the points to which play shall be directed when the next round is in the making, perhaps the best of all.