You may always tell from the form of the answer when the St. Andrews lip has curled at the question that has been asked of it. Nowadays the committee can hear the mention of a hedge without a rise in its temperature; but when the secretary, in reading out the problem of the moment, has to say “mud” there is uneasiness still. The committee move in their chairs, they fidget, they scowl, somebody mutters “Tut, tut!” and they all cough to hide their agitation. “Mud” is the word you must not say. I have not seen the committee in this agitation; nobody except its own members has, for it is a very private committee; but this sudden disturbance can be imagined most clearly. Yet these inconsiderate golfers will keep on mentioning mud, and St. Andrews answers them back with as much asperity as is consistent with the preservation of its own dignity. One time in a matter of this kind they gave a snubbing to a Kentish course. The club there, in all seriousness and innocence, propounded a very pretty point. “Playing in a foursome,” they said, “A is left by his partner’s approach shot a six-inch putt for the hole; but A’s ball pitched in a small piece of wet mud left on the edge of the green (presumably from the boot of a player in front). A small piece of this mud clung to the ball, and was on the side of the ball A had to strike. A played the stroke, and the ball and the mud stuck to his putter, and the head of the putter and the ball on it were exactly above the hole.” This was surely a most delightful situation! See how pretty is the combination of this foursome pair, and how they do play each the game to suit the other, thus: “His partner then with his putter tapped the ball off A’s putter and it fell into the hole.” A charming incident! “Did A or his partner lose or halve the hole, and would A have been within his rights in shaking the ball off into the hole, or what should they have done?” Said the Committee to the secretary, “Tell these good people that the Committee have no experience of such tenacious mud, and such a contingency should be provided for by the local rules,” and then they hurriedly spoke of the weather and the wind and the state of the eighteenth green, and how the Major got a bonny 3 there the night before--anything to get this taste of Kentish mud out of their St. Andrews mouths.