When you are one of a special party that sets out for a sojourn at some place, solely for the reason of the golf that it affords, and when in due course, the time having been well and enjoyably spent on the links, your friends determine that they will return home or depart to some other place for golf, do not on any account yield to an impulse to stay behind them, on feeling that you could enjoy still a little more play, and persuading yourself that among the people you know who are staying in the place you may make up good matches. There will be no further enjoyment, for all the days that follow will suffer in comparison with those full ones that were spent when those bosom companions helped to the happiness in every hour. The course will not be the same; there will be a ghostly silence about the rooms of your lodging place, and the atmosphere of the town or village may seem unfriendly or at least indifferent; whereas before, in the independence of your association, you had not cared what it was, but formed a vague impression that the people were pleasantly conspiring to add to the comfort and the pleasure of this expedition. On the first morning afterwards it does really seem that all the people who had stayed there had gone also, and not merely the three who had come with you. You breakfast perhaps alone in a vast apartment. The head waiter seems to mix a great sympathy with his attentions, suggesting that he appreciates the loneliness and the misery of your bereavement. Out of this wretched place to the clubhouse, and there is no one there, and the obliging secretary or steward is unable to give any definite information as to the prospects of a morning match. You take out a young professional, and, well though he plays, a poor thing is this match with him in comparison with those that were of the days before, when you knew always the thoughts and fears that were passing through the mind of your opponent, and knew almost as well as your own, the clubs with which he played his shots, and exactly how they did their work. The ghosts of your friends seem to walk in front of you down the fairway leading to every hole, and as you leave the putting green and go forward moodily to the next tee, there is the shadow form of one of them pointing with his club to the exact spot where you remember his ball was teed yesterday, and you feel momentarily a happier man as you think you can see his characteristic swing and the glint of joy that comes into his eyes as he finds he has made the carry that it needed a strong heart to attempt with this wind blowing back from the green. You do not wish to appear inconsiderate, and not to show yourself as a man of proper feeling and a good sportsman in the presence of another who can hardly display any open resentment at your attitude, but you cannot help this walking moodily and listlessly to the tee, as if not caring anything for the game that is in progress. There is no familiar talk on the old familiar topics.