Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/708

698 has been previously gloomy and lowering, suddenly and spasmodically brightens up; he pulls out his cigar-case, lights a weed, and offering his partner one, remarks:

“Well, this is a charming view; capital bracing exercise this; does one a power of good!”

This extraordinary change is intended to express this:

“It is useless to try to play with a muff like you for a partner; let me, however, enjoy the beauties of nature, the soothing weed, and the bracing exercise; but as for calling this golf, my dear fellow, you have clearly mistaken your vocation.”

Tremble, Saxon, when in after years your partner lights a pipe.

To-morrow and next day you will have an opportunity of seeing some really important foursomes. There is going to be a match between four of the best professional players in Scotland. And then several matches have been made up, in which one gentleman and a professional play another gentleman and a professional; all four being first-rate players. These matches are well worth seeing, and they usually play for pretty high sums. And if so be you are so minded, you can make your little bets upon them.

And now, Saxon, do you, after what you have seen, dare to deny that golf is a scientific game? You think that hitting a ball along the ground looks easy. Wait until you try. At the first attempt most probably you will not hit the ball at all; nor at the second; nor very probably at the third; at the fourth there is every chance of your breaking the club. Now at cricket a muff may go in and hit the best of bowling about; all in wrong directions it is true, but still making runs which count. The ball may come against his bat and go off in the slip for three, even supposing that he never moves his bat. But at golf you have an inert lump of gutta-percha lying obstinately motionless in front of you. Unless you hit that ball there is not the remotest chance of its budging an inch of its own accord. At cricket the farther a ball goes (provided it goes not into a field’s hands) the better; may it run for ever, may it go down a well where it may be seen but not touched; may it go out of the ground into the next field. But at golf if you do hit the ball how are you to manage to make it stop when you wish it to do so? You have set the ball in motion, and roll it will, though it be making inevitably for a bunker. You may not “rush in hands low,” field the ball, and return it, “with a long and arrow-like throw,” to the place you wish it to lie. You must stand by and see your hopes buried in a grave of sand.

And then consider the unspeakable advantages of golf. No toiling, and running, and sweating in the heat of a summer’s day to the end that you may jerk your arms off returning the ball only that the batsman may hit it the harder, and that you may perspire and be sworn at again.

No solitary “over from Jackson,”—one on the knee, one in the abdomen, one in the eye, and the fourth in the wicket,—and then instant and utter extinction for hours to come. But one perpetual jubilee of hitting and whacking—the worse the player the more the hitting: a game, my Norman, where you are never put out except in temper, never run, never perspire, never sw—but enough, I see that I have touched you, you yield, you are a proselyte. Come! let me gently lead thee by the hand into yonder workshop, where, for the modest outlay of two shillings and sixpence, or at most of three shillings of the coin of this realm, thou mayest purchase the shortest of short spoons—there is nothing personal in the name, my friend, it is that of a short and stumpy club—and thus begin, though humbly, a career which cannot but end in a happy, a vigorous, and a contented old age.

H. M.

loop of the Main which extends from Aschaffenburg to Lohr, and at the southern point of which lies Miltenberg, comprises the principal as well as the most typical beauties of the Franconian river. Considering the times in which we live, it is singularly apart from all travelled routes, although by no means difficult of access, as the railway between Hanau and Würzburg forms the chord of which it is the arc, and there are excellent roads on both banks of the river. Improved locomotion has had the effect of, in a manner, sending this country to Coventry, for, before the railroad was made, which bores through the Spessart hills, there was considerable passenger traffic up and down the river. At present the principal business appears to be in building-stone, for the cultivation of the vine, once carried to great perfection in this region, seems to have declined, so that the wines, though still some of them excellent in quality, are chiefly consumed on the spot. It is, however, undeniable that this portion of the river deserves a visit more than any other part of its course, not only on account of its picturesque beauty, but its rich stores of historical monuments and recollections. We have heard it preferred by landscape-painters to the Moselle or the Rhine, though for a reason which would scarcely be generally admitted as justifying such a preference, the absence of bold or rugged natural features, and the substitution for them of combinations of the softer lines.

To our eyes the scenery, as a whole, was disappointing, as too constantly repeating itself: the small horseshoe of the river by Miltenberg forming an exception, and this probably because the long sandstone hills at that spot are viewed more in their profile than elsewhere. Miltenberg is the point which most painters would fix upon as the gem of the Main.

At Lohr a brook of the same name, rich in trout and grayling, falls into the Main, the course of which affluent runs mostly parallel with the railroad after the tunnel is passed, by which the railroad escapes the necessity of climbing over the crest of the Spessart. Thus Lohr is a desirable angling station. A fisherman may make himself very comfortable at the large hotel kept by Herr Gundlach, of whom, however, it is necessary to