Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/175

144 month's sea-side golf. The joy of finding the ball always in a first-rate lie, the capacity of running the ball true and straight to the hole, the sea air—to enjoy these to the full you must have come straight from eight months' play on a clay common with the lumps as hard as stones, and the soil cracked with the heat. Contrast is the essence of enjoyment; the inhabitant of North Berwick has nothing like the same fascination at the game in October as the inland golfer who is there for his holiday. All honour, therefore, to the old clay common which can provide him with the means of play, though it may be of an inferior kind. It has at any rate given him exercise, and the capacity for enjoyment of better things.