Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/243

204 a club to suit them and make them good players is so profitable to the club-makers, and is moreover an idiosyncrasy so easy to encourage, that, on the whole, these dealers have a very good time.

Cricket and golf are the two games where professionals and amateurs can mix and play with each other with perfect freedom. There are some sports where the thing is impossible. Rowing and athletics are either one thing or the other: if it is desirable to settle the question whether A, a professional runner, or B, the great amateur, is the best over a mile, there is no way of doing it except by A becoming an amateur, or B a professional. But any golf amateur can play a professional if he has no objection to pay them the proper fee, and he may go so far as to bet to a moderate amount with his opponent. It is the case, I hear, that money does not by any means always pass at the end of these games, but a ball is frequently the medium of exchange, and the contango system is frequently adopted without payment of interest. But foursomes and singles are frequently played on the mixed plans, and it is a good thing for the game that such is