numerous for a club of such magnitude.
The members, however, if not residents,
are annual visitors, and come from all parts
of the world—from San Francisco, Chicago,
and New York, on one side, and from
Canton, Calcutta, Hong Kong, on the other,
even from Sydney and Melbourne, to indulge
in the game, and prevent the old city from
becoming musty and stagnant. The laws of
golf, as interpreted by the St. Andrew's
Golfing Club, are the laws of the game all
over the Scottish world.

Let me describe these famous links as
well as I can, by the aid, not only of a
personal survey, but of a large and elaborate
map of the golfing ground, which is to be
seen in most of the fashionable private
houses of the city. The links extend along
the margin of the sea shore, from the city
towards the embouchure of the river Eden,
where it falls into the Bay of St. Andrews.
The ground is about four miles and a half
in length, and half or three quarters of a
mile in width. The course taken at a match
is up one side of the links and down again on
the other, making a distance of upwards of
nine miles. On the course, out and in, there
are nine holes, about a mile apart, respectively
called the Bridge Hole, the Cartgate
Hole, the Third Hole, the Ginger Beer
Hole, the Hell Hole, the Heather Hole, the
Eden Hole, the Short Hole, and the End
Hole. One part of the link, that presents a
smooth green sward, and offers no difficullties
to the golfer, in the shape of "bunkers," that
is, pits or deep hollows in the soil, or "whin
bushes," in which the ball may get
embedded and concealed, is called the Elysian
Fields, and another, where these combined
difficulties are many, and extend over the
best part of a mile, is called Pandemonium
by the ladies. The gentlemen are less
mealy-mouthed, and give it the shorter,
and more emphatic designation of "Hell."
He who, in the words of the Golfiad, a
poem by an anonymous writer, can send
his ball

        Smack over Hell at one immortal go,

is generally rewarded for his pith of arm
and his success with a ringing cheer, alike
from his partisans and opponents. A golfer
and a poet—and poets of the third and
fourth order are almost as common in Scotland
as blackberries in England—says of
the fifth, or Hell-hole:

What daring genius first yclept thee Hell;
   What high poetic, awe-struck, grand old golfer,
   Much more of a mythologist than scoffer!
Whoe'er he was, the name befits thee well!
  "All hope abandon, ye who enter here,"
   Is written awful o'er thy gloomy jaws!

The clubs used at the game are of various
degrees of strength, weight, and elasticity
—some for hitting a hard blow on level
ground, some more adapted for the hilly
ground, strewn with pits and bunkers,
some for extricating the ball from the whin
and furze bushes, and some for the gentle
final stroke that is to land the ball safely in
the hole, from which at the final consummation
it may not be a yard, or even an inch
distant.

There is a minimum supply of clubs to
be carried by the caddie, from which the
player can select his weapon, according to
his fancy or his requirements: the play
club, the long spoon, the middle spoon, the
short spoon, the click, the heavy iron, and
the light iron. Some players, however,
are fastidious, and load their caddies with
twenty or thirty clubs, that they may have
a plethora of choice, when the lay of the
ball and the distance from the hole present
any real or seeming difficulty to be
surmounted. The side that lands its ball in
the ninth hole, after the smallest number of
strokes during the whole course, is the
winner. It is no wonder to any one who
has ever tried his hand at golf, especially
on these breezy links, that the
game should be a fascinating one. The
beautiful stretch of open land, the blue
expanse of sea, the joyous "caller air"
that comes surging and waving over the
deep, laden with health to the smoke-dried
lungs of men who have long been
pent in cities; the exhilaration of the
steady march after the flying ball; all these
auxiliaries make up a sport that has for its
votaries to the full as much delight as
fox-hunting or deer-stalking. And all the more
delightful for being unalloyed, like these
sports, with cruelty or wrong to the humblest
living thing that God has created. As
the Golfer's Garland, an old song of 1743,
says:

At golf we contend without rancour or spleen,
And bloodless the laurels we reap on the green:
From healthful exertion our pleasures arise,
And to crown our delight no poor fugitive dies.

Blue devils, diseases, dull sorrow, and care,
Are chased by our balls as they fly through the air,
And small were the monsters that Hercules slew,
Compared with the fiends that our clubs can subdue!

Every one has heard of the passion of
some folks for whist, of others for angling,
and of others again for skating, a pastime
that our climate but too seldom affords; but
few out of Scotland know the intensity of
the passion with which golf inspires its
votaries, and which age and decrepitude