The beauty of Golf is that there are so many ways of going wrong, and so many things to think of.  A person of very moderately active mind has his ideas diverted by the landscape, the sea, the blossom on the gorse, the larks singing overhead, not to mention the whole system of the universe.  He forgets to keep his eye on the ball, in devoting his energy to holding tight with his left, and being slow up.  Or he remembers to keep his eye on the ball, and forgets the other essentials.  Then an awful moment comes when he loses his temper.  Thereby all is lost, honour (not to mention “the honour,”) and everything.  People in front, old people, are so provoking.  They potter tardily along, pass ten minutes in considering a putt, shout and swear if you hit into them, and are not pleased if you sit down and smoke while you wait.  The only entity that I don’t lose my temper with is my partner.  The worse he plays, the better am I pleased to have a brother in adversity.  The subjective Golfer, however, is certainly a bore.  He is “put off” by every simple circumstance, by his opponent wearing an unbecoming cap and the like.  Afterwards, he will hold forth for hours on all his sorrows and all the sins of others.  The Duffer is more modest and less apologetic.  He is kept always playing (as I said) by the diabolical circumstance that he has lucid intervals, though rarely, when he plays like other people for three or four holes.  I once, myself did the long hole in—­but never mind.  Nobody would believe me.  The most amiable of Duffers was he who, after ten strokes in a bunker, cut his ball into three parts.  “I am bringing it out,” he said, “in penny numbers.”

The born Duffer, I speak feelingly, is incurable.  No amount of odds will put him on the level even of Scotch Professors.  For the learned have divided Golf into several categories.  There is Professional Golf, the best Amateur Golf, Enthusiasts’ Golf, Golf, Beginners’ Golf, Ladies’ Golf, Infant Golf, Parlour Golf, the Golf of Scotch Professors.  But the true Duffer’s Golf is far, far below that.  A Duffer like me is too bad for hanging.  He should be condemned to play for life at Chorley Wood, or to bush-whack at Bungay.

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FREE AND EASY THEATRES.—­We have no sympathy whatever with the idea of a Theatre Libre or with a Free-and-Easy Theatre, but we shall be very glad when all Theatres are made Easy, Easy, that is, as to sitting accommodation, and Easy of egress and ingress.  But if the space is to be enlarged, will not the prices have to be enlarged too?  ’Tis a problem in the discussion of which The Players, which is a new journal, solely devoted to things Dramatic and Theatrical, would find congenial employment.

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VENICE AT OLYMPIA.

    ["The water in the canals is two feet in depth, and is kept at
    a temperature of sixty degrees.”

Vide the Press on “Venice at Olympia."]