lost balls. Now, I do not object to looking for balls. I rather enjoy it.
It is a healthy, open-air occupation that keeps the body exercised and the
mind fallow. There are some people who think the spectacle of a grown-up
man (with a family) looking in an open field for a ball that isn't there is
ridiculous. They are mistaken. It is really, seen from the philosophic
angle, a very noble spectacle. It is the symbol of deathless hope. It is
part of the great discipline of the game. It is that part of the game at
which I do best. There is not a spinney over the whole course that I do not
know by heart. There is not a bit of gorse that I have not probed and been
probed by. I must have spent hours in the ditches, and I have upon me the
scars left by every hedgerow. And the result is that, while I am worthless
as a golfer, I think I may claim to be quite in the first class at finding
lost balls.

Now all discoveries hinge upon some sudden illumination. I had up to a
certain point been a sad failure in recovering balls. I watched them fall
with the utmost care and was so sure of them that I felt that I could walk
blindfold and pick them up. But when I came to the spot the ball was not
there. This experience became so common that at last the conclusion forced
itself upon me that the golf ball had a sort of impish intelligence that
could only be met by a superior cunning. I suspected that it deliberately
hid itself, and that so long as it was aware that you were hunting for it,
it took a fiendish delight in dodging you. If, said I, one could only let
the thing suppose it was not being looked for it would be taken off its
guard. I put the idea into operation, and I rejoice to say it works like a
charm.

The method is quite simple. You lose the ball, of course, to begin with.
That is easy enough. Then you search for it, and the longer you search the
deeper grows the mystery of its vanishing. Your companions come and help