"You may have these clubs," he said. "Take them away. If you don't want
them yourself, give them to one of the caddies."

Across the room the Oldest Member gazed at him with a grave sadness
through the smoke of his pipe. His eye was deep and dreamy--the eye of
a man who, as the poet says, has seen Golf steadily and seen it whole.

"You are giving up golf?" he said.

He was not altogether unprepared for such an attitude on the young
man's part: for from his eyrie on the terrace above the ninth green he
had observed him start out on the afternoon's round and had seen him
lose a couple of balls in the lake at the second hole after taking
seven strokes at the first.

"Yes!" cried the young man fiercely. "For ever, dammit! Footling game!
Blanked infernal fat-headed silly ass of a game! Nothing but a waste of
time."

The Sage winced.

"Don't say that, my boy."

"But I do say it. What earthly good is golf? Life is stern and life is
earnest. We live in a practical age. All round us we see foreign
competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing
golf! What do we get out of it? Is golf any _use_? That's what I'm
asking you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this
pestilential pastime has done a man any practical good?"