"There is more in this pastime," he said, "than the casual observer
would suspect."

I have noticed, and I suppose other people have noticed, that in the
golf education of every man there is a definite point at which he may
be said to have crossed the dividing line--the Rubicon, as it
were--that separates the golfer from the non-golfer. This moment comes
immediately after his first good drive. In the ninety minutes in which
I instructed Mortimer Sturgis that morning in the rudiments of the
game, he made every variety of drive known to science; but it was not
till we were about to leave that he made a good one.

A moment before he had surveyed his blistered hands with sombre
disgust.

"It's no good," he said. "I shall never learn this beast of a game. And
I don't want to either. It's only fit for lunatics. Where's the sense
in it? Hitting a rotten little ball with a stick! If I want exercise,
I'll take a stick and go and rattle it along the railings. There's
something _in_ that! Well, let's be getting along. No good wasting
the whole morning out here."

"Try one more drive, and then we'll go."

"All right. If you like. No sense in it, though."

He teed up the ball, took a careless stance, and flicked moodily. There
was a sharp crack, the ball shot off the tee, flew a hundred yards in a
dead straight line never ten feet above the ground, soared another