was playing the match over in his mind and was wondering just how it happened that he and Judge Taft had lost it. Meaning to have a little quiet fun out of the situation, the writer determined to make no comments on the match, but to wait and see what his father would say and do next; and, hurrying into the cottage in advance, he enlisted the other members of the household in a conspiracy of silence. Accordingly, no questions were asked as to the result of the great match, and the justice, like "Tar Baby" in Uncle Remus's story, "kep' on sayin' nuffin," while the writer, like Bre'r Fox, "lay low" and waited for developments. We might have been returning from the most commonplace tramp across the Murray Bay hills.

During supper that evening no one even mentioned golf, and the justice did not open his mouth upon any topicwhich was unusual, for he was fond of table-talk. After supper he sat in his favorite corner near the blazing log fire, silent and very thoughtful. At about half-past eight he rose from his chimneycorner and said, "I think I will go to bed," and, bidding us all "good night," he slowly climbed the stairs to his bed

room.

The next morning we two were taking an early breakfast alone. Neither of us had even so much as mentioned golf since leaving the club-house the day before, and I was waiting to hear what he would say. Finally, he broke his long silence on the subject, and, just as if only one topic had been in our minds ever since the close of the match and he were only continuing a discussion that had been going on all night, he casually remarked that he "didn't think much of Taft's game!"

In after years the justice was in the habit of saying that "Golf is not a game, but a disease"; and from that somewhat disparaging remark about the other fellow's game it was then evident that his own had already become a chronic case. Hiding a smile with some difficulty, the writer admitted that Judge Taft had certainly been "clean off his game" the day before, and that he had never seen him play so badly-for the ex-President, even then as a beginner, was a very dangerous antagonist; possibly "Charley's" ill-con

cealed filial anxiety had "queered him." To that explanation, slowly nodding his head up and down, with an air of having reached a final and thoroughly judicial conclusion, the justice replied:

"Well, I think I can learn this game; but Andrews never will!"

From that time on my father's interest in the game increased apace. Especially during that first summer, he practised his strokes at all hours and in all places, whether suitable or not. For him, the sitting-room rug was a good imitation of the putting green and a salt-cellar an excellent counterfeit of the inviting but elusive hole. But woe betide the chandelier, or the passer-by in the rear, when at night he practised some new idea as to stance or swing which he had gotten from Harry Vardon or Travers, and the numerous other books by famous golfers which he read with great avidity at that period.

A week or two after he had thus tasted blood in his first real match game, he saw one of his daughters-in-law knitting a fancy red-and-black waistcoat, and he asked her what it was. Being told that it was a golf waistcoat for her husband, he asked her to let him try it on-which he immediately proceeded to do. It was never seen again except upon his portly form! Not only did he thus commandeer another man's waistcoat, but he also bought a red coat to match it. He balked, however, at the knickerbockers then in vogue even for elderly men; but he compromised by putting on leggings, which gave him a very trim, sportsmanlike appearance.

Another anecdote is perhaps worth repeating, as additional evidence that a large amount of a very lovable kind of "human nature" went into the make-up of his character.

At the close of his first season at Murray Bay he played a match with a distinguished French-Canadian judge, and somewhat to his surprise he was badly beaten. Some friend of the Quebec jurist had evidently seen the match and been interested in its spicy international aspect, for several days afterward there appeared in one of the Montreal papers a full and rather amusing account of it, in which special emphasis was laid on the fact that the Canadian jurist had worsted

"the United States Supreme Court at the ancient and royal game of golf," and the justice had to stand quite a bit of goodhumored chaffing on the subject, at the hands of his boys and his Canadian and American friends at Murray Bay. Of course he took it most good-naturedly, but it was evident to his family that his growing pride as a golfer and his pride as an American had both received a rude shock, and we boys had premonitions then of a challenge from him for a return match at the very opening of the next summer. Thanks to the opportunities for practice snatched at intervals during the open Washington winters at the Chevy Chase Country Club (which he joined immediately upon his return that autumn), his game had greatly improved by the following summer, and as soon as the Quebec jurist arrived at Murray Bay he was served with a good-humored, formal challenge to a return match in the "CanadianAmerican Champion Series." On that occasion the justice, to his great delight, was decidedly victorious.

For several days afterward it was observed that he carefully examined the sporting columns of that same Montreal paper-the part of a newspaper that he had never been known so much as to glance at. Finally, pointing accusingly at the paper in his hands, he said to the writer, somewhat quizzically (his very words are here quoted substantially as he uttered them):

"Last year, when Judge B., who had played golf all his life, beat me, that Montreal paper took nearly a half-column to tell its readers how the French-Canadian jurist had downed the Supreme Court of the United States; but I wish simply to call your attention to the fact that, this year, when the American judge was even more victorious than his opponent had been last year, this same enterprising Canadian newspaper doesn't even give a line to the return match.”

It was a touch of "human nature" in a golfer that bridged all the years between father and son.

By the end of his second or third year on the links his descent of the golfer's Avernus had become so complete that, quite as a matter of course, he accepted an election for one or two years to the

presidency of the Murray Bay Golf Club, and for twelve or more years, during the happy summers spent in the bracing air of the lower Saint Lawrence region, he rarely missed a day on the links. In the first two or three summers he often played twice a day, making his thirty-six holes. To him an ordinary rain was no obstacle at all; he would say that it was "only a Scotch mist," and that it could easily be negotiated with the help of an umbrella, which he always carried in his golf-bag, as if it were one of his clubs. After making his stroke he would hoist the umbrella and, blissfully oblivious of even a sharp shower, he would follow up his ball with a stately and springy step, full of high hopes for his next stroke. And when he returned to the cottage he would tell us how he had made one hole in four strokes and a certain very difficult hole in five, and another, a short and very "sporty" hole, in three; and what hard luck he had on another, "perfectly simple hole," etc., etc.

Eventually he developed a very accurate and effective game. Many a better golfer was quite often beaten by him because of his steady playing through the fair green-his safer though shorter shots more than making up for the longer but erratic shots of his more brilliant opponent. And on the putting-green he won many a hole with his deadly eight and ten foot putts, which, standing erect like a flagstaff, he generally made with one hand.

He became such a familiar and welcome figure on the Murray Bay links, and was so closely associated with the development of the club, that when, in later years, the course was rearranged and names given to the holes, one of his favorites was named "The Justice," in his honor, another hole being called "The President," in honor of his partner in that first foursome match of "Uncle Sam vs. the Empire State."

So contagious was his pleasure in the game and such was his genial camaraderie that he became a much-sought-after companion on the links, both at Murray Bay and at Chevy Chase. Younger men were specially keen to try conclusions with "the justice."

The writer remembers one instance where the much younger golfer (a cer

tain Mr. S.) came home from the links "a sadder and a wiser man." This gentleman was the writer's guest at Murray Bay about the summer of 1900, by which time the justice was among the best of the group listed in golf-clubs as "Class C."

Mr. S. was inclined to take his own game rather seriously. Though at the time he was on the shady side of fifty-five and was at least ten years younger than the justice, he never admitted his age, preferring to be classed with the "boys' in the forties. He confessed to the writer that he would like to see what he could do against "the justice." Slyly encouraged thereto by the writer, he sent him a respectful challenge, which was gleefully accepted. Upon his return from the links, when asked by the writer how the match had turned out, Mr. S. exclaimed: "He's a wonder! Why, he beat me seven up, with six to play. I felt like that Texan whose house and barns and chickens and wife had been swept away by a tornado; it was 'so dd complete' that I had to laugh."

The next morning Mr. S. had a caller in the person of Jackson, the colored messenger assigned to the justice by the marshal of the court. Jackson had become so much attached to the family, and they to him, and had so identified himself with the justice and all that concerned him, that, in speaking to or of the justice, he never used the pronouns of the second or third persons, but always said "we" and "our." The following dialogue then ensued:

"How are you feeling this morning, Mr. S.?"

"Oh, I'm feeling very well, Jackson. Why?"

"Well, Mr. S., we were just wondering how you felt this morning, after the game; for we have made up our minds that, after this season, we are only going to play with the young men, with the men of our class."

And this double shot came from the faithful henchman of a man of sixtyseven, who was also a novice! Mr. S., however, was a good enough "sport" to tell this good story on himself all over Rochester. He is probably still telling it.

The writer can vouch for the truth of a certain other story about the justice which even now, every once in a while, some paragrapher sends on its fresh rounds through the newspapers.

Among his favorite companions on the Chevy Chase links was a prominent Episcopalian clergyman in Washington. The reverend doctor had just missed his drive completely. Though greatly surprised and disgusted, not a word escaped his lips. Whereupon the justice (quoting unconsciously from one of John Kendrick Bangs's delightful golf tales, which he had recently read) remarked:

"Doctor Sterrett, the things you didn't say were something awful. That was the most profane silence I ever heard!"

Often, during the mild Washington winters, when he was troubled by a knotty point in some case before the court, he would go out very early in the morning to Chevy Chase, for a short singleton on the links, his small negro caddy being his only companion; and then returning home, with a freshened mind, he would successfully attack the legal problem that had perplexed him. And as the spring approached he would begin to look forward to the good times he meant to have, during the next summer, on the wind-swept links at Murray Bay, drinking in the glorious views of the majestic Saint Lawrence between strokes, and accumulating new strength of body and clearness of mind for his arduous work on the bench.

There can be no doubt that "this game of golf," at which he shied so decidedly when first he was urged and tempted to try it, added not a few years to his life. It certainly kept him physically and mentally vigorous to the very end of his days.

A telegram of congratulation that was sent to him by a fellow golfer on his seventieth birthday will make an appropriate finis to this story:

"Many happy returns of the day,

Seventy years up, and many more to play." And he did "play" eight years morekeenly enjoying his game up to almost the very last, when the curtain dropped upon his earthly life.