Spirit of the links

YOUNG TOM'S BEREAVEMENT
141
his
boy, the great Young Tom, are on the green,
matched against old Willie Park and Mungo Park.
Some news comes. It is bad news. It is taken to
the green, and the others bow their heads for a
moment but say nothing to the boy. But as soon
as may be they take him off the links, and put
him in a sailing boat to sail across the water with
Old Tom, his father, to St. Andrews on the Fifeshire
coast. And there he reels as he looks upon the
pallid face of his much-beloved wife, her head laid
upon a pillow, and the eyelids closed in death. Young
Tom's own death-warrant was signed that moment.
The golfing history of North Berwick is full of the
romance of the game.
VIII
In many sequestered places there are fine courses
that the golfer in general knows little of. Demand
of him suddenly that he shall tell you of a far-away
seaside links where you may rest and play for a little
while until the city calls you back, and by force of
habit he will begin to murmur pleasantly about his
Carnousties and his Gullanes and all the rest. They
are excellent, most excellent; but we call for change,
and where for the old wanderer is the change that is
good enough? When he appeals to you, send him
down in a cab to Paddington, bidding him take a
ticket to Porthcawl, changing at Cardiff, for you may
know that in the evening he will be happy, and that
upon the next day the joy of life will have come again
to a weary worker.
Porthcawl is a place that rests the man and gives
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