The ubiquity of this game - being the third of the seven wonders - is remarkable, for it is played everywhere by everybody. No other sport has ever achieved such universal favour, and we may be sure that none will ever do so, because, apart from the fascination it exercises upon the people of different countries and different races, it is so strong in its simplicity - the stick, the ball, the mark, and, with them being given, the object plainly suggested. It has already been suggested that, in its essentials golf being obvious, it must have been practised from the earliest times. Everywhere the simpler emotions of man are the same, and so everywhere the game must make the same appeal when it is understood. So here, strange as it is still, we have a nearly satisfying explanation. What is yet wonderful beyond it is the fact that the regulated game with the rules and restrictions that have been agreed upon and codified by the high authorities at St. Andrews are everywhere accepted, and even in such embellishments it is the same game everywhere. Nothing can approach it in this universality. Yet that also is nearly explicable.

By a process of continuous thought and deduction from observation the people of St. Andrews, past and present, have gained a code of regulations which seems most completely to satisfy the requirements of the case. It has often been urged against the numerous and lengthy laws we have that they suffer from too many niceties and too many complications, and that they represent a remarkable evolution of man-made intricacy from the one simple governing principle that the ball shall be struck by the stick, and that if the object be not achieved by the first blow it shall be struck again from the place where it then lies. In that simple principle there is all golf, and by it the game must surely have been played at the beginning. But it is the disposition of man to depart from the most absolute simplicity in the direction of what he regards as improvement upon it, and therefore bare principles get covered up with fancy wrappings, while again there is in the human species an immovable distrust of each other and a tendency towards the setting up of safeguards and protections - laws. When this is done in different places, and by different peoples, the results also are almost certain to be widely different; and with the assistance of time and futher development two peoples might at length produce two games which, originating in the same basic principle, might be in appearance, materials, and actions quite dissimilar. Nearly all ball games, indeed, must have had much the same original principle. Golf, as we know it, has had its integrity preserved, and has established its amazing universality because, despite the numerous and lengthy laws, the spirit of the game has been so completely preserved in them. Between absolute simplicity, the one natural law of golf, as we might call it, as just enunciated, and a lengthy, confusing, and sometimes even contradictory code there can be little compromise, and perfection and completeness in golfing law are impossible, because no two courses are alike, no two shots are quite the same, and there can be no end to new situations until there is an end of the world and man. It sometimes seems that St. Andrews, indefatigable, pursues an impossible finality, and thereby makes difficulties for itself. That through ages and generations it has produced a code of laws, and defined the principles of a game that is accepted all over the world, and causes the same game to be played wherever the sun may shine, is not merely an achievement in intelligence and discernment, but something that suggests a grand inspiration. These are times of change, when old systems of the world are being abandoned and new ones being set in their places. It may happen, though it is as unlikely as it is undesirable, that St. Andrews itself as a governing body will fall; but nothing that ever happens to the game in the future can equal the marvel of its foundation and establishment by this authority and its associates.

It is not without good reason that they call golf the world game now. It has alighted upon every country, and wherever it has touched it has seized. The yellow man likes it; the black man in some places has to be kept away from it, because it is found that he grows too fond of it. One day when I was golfing at the Country Club, near Boston, they showed me a most primitive kind of club that was kept with some other relics in a glass case. It had been fashioned from the branch of a tree, and with this crude implement a nigger boy in one of the southern states had not long previously driven a ball over two hundred yards. Other games are for their own countries, like the country's foods, and they would neither be suitable nor adaptable elsewhere; but in its nature golf will do for all, and it has the same subtle attraction for everybody, so that what was once thought to be the "golf craze" of the British people only became the craze of the Americans too, then of the French, now of the Germans and others, and of really everybody. Its qualities and conveniences make it the only possible world game. At present in some countries it is confined to a few people of unusual distinction or circumstances, but it has been found in old and recent history that, following a beginning of this kind, the game in a new land has never languished, but that presently it has extended from the pioneers, who were probably from abroad, to the native people, and from the upper classes to the middle, and then to the lower. In France at the present time we see the game being started among the general French, and I have news that the statesmen have begun to play; yet a little while since the golf of Gaul was carried on by British only.

Recently some of us were looking over the map of the world for odd countries that might be golfless, and it appeared then that there were but four: one being the Balkan States, considering them in the piece, another was Afghanistan, a third was Persia, and, scattering the attention over the islands of the earth, one reflected that no golf in Iceland had been heard of. But shortly afterwards this brief list of lone golfless places was reduced to one. To a little gathering of friends one night an adventurous gentleman was describing the excitements of a day's rough golf that he had had one time when near to Reykiavik, and, if the course was to some extent made for the occasion, little enough did that matter then. There were some real holes, and the pioneer declared one of them to be the longest and most sporting he had ever played; and we knew he had played some good ones. So Iceland came into the fold. It was discovered during the recent wars that there was golf here and there in those worrying Balkans. Then lo! the land of the Afghans was also delivered to the game, and it was the Ameer himself who was chiefly responsible, thus emulating the rulers of many other lands. He had heard of golf, had seen it, realised it, and had been fascinated. Thereupon he had a short course prepared for him in the neighbourhood of Kabul, and began to practise with royal assiduity at his driving, pitching, and putting. Humble, doubtful, and yet loyal subjects observed this done from a respectful distance, and they wondered. After a little while they perceived that it was a game, and that the chief of Afghans invariably sought with his little ball the holes that were placed upon the course. Being practical people, they conceived that they might turn the game and their royal master's fondness for it to their advantage, and thereupon began to deposit in the holes at night such petitions as they had difficulty in getting placed before the royal eyes by any other means. They believed that by their new system the Ameer was sure to see and read what was intended for him. Yet it proved that he was somewhat angered by this manner of approach, and gave orders that all petitions found in his golfing holes should be burned unread. The petitioning parties had not understood how seriously the game he played was taken, nor the deep effect it had upon the mind and the disposition of the player, else they would surely have moved craftily and warily with their prayers, and then they might have gained imperial favour. Had they seen their ruler miss his drive, foozle his second, put his third into the pond, slice among the trees with his fifth - even Ameers being penalised a stroke for lifting from the water - and eventually reach the putting green in nine, three more strokes then being needed, they would have been stupid Afghans had they not at a convenient moment taken their petitions from the holes, or withheld them if they had not placed them there. But when an Ameer hits a good one from the tee, when his ball flies fast and straight from his royal brassey (and rulers also laugh when a topped ball runs a bunker!), when by enormous luck he lays an approach quite close to the hole, and afterwards the putt is truly played - why, many an Afghan might pray for the release of a brother from prison in Kabul, and the brother, pardoned, might be raised to office in the palace, perhaps to be an executioner. Now, if the petition had been submitted when the sovereign had done his hole in twelve, the brother might have died as arranged, perhaps the petitioner also, and who knows but that the neglectful greenkeeper, for not having seen that all holes for the day were free of pleas, would not have joined the departures for another world. Wandering players may look forward now to some future golf in Afghanistan. Have we not heard of the Shah at the game? If it cannot be proved, Persia must be left in an Asiatic golfless solitude, with the gibe against her that even celestial China has her courses, and that they are everywhere save in the Persia where Omar was and in fine worldly philosophy bade us take good pleasures while we may.