"Yes, but wait until you see Myopia!" I was not glad to leave Essex, but I was happy to go from there to the Myopia Hunt Club a few miles distant (and may I never forget that glorious ride in Mr. Willett's big car, along the winding road fringed with silver birches and autumn-tinted foliage, past placid little lakes, through some of the country of chastest charm in New England!), for Myopia is America's golfing pride. Besides, it is one of the few American courses that have a wide international reputation. Remember the astonishment when Andrew Kirkaldy, a St. Andrews golfer, if ever there was one, a man believing in the old course of Fifeshire as a Mussulman believes in Mecca, came back from an American tour and declared to British people that Myopia was the best course in the world! So we approach one American golf course with wonder and a certain awe. There are other reasons for doing so if we only knew them beforehand. Traditions and old dignity are strongly attached to it, and this Myopia is such a club for high feeling and exclusiveness as would do credit to any institution we have at home, golf or otherwise. It is, at the very least, as difficult to become a member of Myopia as of the Royal and Ancient. If I dared I would say it is more so. Myopia, I am told, will use the black ball with joy when there is a candidate at the doors. It might be easier in some circumstances for a man to become the President of the United States than to become a member of the Myopia Hunt Club. The dignity of Myopia exudes from the timbers of its long, quaint club-house. The ceilings are low, while the walls are panelied and are really old, for in quite early days of New England this, or part of it, was a farmhouse.

The name of the club in this case has nothing to do with golf, nor with the name of a place, for the place is Hamilton. Myopia is a technical term for near-sight. The original members despised the game, and as for letting it influence them in their choice of name of the club, such a thing is inconceivable. Originally, and for long afterwards, and primarily even now, Myopia is a hunt club; it prides itself on being so, and when anybody asks one of the old hunting members if they do not possess a good golf course there, he might say he supposed they did play some game with that name there sometimes. In the early days, I believe that many of the members wore coloured glasses for some reasons connected with their sight, and it was through this that the name of the club was given. Golf was a very late addition, and some of the old hunting-men, whom you will see moving about the clubhouse in real and unaffected riding costume as hardly anywhere else in America, feel a little sore about it still, and it is even now the fact that the hunting section keep to themselves in one part of the club and the golfers to themselves in their part, with such as Mr. Herbert Leeds and one or two others in both. Mr. Leeds showed me some of the old prints on the walls illustrating the race meetings that had taken place there in almost prehistoric times, and some mementoes of the early days of the golf club, together with the score card of George Duncan's record round on the course. I hope you realise that Myopia is not an ordinary golf club; I did so within a minute of my arrival there.

The course is not like others in America. It is almost more of the open heathland sort of course than any other I have tramped over while in the country. It is a little barer, seemingly a little wilder than most of the others, and none the worse for that. Its putting-greens are capital, and at some of the holes, if not all, I have certainly trodden on turf that is better than anything else that my feet have touched on that side of the Atlantic. I remember that I nearly shouted with delight to my partner when I came upon the first stretch of it - green and soft and velvety. But it was not all like that, and in some respects I do think that, splendid as the course is, praise of it has been a little overdone. Yet on the other hand it is certainly a course that grows on the constant player there, and reveals new subtleties to him every time of playing. That after all is the test of a great course. architecturally many of the holes are splendid. I do not quite like the idea of the man having to drive uphill at the first hole, but the tee-shot has most decidedly to be placed - to the left - or the player has the most fearful approach that he might ever dream of after the most indigestible dinner. The fourth hole is a splendid one of the dog-leg kind, a drive and an iron with the green very well bunkered, and some very low land to the left which is a constant attraction to the weak - minded ball. Then for my own part I liked the tenth very much, for a big drive has to be done over some high ground with a bunker away to the right that draws hard at sliced balls, while the green is one of the nicest and most prettily guarded. I lingered about it for some time in an admiring way. The last hole also has infinitely more in it than appears at the first glance, for here again a big bunker jutting into the edge of the green and to the right is a strong factor, especially when the pin is behind it; and if the hero does not place his tee-shot to the left, and within a very little space there, too, he will be sorry. It is 6335 yards round the course. In the club-house over the tea-cups, on the occasion of my first visit, I pondered upon the marvellous excellence of Duncan's record round, and paid some most sincere compliments to Mr. Leeds for the quality of the golf architecture of Myopia, for it is he, after close study of the best British models, who has been chiefly responsible for it.

A day and night at the Brae Burn Country Club at West Newton, near Boston, left a warm glow lingering in my mind. Here if anywhere in America there is country charm and social delight. Nowhere is the idea of the complete and happy social community of the country club better developed. The course is a fine one, and here also, at the time of my first visit, extensive works were being carried out, and some splendid new holes over heaving land were in the process of formation. They have since been completed and the course has now risen to the highest standard. The putting-greens are in the nicest and most beautiful places, belts of trees line the fairway at several of the holes; there are others in open country, and the short ones are uncommonly good. A new one that they were making then, calling for a drive from a height down to a pocket-handkerchief kind of green is one that I hope to be puzzled at in the play within a few weeks of the moment when I write. I had the happiness then to nominate the situation of a new bunker at one of the new holes, and sure I am that a momentary vexation will be the result when I play that hole, for I, too, in America, have found that I develop the American hook, which seems to be in the climate and the soil. It was on this course that Harry Vardon in his all-conquering tour in America in 1900 sustained his only defeat. Our dinner-party in the club-house in the evening is an unforgettable reminiscence. It was a good-fellowship golfing party such as this game only can bring about. Mr. Harry L. Ayer, Mr. E. A. Wilkie, Mr. George Gilbert, Mr. C. I. Travelli, good Anderson and self talked our golf, British and American, to the full extent of a good ability. One of the topics was club captaincy, and the discussion we had may lead to the creation of the office at Brae Burn and elsewhere, for it is a curious thing that the American clubs have never thought of creating captains, and this community was rather pleased with the idea. It is an office that a golf club needs. If the captain is the right man, if he is chosen for his past service, for his present strength, and for his tact and quality as man and golfer, he can do much for a club, and his appointment is a recognition that a club needs for its best and most faithful men.