Golf Author:Horace G. Hutchinson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: freely with the humblest mechanics in pursuit of their common and beloved amusement. All distinctions of rank were levelled by the joyous spirit of the game. Lor... more »ds of Sessions and cobblers, knights, baronets and tailors, might be seen earnestly contesting for the palms of superior dexterity, and vehemently, but good- humouredly, discussing moot points of the game, a they arose in the course of play. There were, in particular, somewhat later than the middle of the last century, a batch of lively active old fellows, who made this good ancient pastime almost the sole business of their lives. Each of these veterans, according to Smollett, was turned fourscore, and never went a night to bed without having under their belts the best part of a gallon of claret. Before the present golf-house was built, which was in the year 1768, the merry golf-players of Leith used to frequent the house of one Straiten, who then kept a tavern at the head of the Kirkgate, on the west side, and near to the junction of the new road with the foot of Leith Walk. Here they were wont to close the day with copious libations of pure and unadulterated claret, brought, in shining pewter or silver tankards, fresh from the butt The manners of caddies, at this period, are commemorated by no one less than Smollett, in his ' History of Humphrey Clinker,' the history which Rebecca Sharp read with her young charges at Queen's Crawley. But he mainly speaks of street caddies, not of golfers. The period of Bobson, and of' The Goff,' saw the giving of a challenge prize, a silver club, by the City of Edinburgh, to the gentlemen golfers, and in 1754 a club was given at St. Andrews, and the club then more or less formally became an institution. Stet Forluna domus! The early consecration of the Links to golf is vouched f...« less