On the Styxville Golf Links
“Bozzy,” chuckled Dr. Samuel Johnson, “you were but a novice at the game.”
The amiable lexicographer teed off on the links of the Styxville Golf Club and he and Boswell, his caddie, leisurely followed the ball.
“Yes, Bozzy,” continued Dr. Johnson, “I used to think you the most enterprising press agent that ever tooted a horn, but when I compare your work with the twentieth century article I am convinced that you were the merest alphabetarian.”
“I put down everything that happened,” said Boswell, humbly.
“Pooh, pooh! A press agent who publishes only what has happened would starve to death these days. But I have you even on that count. How about the time I lost my pantaloons and was too late at the Cheshire Cheese. Not a word about it in your celebrated ‘Life of Johnson.’ By the way, what became of the ball? Did you keep your eye on it?”
Boswell located the gutta percha and remarked that he considered the loss of his patron’s unmentionables too trivial an item for a dignified biography.
“Sir,” cried Dr. Johnson, relapsing into his ancient stilted manner, “you are an unconscionable blockhead. When, not long ago Booth Tarkington lost his trousers a great ado was made by the press agent and the papers were full of it. ’Twas not half so good a tale as mine. You might have scribbled a whole chapter about it. Dick Steele made an excellent jest on the matter and Noll Goldsmith a set of verses, Davy Garrick gagged his lines with it and put the house in an uproar. Give me the cleek.”
Leaning on the club he gazed at his abashed biographer with a twinkling eye.
“Nay, Bozzy, you were a very good press agent for our day, but you would not stand much show if you were on earth to-day. Tarkington wouldn’t keep you a week. You couldn’t caddie five minutes for Irving Bacheller or Ham Garland, or Hop Smith, or any other modern man of letters. Boz, you’re a back number.”
Golfers, especially those addicted to slicing, will approve a plan to pasture sheep in the rough and on the crest of bunkers. A well cropped rough will take much of the gloom out of their zigzag operations.