The Sunday Bee
MAGAZINE SECTlONl
VOL. 52 NO., 9.
OMAHA, St'NUAV MOUSING, AUGUST 13, 1922.
FIVE CENTS
GREEN MAGIC
By Will Irwin
OJ Course You've Hear do the Seagull
Links and 0 Kdgerley Moore,
lie's the Goljer WhoHut That
Would He Revealing the Secret!
J l ANNUl t-U (lii lory 01 r.ugcriry wwjri wiwioui
telling !" the 'v'y of our k club, (or on it
1 i.iimX'iiiiiii ji v (11 other. '1 he Srautill link it
lily five year old, l ha become (tr a fathion
famout, at ha also Edgrrlry Moore, and their sporting
immortalitic go together, lime and fashion diangr,
but the royal and ancient game ha readied point, 1
suppose, where it thange iiot.
A hundred year (ton) now people will lou1ilr be
playing it with tlx nme implements, the tame rule, the
same profanity, the tame alternating currents of triumph
m) self-pity. Ami a hundred year from now oriie reti
drni oi t'a Harbor, tooling a hou guett over to the
link in hii molecular power monoplane runabout, will
rrmark a he drop it virtually to the landing plane he
hind thr alub houtc where we now park our gatohue
power automobile;
".Sporty little link all natural hazard, Here'
where Kdgerley Moore hii developed, V'ou've heard
all at oiue, do wef I! i iw i and loin and attritiucnt and
tliiligt we'll scarcely notirr lliliti."
1 watn't really rntliutiatlic then. But I'd found by
ecniue tlml it wat 110 ue opposing Madge Bavin in
her trea'ive and entrutive tno.nJ. I uu fallen I'd tried
that and ' the measure which I lud ducouraied in
the beginning turn out an unqualified turret. 'II the
r t are willing to pbingr, am, 1 (aid at the rnd of the
t li .( r, Mrs, Bavin, i liarutd afterward, got a doen
other out l' the ("owan pUre in the court of the neat
10 d.yt. All came to about the tame lerim Willi her
enVii-my a 1 lud -rjorie-they would if the real would.
We held meeting and it wa all dune but the attest
ificitt. Another week and the anhiteil wa at woik.
By autumn we were playing on a rough fairway, with
ground rub about lifting from holra and hod mark; by
the middle of the neat tnton that fairway had beuun M
look really like a lawn. And our third hole, iuk'C famous,
wai attracting attention,
Then Mrr Bavin termed to feel tlut her chicken wat
grown up and needed no more brooding; the left u to
druggie on for ourttlvrt, while the plunged into a com
lummy rirrut, J'.ut not before the had conducted a litem
bertlnp drive of her own, She, and Case Harbor in gen
eral, went at lhi matter of membership in charartenitic
fanhion. I-oral traditioni are curiously prriiilent, Now
our town away back in the 17th century, when it wa
' jubt a row of log cabin in a howling wilderneti, it wat
famous for it tolerance. It ttill it; neither the penna-
wanted to play, and that h owed it to the eoiiiiuiinily.
Moved bw that argument, Mr, M'Kire joined and even
pronuted to look in on the link tome y.
ft wt a different mat tr r with John II, iit--1 i.- In a
more rhoo.y commiiiiity i d'tubt whether he would luve
been aked to jout at all. He had blown into that town
about a ear brfoie, built a new Iioum. hriiUl aiul var
niahed, over on the hill beyond the 'on place, and
tlartrd immediately to get hiiliulf tolid wild the tiwna
neople and with tit, He wa a baehelor at Irait I never
heard of any Mr. Gilletpie and there arue tramfaloui
whitpelt about aome of hit lioute partlet.
' bi month faier hit purpote wat revetib-d. He had
bought three old and nearly utelet farm on the lull
tiirroiinditig hi new lioute and wa inarkeliiig lot in
(iilletpie'i addition "a high rlaa retidenre ilniriit," a
hi advrrliting raprrtted it. We even heard rumor that
be intended to put up a modern country hotel. 'J hi pro
reeding did not luid to make Mm popular; we hud always
feared the day when CaC Harbor would become emi
fa. burnable and u'd no longer feel lke guing over ' the
(lottofhre in your awrater. (jilletpia, I Uiioe, knew
that, and it et him to work all the harder at the job of
gathering popularity.
He wa a tall man In hi life 4'), with tonnililng
theatrically ditinguihrd in bit general makeup. Hi
black hair wa lurking gray at the templet. Hi firm and
tlighlly jowly chetki teemed alwayt. even when he wa
newly ahaved, to be peppered- with the powder mark of
Jm;M f
"But don't sou $eti,n laid Mri. Bavin, "what it was tnaJa forf.
of him. The golfer who-" But I withhold the end
of that quotation lent I betray my ttory.
Hitherto only four people have known the whole
truth about Mr, Moore' career, however much the pub
lic thought it knew Ur, Cdrrington, Mr. Bavin, John
II. Gillciipic and I. And latt week an incotmpicuou item
fit the (porting page announced the death of "John I).
Gilletpie the trainer who " but here I munt again
Hop, Edgcrley Moore it already dead. And Mri. Bavin
and Dr. Carrington tay there' no reason they know of
why 1 thould not make public the hnide of this remark
able episode in amateur tport, ''
The Seagull link really owe its exigence to the fact
that we were getting too old for tenni. We all reached
that ttage within a year or to of each other. None tf
u admitted it publicly, but the Seagull link wa our
private admiiniou. Mr. Bavin first had the idea; the.
genrrate mot of the bright thought in our town, Madge
Bavin i one of the bcnovoUtitljr rc.Mlcst of her cx. Her
husband, Boh, ha tome job in the management of a
tfing of batiki. Most of the tummcr he it -(raveling; he
get to Case Harbor only for a week-end now and then.
Bringing up her three children doesn't employ a third of
her tplcndid energies; the workt olf the rent in public
acrvicc.
Mrt. Bavin found that the old Cowan place wa for
tale. It embraced W acre of hardtcrabhle hill land, a
large and decaying farm house, tome disintegrating itone
fence and a patch of pear and apple orchard o long
neglected that the tree had flattened out like Japanese
thrub and bore mainly thorn, I first heard of Mr,
Bavin' idea when die invited me myatcriously on a drive,
commanded me to dismount bcniilc the Cowan hou.te, and
bade me view the landscape.
"It' very pretty," taid I, rolling my eye over the Japa
neiue clfeclt of beach plum himlic, tumac and gnarled
apple tree, "lt't very pretty," I repeated, "but "
"But don't you tec,' taid Mr. Bavin in her quick,
nervou way, "what it wa made for?" She didn't wait
for my reply; the teemed too afraid lest I guest wrong,
"A golf links A perfect nine-hole course, Look a thort
hole over there on tlte knoll wonderfully tporty there'
your fairway the pasture there isn't it perfect? And
the brook for a water haiard."
"I.ookt good to me," taid I, "Hut of course if a real
golf rourte architect looked it over'' ,,,
"He las," taid Mr, Bavin, "and he' wild about it.
He't a young fellow jut from Scotland, He say golf
was I'l.ivid oiiginally on this kind of ground hill coun
try hi ido the ira. He say this it just like St, Andrew
St. Andrew I' Mr, Bavin repeated impressively, "He
lays he'll med icnrccly ail artificial hazard it will !
miieh more Interesting that way and we can twing the
whole iliinn - the imuha.e and hi estimate and making
the hue livable for" llera Mr. Uavin ranit down
with a future which made me gasp and whistle,
"Well, said Mil, Bavin, "we don't luv to pay for It
nent inhabitants nor yet the tumnier people who owif
their villas, have been coming there all their lives, and
contidcr thcniselvr a citizen have ever troubled them
selves a great deal about social distinctions.
At Gorcham, a dozen miles or ao up the coast, it's
done differently. The old crowd "our set" has had an
18-hole links for the last 30 years. Most of the members
were born before golf was known in America, but they
were born to the Gorcham Golf club just the same, Some
of the more antique fossils of Gorcham never attend the
county tournament when it is played on their course, be
cause that might involve meeting persons whom one
doesn't know socially. - -
But everyone in Case Harbor with the price and the
desire was eligible for our club. That is how our mem
bership came to include persons so diverse in origin and
circumstance as Kdgerley Moore and John B, Gillespie.
Kdgerley Moore would have been clegiblc even under the
standard of Gorhatn. The money behind him had ripr
encd for three generations, which implies aristocracy in
this democratic land,' In his 20s lie had inherited some
two or three liundred thousand dollars from his father
and invested most of it conservatively in a busints with
a by product. The byproduct suddenly boomed through
no merit of Kdgerley Moore. In a few years he doubled
hi money and more. After which he put the whole thing
into an annuity and retired, planted himself and went to
seed. He didn't work at anything except a good deal of
dull and useless reading; he didn't play at anything ex
cept pottering with hit gardener -about the roset on his
place. Of winters he and the perfectly colorless Mrs.
Moore used to go to Florida, or California, or Europe,
where the vegetating process flourished on alien soil,
I never knew a man who brought lets back from for
eign travel than Kdgerley Moore. When, about five years
before we started the Seagull links, his wife died, I sus
pect tliat he experienced the first emotion which had gone
deeper than his skin in a quarter of a century. But by a
fortnight later he had resumed his routine of reading and
rote gardening. If he hadn't vegetated physically, as he
had mentally, it was because of that tame work in the
garden.
He was now SO years old and looked older, Hi hair
and hi sea lion mustache were as glistening white a
granulated sugar; he was rather tall, but decidedly spare;
lily shoulders drooped and he seemed to favor his back
when he walked. For the rest, he dressed rather youth
fully hi rough Engliih tweeds, voted regular in politics, '
and wat given socially to long spells of silence between
long luuiHiloguei. on book he had just read, wherein he
made a dull subject duller.
Edgcrley Moore, when Mrs. Bavin called on Win con
reining the golf club, announced flatly that he'd never
tern anything in the gam and had never tried it. He
started a dissertation to prove that a similar gama had
brfit played In ancient Egypt, which Mr, Bavin had to
interrupt to remind him that other people in l'ae Harbor
hi stiff, black beard. Yet, after all, the first thing yoo
noticed about his countenance was a pair of kearchiug,
direct, light brown eyes with lighter edges round the rims
of the iris.
If you looked Ids clothe over in detail you realized
they were as quiet as anyone's; yet he always gave some
how the effect of loud dressing. The women culled him,
in their confidicntial moments, a little vulgar why, they
could never explain. It was an effect as subtle and in
definable as that apparent loudness of his clothes. With
the men he was amusing enough, but the best things he
said gave always the impression of set pieces, as though
he had them card catalogued in his mind to spring on the
proper occasion,
A might have been expected, Mr. Gillespie leaped at
the proposal for a country club. Everyone understood his
motive it'wa a great selling point for Gillespie's addi
tion, He took up golf at once; was playing a moderately
good duffer's game before the links were much better
than rough hill and meadow, '
I was privileged to be present at a much more impor
tant event on our links, one of those little, unconsidered
momcnt-s which one recognizes as the beginning of his
tory. 1 saw Edgcrley Moore make his first attempt. It
wa Billy Meat, one of our golr fiends, who lured him
away from liis garden, tempted him, and put a driver into
hi hand. I wa waiting at the first tee for a partner
when, after a few minute of instruction about not trying
to hit too hard and keeping his eye on the ball, he made
his first swing. Of course, he scut it straight down the
fairway, without a suggestion of slice or hook, for a good
150 yards. Something like that always happens when
you first try golf. It is a device of Satan, I think, to lead
you on toward profanity and Sabbath breaking.
I met him in the club house afterward, more excited
than I had ever seen liim before.
"There's something in the game," die said. "Billy
Mean says"
"Eighty-five for the nine holes that's alll'" put in
Billy, "I ask you if that isn't good for the first time he
ever touched a club."
We congratulated Mr. Moore hypocritically we'd all
been through that stage of the triumphant, Initial round
and dodged away to escape a dissertation which h
was beginning on the gamo among tlio early kings of
Scotland,
I noted him a few days later, Rolng around with Jock
Kausome, our pro. That night Jock was wrapping ry
driver and indulging in shop talk, and be touched on Mr,
Moore.
"l'ity he wasn't cauglit young," said Jock. "'Course hi
can't do anything much now started too old. But he'
got natural form I can't teach him anything about swing
ing. And he's a nut on tba game," From his tone, Jock
was mentioning thi last tact not In tha spirit of rrituitm
but of warm approval. But you, Mr. Langford, with that
natural eyrt of your-" Edgeilry Moor drifted out