TEE PINEEUEST OUTLOOK
PAGE U
Playing the Preacher
By Edgar A. Guest
"You must," the good wife said to me,
"devote one pleasant day.
Unto our new-come minister. At . golf
he likes to play.!
And so, obedient to her wish, I sought
the goodly man
And asked him., -would he like, to shoot
the ball into the can. , -
"Aye, that I would," he, smiling, said.
1 1 think the game sublime. ' ' .
So I prepared that afternoon to have a
rotten time.
I'd never. played with ministers; it did
not seem to me
That one could preach the 'Word of God
and still a golfer be.
Yet when he changed his clericals for
garments less refined,
No golfer on the course would know he
hooked his vest behind.
"What odds shall I bestow?" I asked.
'He answered, "None at all.
I'll play you level around the course. A
ball, a ball, a ball!"
Now that is true-born golfers' speech
It startled me a bit.
Thought I, " The parson knows the game
Perhaps the Church can hit!"
And when I saw him make a swing and
then observed his smile,
I whispered low. to Alex Ross: "The
dominie has style ! "
Then as his , first drive left the tee I
.further said it looked
As tho for "three good dollar balls the
clergy had me hooked.
He hit 'em far and straight and true,
he putted like a fiend,
He smote the pill with all his might,
and into it he leaned;
He kept the honor all the way; and at
the final cup,
I paid him three good dollar balls, for
he was seven up.
"My friend," said I, "you have a style
for which all golfers search.
If I thought I could play like you, I'd
. gladly go to Church . "
FAMINE-SWEPT STEPPES
OF RUSSIA
1.
S..S : J"fc
5
'TyitiWN4' m
The Home Green, Inwood Country Club, Far Rockaway, L. J.,
where Professional Golfers' Association Championship was held last seanon.
Grass Seed supplied by Stump p & Walter Co. for past eight years.
Grass Seed
of Known Quality
TESTED for PURITY and GERMINATION
for the Golf Course, the Tennis Court or Lawn
REMEMBER All our seed is of the, highest quality, pur chased
direct from the most reliable sources of supply and is carefully
examined as to purity and growth, including tests made for us by
leading Seed Testing' Stations.--We furnish on request the per
centage of purity and growth.
NOTE : While the supply of many of the varieties of grass reed used on
golf courres, especially the putting greens, is short, we are pleased to
announce that we are in a position to furnish our customers, in limited
quantities, with these varieties which include Creeping Bent and Colonial
Bent in Fine and Superfine Qualities. Samples with Purity and Germ
ination furnished on reouest.
30-32 Barclay St.,
NEW YORK
(United Press Staff Correspondent)
Bulgari Village, East Russia,.
American food given through the A. R.
A., is helping to preserve life in this,
one of the most ancient spots in Russia.
Thirteen hundred years ago one of
the three "Bulgarian" princes of the
old Slav dynasty settled here with his
retinue and followers. There were three
brothers. The other two established
themselves in Vienna and Sophia, re
spectively. On the heights commanding the Volga
grew a city of 30,000 inhabitants, which
controlled the country for miles around.
Remains of the old city wall are still
standing and the American Relief Ad-
ministation's children's kitchen, in the
little schoolhouse, is only a few yards
from the site of one of the palaces. For
hundreds of years, however, Bulgaria has
been a village, with about 1,500 inhabitants.
Of these 1,500 half have disappeared
since summer, and unless help comes
from outside, most of the others will be
missing by next summer. Then the cycle
of fate will be completed and in the
space of six months, history will have
sprung back fourteen hundred years, re
storing Bulgaria as it was when the
Black Prince encamped -upon the prom
ontory. For miles in every direction stretch
the level, treeless steppes,, infinite in lone
liness, extent and cruel beauty. Not a
fence nor hedge or house breaks the sky
line. In fact, there hardly seems to be
any skyline at all, as I write this, so per
fectly does the white of the snowfields
blend into the light gray of the sky,
overhung with snoAvclouds. A "Dutch"
windmill, its four arms motionless, near
by, stands in opaque relief, like a cross
against the background of snow and
sky. A few stunted trees on both sides
of the road climb the little incline from
the plains to the top of the mole.
Across the frozen Volga, a mile wide,
our caravan of four Russian sleighs drove
this afternoon into Bulgaria. The snow
stopped falling as we turned into a front
yard of the log cabin schoolhouse where
the A. R. A. gives ninety children one
"supplementary" meal a day. This
"supplementary" meal, however, is sup
plementary only in the technical sense of
A. R. A. phraseology. Actually, it is
all the children get to eat. And actu
ally, also, it is enough to keep them alive.
We rolled out of our sleighs like huge
balls of snow. The village lay around us
in stillness and snow, each hut seemingly
snowbound for years. Near the school
house were the ruins of three old build
ings, dating from the fifteenth century.
Inside, the schoolmaster and his wife
greeted us with far western cordiality.
There was still fuel, so the school had
not suffered the fate of so many in the
famine region for the schools are clos
'ng rapidly now, as the woodpiles in the
backyards disappear.
"We have very few books," the
schoolmaster explained. "But Ave do
the best we can. We have almost no
paper and pencils . "
Then he told how all activity eco
nomic and social had ceased durir.T
the last several months. How the
simple peasants who were left after
the cold weather checked the migration
quietly withdrew themselves into their
logcabins to await death in stoic silence.
I visited scores of these homes dur
ing the tour through the Tartar. Repub
lic. They were nearly all the same. En
tire families, in varying degrees of suf
fering, huddled around the stove where
there was fuel or more commonly, lying
on the bare floor with a guernseysack as
a cover.
Often three generations, grandfather,
son and grandchild, were together in
various stages of the slow lingering
death which the villagers of the Tartar
Republic are dying. , Meanwhile, the
qeiling creaked rhythmically with the
undulations of the cradle, under the hand
of the grandmother. A Russian cradle
is suspended on an elastic cord from
the ceiling, and rocks up and down.
All three generations and both sexes
live together in the common room, dis
tributing themselves around over the
stove and floor at night. I never saw
more than one bed in a peasant's house.
It was generally occupied by the son and
his wife. The grandfather and grand
mother slept on top of the brick stove,
and the children, either on the hard floor
or on the ' ' children 's shelf, ' ' a quaint
feature of every peasant 's house, a few
feet from the ceiling. Here the children
can be chucked out of the way at any
time of the day or night.
We put up in many of these peasant
houses during our trip, invariably meet
ing with touching hospitality,, the hosts
apologizing for not offering us food (even
though they were themselves starving)
and invariably hustling out the samovar
in a jiffy.
A single table, two or three chairs,
the huge brick oven, the cradle, suspen
ded from tho ceiling, one bed,, and tho
icons in the corner, were the total wealth
in furniture.
Very, very f ew have even steel knives
and forks. The peasants eat their en
tire meal with big wooden spoons, or
with their fingers. Cooking utensils are
equally lacking. One or two pots, a big
frying pan, a few crockery plates, a few
cups and saucers or glasses for tea rep
resented the sum-total of the house
wife's equipment in most of the homes
where Ave overnighted.
WILLIE WILSON HOLES A
MASHIE SHOT
In the course of a round with Donald
Ross on Saturday last, Willie Wilson
holed a mashie shot for the seA-enth
green on Number 3 course, scoring a two
for that hole.
THREE-BALL MATCH
Continued from Page 9)
A. B. Alley 109-21 88
F. T. Keating 89- 188
x-J. T. NeAvton 118-2293
A. D. Fisher 118-2290
Herman Ellis 111-1596
x-H. W. Ormsbee 125-2696
x-Credit of 3 strokes if played on
No. 3 course.