The links then were principally as Providence had fashioned them, with perfectly natural bunkers and a great many little hills and hollows which made excellent hazards. They were on common ground as far as the third green where the Dalrymple and Hamilton-Ogilvie properties "marched" and were divided by a stone wall.

Past that one could not go without paying a shilling to the peri at the gate, one Anderson, known generally as "Bob" although I do not know whether that was his real name or only a reference to the coin he demanded. His son afterwards came to America and was made professional to the Oakmont Country Club.

I believe that the first woman who played on the links at North Berwick was Miss Violet Chambers and I have often heard my mother say that she was almost mobbed when she first started as the sight was such a surprise to the conservative people of the town.

Later on the daughters of the English Church clergyman took it up and gradually enough people became interested to warrant the making of a ladies' course: which was shortly afterwards laid out in a field of a few acres, to the west of the Marine Hotel. I was not made a member until I was twelve years old and until then had to be contented to play with our faithful nurse, Marion McSwan, on the small links relegated to the caddies. This was a course of the roughest description, with holes innocent of tins or even of flags and whose only caretakers were the cows who occasionally condescended to browse there. Sometimes we would mark out a little course of our own on the wet sand after the tide had gone out, our playmates at that time often being Lady Victoria and Lady Isabel Kerr, Young Cameron of Lochiel, the children of the Duke of Montrose and other children none of whom ever became distinguished on the links but who died very bravely in Northern France or cheerfully gave their husbands and brothers to do so.

I have only got a very indistinct recollection of the first real match I ever played which is not surprising as I was only five years old at the time. It was a two ball foursome in which I had as partner a Mr. Arthur Dewar, who was afterwards member of Parliament for some place in Scotland, I forget exactly where.