Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 222
Means of effecting it — By cultivating in the members a sense of service.
Politics of the organization — None.
Religion of the members — None.
Ideas represented — None.
Education and other tests for membership — None.
Fees, outside of food — Nothing.
The constitution was voted with a great deal of enthusiasm. When the lunch broke up, it was felt that a real start had been made.
Well, having the lunch encouraged us to go right on, and so the next thing we had was a dinner. There was a feeling that you can get men together at a dinner where they sit together in a way in which you can’t unless you do.
Of course, it took a good deal of work to get the dinner, a lot of spade work and team work. It’s always that way. But at last we got over a hundred pledged to eat dinner and ventured to pull it off.
It certainly was a big success. It was quite informal. We just held it in one of the big hotels, taking the ordinary table d’hôte dinner that the hotel served that night and letting the members just come in and sit down and start eating when they liked and get up and leave just when they wanted to.
There were no speeches — just the president and one or two gave ten minutes’ talk on service and community feeling. The president said that the way to get these was by getting together: he said that we had already done a lot just by sheer ground work and he wanted us all to hang right on and stick to it and see it through.
Well, since then we’ve been keeping the lunches and dinners going pretty regularly. And as a result we feel that we are beginning to know one another. I sat next to a man the other night whom I don’t suppose I would have ever got to know if I hadn’t sat next to him. We both remarked upon it. In fact, I don’t think there’s any better way to get next to a man than by sitting next to him when he’s eating. You get a community feeling out of it. This man — I forget his name — said so too.
But we’ve cut out the local speakers. Somehow our members don’t care to listen to one another. They all seem to feel that you get more community feeling, a far better sense of genuine fellowship, from an outsider. So we take our speakers now from a good way off.
And we’ve certainly had some wonderful talks. One of the first — I think the man was a professor — was a great talk; it was on “How to Be 100 Per Cent Yourself”; and there was another on “How to Get 100 Per Cent Outside Yourself”; and others on “How to Think 100 Per Cent” and on “How to Be 100 Per Cent Awake.”
There’s no doubt the organization has done a whole lot towards bringing us all together. When the members meet on the street, they always say, “Good morning!” or “How are you?” or something of that sort, or even stop for a second and say, “Well, how’s it going?” or “How’s the boy?”
In fact, you can generally tell the members of our organization on the street just by the look on their faces. I heard a man say the other day that he’d know them a mile off.
So what we feel is that there must be men of the same stamp as ourselves in other towns. We ought to know them and they ought to know us. Let’s start something to get together.
Short Circuits in the Open Air
A Lesson on the Links THE APPLICATION OF MATHEMATICS TO GOLF
IT IS ONLY quite recently that I have taken up golf. In fact, I have only played for three or four years, and seldom more than ten games in a week or at most four in a day. I have only had a proper golf vest for two years: I only bought a “spoon” this year and I am not going to get Scotch socks till next year.
In short, I am still a beginner. I have once, it is true, had the distinction of “making a hole in one,” in other words of hitting the ball into the pot, or can, or receptacle, in one shot. That is to say, after I had hit, a ball was found in the can and my ball was not found. It is what we call circumstantial evidence — the same thing that people are hanged for.
Under such circumstances I should have little to teach to anybody about golf. But it has occurred to me that from a certain angle my opinions may be of value. I at least bring to bear on the game all the resources of a trained mind and all the equipment of a complete education.
In particular I may be able to help the ordinary golfer — or “goofer” — others prefer “gopher” — by showing him something of the application of mathematics to golf.
Many a player is perhaps needlessly discouraged by not being able to calculate properly the chances and probabilities of progress in the game. Take, for example, the simple problem of “going round in bogey.” The ordinary average player such as I am now becoming — something between a beginner and an expert — necessarily wonders to himself “Shall I ever be able to go around in bogey; will the time ever come when I shall make not one hole in bogey, but all the holes?”
To this, according to my calculations, the answer is overwhelmingly “yes.” The thing is a mere matter of time and patience.
Let me explain for the few people who never play golf (such as night watchmen, night clerks in hotels, night operators, astronomers and negroes), that “bogey” is an imaginary player who does each hole at golf in the fewest strokes that a first-class player with ordinary luck ought to need for that hole.
Now an ordinary player finds it quite usual to do one hole out of the nine “in bogey,” — as we golfers, or rather, “us goofers,” call it, — but he wonders whether it will ever be his fate to do all the nine holes of the course in bogey. To which we answer again with absolute assurance, he will.
The thing is a simple instance of what is called the mathematical theory of probability. If a player usually and generally makes one hole in bogey, or comes close to it, his chance of making any one particular hole in bogey is one in nine. Let us say, for easier calculation, that it is one in ten. When he makes it, his chance of doing the same with the next hole is also one in ten; therefore, taken from the start his chance of making the two holes successively in bogey is one-tenth of a tenth chance. In other words it is one in a hundred.
The reader sees already how encouraging the calculation is. Here is at last something definite about his progress. Let us carry it further. His chance of making three holes in bogey one after the other will be one in a thousand, his chance of four one in ten thousand and his chance of making the whole round in bogey will be exactly one in 1,000,000,000, — that is one in a billion games.
In other words, all he has to do is to keep right on. But for how long? he asks. How long will it take, playing the ordinary number of games in a month, to play a billion? Will it take several years? Yes, it will.
An ordinary player plays about 100 games in a year, and will therefore play a billion games in exactly 10,000,000 years. That gives us precisely the time it will need for persons like the reader and myself to go round in bogey.
Even this calculation needs a little revision. We have to allow for the fact that in 10,000,000 years the shrinking of the earth’s crust, the diminishing heat of the sun and the general slackening down of the whole solar system, together with the passing of eclipses, comets and showers of meteors, may put us off our game.
In fact, I doubt if we shall ever get around in bogey.
Let us try something else. Here is a very interesting calculation in regard to “allowing for the wind.”
I have noticed that a great many golf players of my own particular class are always preoccupied with the question of “allowing for the wind.” My friend, Amphibius Jones, for example, just before driving always murmurs something, as if in prayer, about “allowing for the wind.” After driving he says with a sigh, “I didn’t allow for the wind.” In fact, all through my class there is a general feeling that our game is practically ruined by the wind. We ought really to play in the middle of the desert of Sahara where there isn’t any.
It occurred to me that it might be interesting to reduce to a formula the effect exercised by the resistance of the wind on a moving golf ball. For example, in our game of last Wednesday, Jones in his drive struck the ball with what he assures me was his full force, hitting in with absolute accuracy, as he himself admits, fair in the center, and he himself feeling, on his own assertion, absolutely fit, his eye being (a very necessary thing with Jones), absolutely “in,” and he also having on his proper sweater — a further necessary condition of first-class play. Under all the favorable circumstances the ball only advanced fifty yards! It was evident at once that it was a simple matter of the wind: the wind, which was of that treacherous character which blows over the links unnoticed, had impinged full upon the ball, pressed it backward and forced it to the earth.
Here then is a neat subject of calculation. Granted that Jones, — as measured on a hitting machine the week the circus was here, — can hit two tons and that this whole force was pressed against a golf ball only one inch and a quarter in diameter. What happens? My reader will remember that the superficial area of such a golf ball is 3.1415 times 5/4 square inches multiplied by 4, or, more simply, 4PR. And all of this driven forward with the power of 4,000 pounds to the inch!
In short, taking Jones’s statement at their face value the ball would have traveled, had it not been for the wind, no less than 6½ miles.
I give the next calculation of even more acute current interest. It is in regard to “moving the head.” How often is an admirable stroke at golf spoiled by moving the head! I have seen members of our golf club sit silent and glum all evening, murmuring from time to time, “I moved my head.” When Jones and I play together I often hit the ball sideways into the vegetable garden from which no ball returns (they have one of these on every links; it is a Scottish invention). And whenever I do so Jones always says, “You moved your head.” In return when he drives his ball away up into air and down again ten yards in front of him, I always retaliate by saying, “You moved your head, old man.”
In short, if absolute immobility of the head could be achieved the major problem of golf would be solved.
Let us put the theory mathematically. The head, poised on the neck, has a circumferential sweep or orbit of about two inches, not counting the rolling of the eyes. The circumferential sweep of a golf ball is based on a radius of 250 yards, or a circumference of about 1,600 yards, which is very nearly equal to a mile. Inside this circumference is an area of 27,878,400 square feet, the whole of which is controlled by a tiny movement of the human neck. In other words, if a player were to wiggle his neck even 1/190 of an inch the amount of ground on which the ball might falsely alight would be half a million square feet. If at the same time he multiplies the effect by rolling his eyes, the ball might alight anywhere.
I feel certain that after reading this any sensible player will keep his head still.
A further calculation remains, — and one perhaps of even greater practical interest than the ones above.
Everybody who plays golf is well aware that on some days he plays better than on others. Question — how often does a man really play his game?
I take the case of Amphibius Jones. There are certain days, when he is, as he admits himself, “put off his game” by not having on his proper golf vest. On other days the light puts him off his game; at other times the dark; so, too, the heat; or again the cold. He is often put off his game because he has been up too late the night before; or similarly because he has been to bed too early the night before; the barking of a dog always puts him off his game; so do children; or adults, or women. Bad news disturbs his game; so does good; so also does the absence of news.
All of this may be expressed mathematically by a very simple application of the theory of permutations and probability; let us say that there are altogether fifty forms of disturbance any one of which puts Jones off his game. Each one of these disturbances happens, say, once in ten days. What chance is there that a day will come when not a single one of them occurs? The formula is a little complicated but mathematicians will recognize the answer at once as x/1 + x/1 . . . xn/1. In fact, that is exactly how often Jones plays at his best; x/1 + x/1 . . . xn/1 worked out in time and reckoning four games to the week and allowing for leap years and solar eclipses, it comes to about once in 2,930,000 years.
And from watching Jones play I think that this is about right.
The Family at Football SHOWING HOW THE GREAT COLLEGE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME OF THE SEASON WAS VARIOUSLY REPORTED
THE OFFICIAL REPORT
(More or less like this)
Williamson got the ball and opened up with a low kick down field against the wind. Smith punted. Jones fumbled. Brown fell down. Robertson got up. Peterson tackled low. Johnson kicked high. Thompson touched down. Jackson converted. Quarter time. Jones kicked. Diplock ran four yards. Brown was put off. Thompson came on. . . . Yards. . . . More yards . . . half time . . . quarter kick . . . punt . . . yards . . . points . . . GAME.
AS SEEN FROM THE STADIUM BENCHES, ROW 4, BY MISS FLOSSIE FITZCLIPPET BROWN, AND REPORTED TO HER GIRL FRIEND IN CONVERSATION.
Certainly it was a wonderful game. I had on my wine-colored dress and the hat to match, and it was cold enough so that you could wear fur around your neck. That’s one of the great things about football games, you can wear fur. That’s why they play so late in the season, at least so some of the boys said. Most of the girls had on cloth coats, so of course you don’t see as much color as at a ball game in the summer. But the two teams wore bright-colored sweaters.
One side — I think it was our side — had bright blue, and the other side were in dark red. But they are not a bit careful of their suits when they play and some of them got into a frightful mess from falling down by accident on the ground. But when they get too dirty the umpire turns them out of the game and takes on a man with a new sweater. The boys explained it all to me.
But I really know a lot about the game because my brother Ted plays on the team. They give another touch of color by having some of the boys stand along the edge of the ground with bright bathrobes on. The umpires have on white sweaters and there are people called referees and they wear long white coats to give a touch of light.
The game was terribly exciting. The side that I think was our side were all kicking the ball one way and the other side the other way. Jack was sitting on one side of me and Bruce on the other and they explained everything so clearly — all about the yards and the different points — that I could understand practically all of it very soon after it had happened. Sometimes, of course, only the referee understands and the scoring has to be done on a special board at the end of the field so as to add it up. But I could tell which was our side all the time even when they changed courts after each rubber.
I saw ever so many people that we knew there because where we were in the grandstand, by standing up and looking round you could see practically everybody. I thought a great many of the hats perfectly sweet. They seem to be wearing softer colors this autumn. I saw one hat of Valencia blue felt that was just a dream.
Papa and Uncle Peter were there, but I don’t think they saw us. They seemed to be looking at the game all the time.
It got tremendously exciting toward the end. Both sides were exactly even with the same number of sets and the boys explained to me that it was just a question now which side could knock down the referee and sit on him. No doubt it sounds brutal, but really when you are there you get so excited that you forget. Again and again as he slipped in and out putting the ball into position, they nearly got him, but each time he slipped out.
Just at the end it got so exciting — I don’t know what it was — something to do with yards, that I stood right up on the seat. So did a lot of the girls. Jack and Bruce had to hold me by the ankles or I might have fallen.
And in the end, I think that the side that I think was our side won the whole game! Wasn’t that splendid?
Oh, football is just delicious.
AS REPORTED BY MR. EDWARD CHUNK BROWN, SENIOR, FATHER OF MISS FLOSSIE FITZCLIPPET BROWN, OVER THE COFFEE AND CIGARS AT HIS DINNER TABLE THAT EVENING.
You didn’t see the big game to-day? You certainly missed it. My boy Ted was playing in it. You ought to have been there. Ted was playing in the forward line, and I must say Ted put up a great game. I tell you, this college football is about as fine and manly a sport as you can get.
Look at Ted. Why, Ted was just a little shrimp till I got him started into football at the prep (I was always keen on the game. My brother and I both played on the college team in 1895, though Peter wasn’t what you’d call really first class). Well, look at Ted now. Why, he’s heavier than I was myself.
Yes, sir, that was a great game today. At one time they broke right through the center and they’d have got clear away with it but for a tackle that my boy Ted made — one of the best tackles I ever saw, at least in the game today. Of course, they do less running than we did, but Ted got in one pretty good run today. Ted’s quick on his feet, and what’s more, Ted can use his head. Now there was one time to-day when Ted — Ted — Ted — Ted — Ted.
AS REPORTED BY MISS MARY DEEPHEART BROWN, ELDER SISTER OF MISS FLOSSIE FITZCLIPPET BROWN AND DAUGHTER OF EDWARD CHUNK BROWN, SENIOR, IN A CONFIDENTIAL LETTER TO ONE OF HER SIX ONLY FRIENDS.
I must tell you all about the perfectly wonderful football game last Saturday. I hadn’t seen Ernest for three days and I was afraid that something had happened or that I had said something, because once before Ernest said that something I said had made him feel just terrible for days and days till he knew that I hadn’t said what I said.
And then I got a note from Ernest to ask me if he might take me to the game, and so I knew it was all right. Papa said, at first, that he would come with us, but I was so afraid that it might mean a chill, that I got Flossie to get Mother to get Ted to get Uncle Peter to take him.
Anyway, it meant that I went with Ernest by ourselves and there was no one else there, and we had awfully good seats, right up at the back in a corner. There was a post partly in front of us, but it didn’t prevent us from seeing anything.
