Perfect Behavior: A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in All Social Crises

A wife playing with her husband should do everything in her power to make the game enjoyable for the latter. She should encourage him, when possible, with little cheering proverbs, such as, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” and she should aid him with her advice when she thinks he is in need of it. Thus, when he drives into the sycamore tree on number eleven, she should say, “Don’t you think, dear, that if you aimed a little bit more to the right....” et cetera. When they come to number fourteen, and his second shot lands in the middle of the lake, she should remark, “Perhaps you didn’t hit it hard enough, dear.” And when, on the eighteenth, his approach goes through the second-story window of the club-house, she should say, “Dear, I wonder if you didn’t hit that too hard?” Such a wife is a true helpmate, and not merely a pretty ornament on which a silly husband can hang expensive clothes, and if he is the right sort of man, he will appreciate this, and refrain from striking her with a niblick after this last remark. A young wife who does not play the game herself can, nevertheless, be of great help to her husband by listening patiently, night after night, while he tells her how he drove the green on number three, and took a four on number eight (Par five), and came up to the fourteenth one under fours. Caddies should be treated at all times with the respect and pity due one’s fellow creatures who are “unfortunate.” The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and one should always remember that it is not, after all, the poor caddy’s fault that he was born blind.