Weidman's Burden

He started toward the clubhouse, stopped, turned back and nodded to his golf bag.

A TOKEN OF GRATITUDE

"By the way, young man," Mr. Hawley said to me, "would you care to have, as a token of my gratitude, a very fine and extremely expensive set of matched clubs?"

"Well—" I said awkwardly.

Mr. Hawley nodded.

"I know," he said. "And I don't blame you one bit. There's no point in being trapped into doing something you don't like just because a great many other people seem to—" The old man paused, and he gave me a sharp glance. "Do you really like public accountancy?"

"Well—" I said again, even more awkwardly. After all, my boss was standing at my elbow.

"That's what I thought," my boss's father-in-law said briskly. "Tomorrow morning when I get to the office, I'll make a couple of phone calls and see what I can do. Several of my clients, as you know, are in the publishing business," Mr. Hawley said. "Don't forget to remind me."

I didn't, and that disposed of my career as a public accountant. As to my career as a golfer, there has never been anything to dispose of. Since that day at Mr. Hawley's club I have never set foot on a golf course. So far as the great game and I are concerned, we reached, before it had a chance to begin, the end of the affair.