THE monastic ruins of England, it has been observed, are the quiet witnesses of a past which we are too easily inclined to relegate to the dusty region of ecclesiology, forgetting, if we ever had the wit to understand, what manner of men those old monks were in ultimate defense of whom half the countryside of England once rose in armed rebellion. By pure good fortune I chanced the other day upon an old forgotten fragment of history, so whimsical and human that one despairs of exercising a faculty light and graceful and roguish enough to lend it a truthful coloring.

Toward the close of the fifteenth century, it appears, before the Dissolution was thought of, there lived and prayed and fasted in St. Leonard's Priory, at York, a fat monk called Brother Jucundus. He had not been long in the House. He had joined the Order, it was believed, in a fit of remorse 'after heavy potations on the occasion of the installation of a new Lord Mayor.' That is all one can learn definitely about the man prior to his entry of St. Leonard's. But reading intelligently between the lines one is unable to resist the opinion that he was of that large type of mind, 'broad as ten thousand beeves at pasture,' which, with an apparently universal tolerance for Nature in all her vagaries, contrives easily and naturally to reconcile a thousand conflicting principles that haunt our lives.

In the absence of a miracle it is rarely that such men are appreciated by their contemporaries. But how in

the case of this monk the miracle actually occurred his story reveals in a sufficiently interesting manner.

It was inevitable, sooner or later, that in the cloistral seclusion of St. Leonard's Brother Jucundus should perceive the opportunity of a riper experience than could readily be gained from the ruder life without. It was in our monasteries that our parliaments met, that our annals were compiled, that our classics were copied and preserved; above all, perhaps, that the very humanity we inherit found an adequate expression for its noblest aspirations. The mayoral banquet, it is only just and reasonable to assume, was merely the occasion, and in no sense the cause, of Jucundus's astonishing and sudden conversion.

In remembering, however, that he had an immortal soul the man forgot the mountain of flesh that God had given him for a body. It was his misfortune to have been born too soon. Mens sana in corpore sano was a doctrine the sweet wisdom of which was not to be discovered, ecclesiastically at least, until a later age. Gargantuan laughter, Brother Jucundus quickly perceived, was the only sane and suitable reply to a fate which imprisoned a living spirit in flesh and bone.

Yet the irrevocable vows were upon him. For life he was bound 'to eat only vegetables and bread, drink very small beer, and sleep only six hours in the night.' Convivial songs, it is gravely reported, 'floated through his mind when he ought to have been chanting

he Psalms of David, and the flavor of ack rose upon his palate when he ooked dolefully at dinner time into his mug of "swipes."'

A year passed by and Jucundus decided that he must have one solitary fling' or he would die. As the monks rose at midnight the Priory was silent, save for their snores, from one o'clock until two. At two o'clock on the day of the great York Fair the little community awoke to a condition of things that was unprecedented. The porter, it appears, missed his keys; the Prior missed a crown from his money-box; and, upon the monks being summoned to the Chapter House, all missed Brother - Jucundus.

That worthy in the meantime had I enjoyed himself as only boys, barbarians, and other geniuses know how. There is authentic evidence to prove that he had seen the bearded woman and the spotted boy, that he had gone 5 round in a whirligig on the back of a I wooden horse, that he had visited the show of dancing dogs and the drinking booths, and that he had won his pockets full of nuts which he 'cracked every now and then and washed down with a draught of really good ale.'

He was just going up on a great seesaw, a foaming tankard in his hand, roaring at the top of his voice, to the immense delight of the bystanders, 'In dulce jubilo-o-o, up, up, up we go-o-o,' when he espied two monks from the Priory who had been sent out in search Eof of him. Brother Jucundus, in a great panic, made a desperate attempt to scramble out, but in doing so he tumbled down; and either the fall, it is magnanimously suggested, or disinclination to return just then to the Priory weakened his legs so much that he had to be put into a wheelbarrow and rolled home.

The Chapter was still sitting, and he was wheeled straight into the midst of

the brethren for immediate trial. In reply to the Prior's demand for his defense he looked round the assembly with the 'kindest, most winsome smile' lighting up his face, and murmured confidently, with a hiccough, 'In dulce jubilo-o-o, up, up, up we go-o-o.' As he made no attempt to justify himself in any more helpful way, he was immediately and unanimously sentenced to be walled up alive in the Priory cellar. A confused glimmering of his situation must then have penetrated his mind, for all the way down the cellar steps he was heard muttering to himself in the quietest but most deliberate tones: 'Down, down, down, we go-o-o.' In a convenient niche a cruse of water and a loaf of bread placed, with cruel refinement, by his side - Brother Jucundus, it is briefly related, was soon walled into a living grave.

But the brethren overlooked a fact which the curious may verify for themselves to this day that the walls of the monastery adjoined those of the neighboring Abbey of St. Mary's; and so they did not dream that after they had abandoned the monk to his fate he kicked and struggled and pushed to such vigorous effect that the wall behind him gave way with a crash, and he found himself forsooth in the cellar of the adjacent monastery.

Now the Abbey of St. Mary's belonged to the severe Cistercian Order. Strict silence was one of the rules of the Society, and accordingly, when Brother Jucundus appeared in the cloisters, no one turned to look at him or ask him 'how the Saints he had come there.' He took his place at table and occupied a pallet in the common dormitory, and it was assumed, if anyone thought about him at all, that he was an ordinary monk who had joined the little community in the ordinary way.

If it had been dull, however, in St. Leonard's it was duller in St. Mary's,

and when the anniversary of the great York Fair came round Brother Jucundus decided that if it was impossible to celebrate the occasion in the city he would do so in the wine cellar. He was discovered unfortunately the following day, fast asleep, by the best cask of malmsey, and sentenced forsooth to a form of punishment with which he was not now altogether unfamiliar. The Cistercian brethren, however, little knew that the niche in which they secured the degraded monk, and which they discovered conveniently at hand behind a heap of crumbling stones, was the very niche from which he had escaped from St. Leonard's twelve months before, to appear so mysteriously in their midst.

It chanced that the cellarer of St. Leonard's had just descended the Priory steps and was filling his pitcher with small beer when he heard strange, muffled sounds proceeding from the wall behind his ear. He was immediately all attention and experienced little difficulty in making out these words: 'In dulce jubilo-o-o, up, up, up we go-o-o.' It was the voice of Brother Jucundus, whom he had helped to immure in that very spot twelve months before.

'Down went the pitcher,' the chronicle proceeds, 'and away fled the monk, amazement on his countenance, “A miracle, a miracle!" on his lips, to his brethren just issuing from the Church after the recitation of sect and the office for the dead around the body of their Prior, lately deceased, and that day to be buried.' There was a rush to the cellar; eager hands, we are told, tore down the wall- and from the niche, which still contained a fresh loaf and a cruse of water full to the brim, stepped Brother Jucundus.

There could be no doubt that this was a divine interposition to establish his innocence. With one voice all the monks shouted, 'Saint Jucundus our Prior,' and on their shoulders they carried him upstairs and installed him immediately in the seat of authority in the Chapter House.

Of what had happened since he had seen the brethren last, Brother Jucundus never spoke a word. Under him, our chronicle concludes, St. Leonard's jogged along pleasantly enough, and he did much in his long rule of the monastery for its discipline and good order 'to excuse, if not to justify, the dissolution which fell upon it immediately after his death.'

I AM old enough to remember very distinctly the first coming of the game of golf to the city where I live. It came in that insidious but forceful way that characterizes everything Scotch. It was similar to the spread of Scottish drapers, the Scottish Church, and Scotch whiskey.

The exact circumstances were these. One afternoon in April, when the wind was on the new grass, three Scotsmen went out to a hill slope near the town. They carried with them three crooked sticks and a little ball. There was firmness in their manner, but nothing obviously criminal. They laid the ball down and began to beat it about on the grass.

In fairness it must be admitted that they made no parade of the matter. They did not seem to challenge observation. They paid no attention to the few mystified people who watched them. At the end of about an hour they were seen to sit down under a brier bush; there they remained for some time; it was thought at the time that they were either praying or drinking whiskey. Opinion was divided. But the real truth was that they had formed themselves into a golf club.

This, I say, was on a Saturday. Had the city been well advised, these men could have been arrested on the following Monday. A judicious application of the vagrancy laws, or a rather free interpretation of the Sedition Acts, might have forestalled at the outset a grave national peril.

But nothing was done. Indeed, at

the moment, little was thought of the matter, or, at any rate, little was manifested in the shape of public indignation or public protest. Even when six Scotsmen appeared on the ground the following Saturday, and twelve the week after, and twenty-four on the last Saturday in the month, few people, if any, realized the magnitude of what was happening. The news that a golf club had been formed in our city was presently printed, quite openly, in the newspapers as if it were an ordinary

event.

One must even admit that a very lively curiosity mixed with something approaching to envy began to surround the afternoon gatherings of the Scotsmen. There is something in the sweep of the wind over the April grass, something in the open space and the blue sky, that conveys an insidious appeal to the lower side of a man's nature. It is difficult to sit indoors at one's desk and know that other men are striding over the turf.

Moreover, the ingenious expedient of carrying out a ball and beating it round with sticks supplied a color of activity and purpose that acted as a drug upon the conscience. Had it not been for this use of the sticks and the ball, the players would have appeared as mere loafers. But the evident earnestness with which they followed their avocation robbed it of every appearance of idleness; and the public was entirely deceived as to its character. In short, it was not long before the game began to exercise an evident

effect upon those who at first had been idle spectators. They became anxious to join in. Here and there, by a very obvious and cunning piece of policy, they were invited to try their hand. The spectator then found to his surprise the peculiar difficulty of the game.

He discovered that, simple though it looked, it was not possible for him to place the ball on the ground, take a drink of Scotch whiskey, and then hit it with the stick. He tried again and again, but failed each time. The natural result was that he solicited membership in the club, and reappeared on the following Saturday with a ball and stick of his own, and with a flask of whiskey on his hip. The Saturday after that he turned up in a pair of knickerbocker trousers, a round tam-o'-shanter hat, and a Cluny Macpherson tartan over his shoulders; after that, as far as any general utility to the community went, the man was lost.

I remember well, some eighteen months after the club started, realizing how far already the movement had gone when I heard the head of our greatest bank accost the chairman of a railway company with the words, 'Hoot, mon! It's a braw morning the day!' Up till that time language of the sort would have come under the criminal code.

I have since learned that this same kind of thing was going on all over the country just as it was in my own city. Men were appearing in the business streets in the Cluny Macpherson tartan. Some even had tall feathers stuck sideways in their tam-o'-shanters. At more than one public dinner the music of the bagpipes was not only tolerated but even applauded. On every Saturday, and presently even on week days, men were seen lifting long bags filled with crooked sticks on to the tramcars.

In those days the public at large was still innocent and ignorant. We had

not even heard the word 'propaganda.' Otherwise, we should have seen under all this a dangerous organized movement for the sale of the poetry of Robert Burns.

The original club of which I speak soon took further steps. They erected a kind of wooden structure on the ground where they played. It was a modest affair - merely two large rooms, one a sitting-room, with easy chairs, for talking about golf in, and the other a rest or silence room for thinking about golf in. The ground on which they played was supposedly public property. They had no shadow of right to build upon it. But any attempt at ejectment was rendered out of the question by the fact that they had enrolled among their membership all the leaders of the Bar and all the senior judges.

This last point, indeed, went strongly in their favor throughout. Even when they had left the modest building of which I speak, and were spreading over the landscape, it was plain that the game of golf had insinuated itself most daringly into the structure of our legal institution.

A decision of the courts decided that the game of golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort. Another decision laid down the principle that a golf club need never close the bar, not being a bar within the legal meaning of the term, but a place of rest, insomuch as the drinks sold are not drinks as known to the statute, but a form of recuperation. In the same way, the pay given to a boy attendant, or caddy, is not pay but a reward, and exempts him from the Cruelty to Children Act.

The excess-profits tax, the license tax, and the property tax do not apply, it is held, to the premises of a golf club, as it is a religious institution; and both