You may talk as much as you please but money is a commanding factor in love and marriage. It is all very well for a wealthy man to fall in love and marry a poor girl, but it is an entirely different thing for a poor man to aspire to the hand and heart of a wealthy woman.
Honestly, I don't believe it right that women should be permitted under the law to inherit vast sums of money--at least marriageable women. No man of ordinary means who possesses a proper self-respect will espouse a woman whose income overshadows his own.
I would limit the inheritances of marriageable women to a maximum amount of $100,000. I wish Miss Harding did not have a dollar.
The contest for the Harding Trophy--I mean the bronze, and not the real Harding Trophy--has narrowed down to four of us, Carter, Boyd, Marshall and myself. I have a sort of a premonition that as that 'bronze gent' goes, so will go everything which I hold dear. I am making the fight of my life for it. I play Marshall to-morrow morning.
I won my match with Marshall after a contest which went to the twentieth hole. He had me dormie one coming to the eighteenth, but by perfect playing I won it in a five and halved the match. Nothing happened on the first extra hole, but on the following I held a fifteen putt for a three and won a beautifully contested match.
Miss Harding went around with us and was my Mascot. I broke my record for the course, making a medal score of seventy-eight. Miss Harding congratulated me and I was so happy I could have yelled. Dear old Marshall did not take his defeat the least to heart, but he is not playing for the stakes that I am.
I have dreamed twice that if I won the Harding Trophy I should win everything.
Carter beat Boyd handily, and the prize will go to one of us. I must beat him; I shall beat him!
After having declared innumerable times that he would master the secrets of golf without aid from anyone, Harding finally surrendered and took his first lesson this afternoon.
"I take back everything I ever said about this being an easy game to play," he said. "I'm a pretty good 'rule of thumb' civil and mechanical engineer, I know a few things about the laws of resistances and all that sort of thing, I have watched you fellows hit that ball and have tried to imitate you, but it's no use. Now I'm going to do just what Wallace tells me, and if he can teach me to drive I'll pay him more than any professional ever made in the history of the game."