29 JANUARY 1927, Page 13

Country Life and Sport

A CLERKLY CADDIE.

A VISITING golfer, on a country common that makes an adorable course, was told by hig native host that his'eaddie was some- thing of a botanist ; so he improVed the occasion by a series of questions on the flora of the Common, beginning with the gorse that was in flower. The boy knew the names Of few flowers ; but what he did not know about stamens and pistils and anthers was not worth knowing. He was the prize scholar hi this as in several other departments of bookish knowledge. At the end of the interrogatory the golfer asked the boy what he wanted above all else to be in life. He answered with promicA brevity, " A clerk," pronoimeing the word to rhyme with work. The moral of this little true story is that even in the few lessons on county subjects in the village school, the emphasis was all wrong. Even the " star " botanist cared nothing whatever for flowers or their cultivation. He greatly desired to be a clerk because his education, so far as it was anything, was clerkly.