Moot Hall

“ As Mr. Mott wavered on the tee, he saw a deep gully, weed-infested and spotted with frowning rocks; he saw pits bounding and guarding the green; he saw trees and excavations and a stone wall. Upon its mound of sand he saw the Silver King waiting resignedly for its certain punishment. He saw his mid-iron, broad bladed and heavy, a club capable of propelling thirty pennyweight of rubber and silk an eighth of a mile if properly handled. Yet Mr. Mott discounted the inherent qualities of that iron, just as he discounted the elasticity of the golf-ball and the power of his wrists and forearms. ”

“ Mott?"
"Oh, pretty fair—for me," said Mr. Mott, feebly.
But as he left the club-house his heart was again proud and high. He had dismissed from his mind all thought of his partner's performance; he was sustained and soothed by the remembrance of the last nine holes in fifty-six, and the last four in par. He felt a sturdy manhood, confident and unafraid. To-day he had scored ll9; to-morrow it might be that he, too, should play the full round as he had played the last four holes to-day; upon such dreams are founded the wealth of the athletic outfitters. ”

“ On the ninth tee, to the frank annoyance of another foursome which had overtaken them, Mr. Mott refused to drive until the quartet ahead had left the green, two hundred and twenty-two yards away, uphill.
"A good wallop 'll carry that far sometimes," he explained with dignity. "They 're off now, anyway." Before proceeding to the shot, he condescended to lighten the situation with a ray of humor. "I'd hate to kill anybody," he said, and topped not more than a mallet's length into the tall grass. ”

“ Temporarily, he had struck his head upon the stars, and with the pride of a champion he swung with a champion's ease and freedom. Par five! Mr. Mott, with the image of the Vardon statue hovering be- fore his eyes, clipped bits of turf from the scarred tee and ogled the green. Carrigan had overdriven it; it was n't much more than three hundred yards. And the morass directly before the tee, the trap to the left, and the rough to the right, what were they? Who but novices were to be alarmed by the puny hazards such as these? Surely not one who has made the long fifteenth in a par five! ”

“ You got a nice drive there."
"Too high," said Mr. Mott, judgmatically. He played a jumping shot which ran briskly over the shallow pit guarding the green, and came to a standstill not twenty feet from the cup. He putted, and was dead. He holed out with neatness and precision, and knew that he had beaten Chapman by a stroke. "Gad, what a green!" said Mr. Mott, pop-eyed. "Like a billiard-table. We 've got an English greenskeeper; he's a wonder. Sleepy Hollow and Pine Valley have nothing on us."
"You 're finishing strong, Mr. Mott. Go to it!"
"One under par for three holes," shouted Mr. ”

“ Lawrence, once existing there; the pedestal and base are fragments from the ruins of Kirkstead. In a recess, or aumbrey, behind the west door, is a very interesting relic, found, a few years ago, in the moat of the old hall at Poolham, which we described in the previous chapter. We there mentioned the remains of an oratory, or chapel, still standing in the south-west corner of the kitchen garden at the old Hall. Some men were employed in cleaning out the mud from the encircling moat, the season being a very dry one, and the moat almost empty of water. ”

“ Mott entered it, echoed the mad confusion of a political convention crossed with a dairy restaurant. Crockery clattered against wooden surfaces, plated silver clattered against crockery, tumblers clinked to tumblers, and hobnails grated on the red-tiled floor. Men in knickerbockers and men in flannels huddled close to the round tables and bawled statistics at one another; men in street clothes dragged rattling caddy-bags through from the office; men flushed and perspiring stamped in from the eighteenth green, and clamored loudly at the bar. ”

“ Mott waved the hand which had recently done duty as a silencer.
"Easiest thing in the world. Mrs. Mott would n't any more think of spoiling my Saturdays than—well, she just would n't think of it. She knows I'm working like a dog all the week; a man's got to have some recreation." ”

“ Look out!" cried Lionel, catching Harriet's arm. "You nearly went over!"
They were standing close to the edge of a dark declivity, in reality not very steep, yet of sufficient depth to be dangerous to any one coming upon it unawares. This last remnant of the ancient moat, for such it was, lay only a few yards from the oldest wing of the house, yet so artfully was it screened on two sides by dense shrubbery and on the third by a crumbling, ivy-covered wall, once part of the old tower, that its presence was known to only two people at Ipping House—the curate and little An Petronia. ”

“ But to reach the church and village one must pass Wilby Old Hall, a romantic building of red brick, with corbie-stepped gables, that peer darkly across the meadows. One cannot resist a closer glance, and the old place well repays that attention. It is now, and long has been, a farmhouse, but was built as a mansion somewhere about the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was when Elizabeth reigned, or in the first years of James I., that the hall first rose within the girdle of its moat: that moat only in part now remaining, but still plentifully stocked with fish. ”

“ I certainly don't! I did n't even expect to play this afternoon, and to-morrow I 'll drive you anywhere you— Oh, it might easily mean a thousand dollars to me. Yes, a thousand. Just as soon as we finish— Oh, no, I would n't do that! The greens committee does n't like to have women on the course on Saturdays. I 'll start home the minute we finish. All right; I'm just as sorry as you are. Good-by!"
Mr. Mott hung up the receiver, exhaled in an abandon of relief, and smartly accosted a cadaverous friend, who happened to be passing through the locker-room:
"Oh, Smithson! ”

“ A great high hall blue with smoke, steel-girdered at the roof like a railway station. It is packed by a cloth-capped crowd, predominantly Oriental—a crowd of swift murmurs and sudden silences and sharp, instantaneous uproars. Good tempered now, but—O my!—suppose somebody started a row! There is not one woman present. The elegant girls in evening gowns who sit out Albert Hall prize fights have no place here. It is a gathering of fight fans. In the centre under bright, white lights rises the ring. The men in it are like men on a raft floating on a sea of restless, white faces. ”

“ Its upper roof rests on a series of carved wooden brackets; pillars of wood also support the lower one, and the whole is crowned with a gilded copper ball. The base is marble, and the edifice is approached by four bridges of the same material, spanning a marble-walled moat, surrounded with white marble balustrades. The hall stands in the centre of a court, and on the right and left of it, in long open verandahs, there are about 200 tablets of upright stone. ”

“ Westward, lying among the tall trees, where the sharp corner of Yorkshire runs in between the Hodder and the Ribble, is Little Mitton Hall, another relic of the past that serves to tell the story of the changing life of our great nation, and to show how the frowning fortress gradually softened into the stately mansion when order spread as law succeeded might, and time had widened and mellowed our social institutions. ”

“ Immediately everybody took to his heels, and as the roar of the cannons rolled away, the sharp nasal bray of horns reëchoed from every quarter of the campus, dying away in the recesses of the various buildings whither the crowd had taken flight. It was “every man for himself” in that scramble, and for my part, the shortest route to my room in Colver Hall was what suited me best, so off I dashed.
Unfortunately I had to pass near the college offices. ”

“ A vast body of men went to work with a will; scrubbing, cleaning, whitewashing, and removing all the foul lumber of the hall; singing in chorus, as they did so, the hymns of Clement Marot. By dinner-time the place was ready. The pulpit and benches for the congregation had taken the place of the gibbet timber. It is difficult to comprehend that such work as this was a deadly crime. Nevertheless, Horn, who was himself a sincere Catholic, had committed the most mortal of all his offences against Philip and against God, by having countenanced so flagitious a transaction. ”

“ Mott prepared to drive.
"Do you always remember scores like that?"
"Always."
Mr. Mott drove far down the fairway. Exalted and emboldened, he ventured to explain briefly just how he had done it. Then when Chapman had hit a long, low ball which developed a faint slice as it dipped to the hollows, Mr. Mott was constrained to offer condolence.
"If you just get that kink out of your shots you 'll play under a hundred," he stated flatly.
"Well, I hope so."
"Nothing in the world but slow wrist action. Look! You don't see me slicing many balls, do you? ”

“ The south and north tower, and the hall curtain, needed no exterior defence. They rise from a very steep bank, and their foundations are of scarped rock and solid masonry. They are quite unassailable from below. The other two sides are more exposed. In front of the south tower is the commencement of the moat, broken by a causeway opposite to the inner gateway, and leading from it to the outer court. Beyond the causeway the moat deepens, and is carried round the east tower and great curtain, steep and deep, and hewn in the rock, so as to render this, the naturally weaker363 side, very strong. ”

“ The halls, stairways, and outer entrance were grand and imposing, and in some respects it looked [9] more like a public edifice than a private residence. The roof was flat, and was surrounded by a parapet, at various points upon which bells had been hung, in the Chinese fashion, which tinkled when the wind blew hard enough, and which probably reminded the old tea-merchant of the days and nights he had passed, when a younger man, in the land of the yellow-skinned Celestials. ”

“ The wide and weedy moat, enclosing nearly an acre of ground, is there as of yore, but the chief interest of the place is in its history. Still Claverham is picturesque: a pleasant, retired, and wholly delightful abode in the summer-time; in the winter—well, it was not winter-time then. Portions of the interior are quaint, especially the black oak-beamed and plastered hall that with its ingle-nook gives one a genuine old-world greeting. The beams of the hall are of the original building, and so, we were told, was the wide ingle-nook of the dining-room ”

“ The City Hall, fronting on one side of the square known as the Campus Martius, is a structure of which any city in the land might be proud. It is built of Cleveland sandstone, and faces on four streets,—being two hundred feet long on Woodward avenue and Griswold street, with a width of ninety feet on Fort street and Michigan avenue.
It is built in the style of the Italian renaissance, with Mansard roof and a tower rising from the centre of the building, adorned at its four corners with colossal figures fourteen feet high, representing "Justice," "Industry," "Arts," and "Commerce." ”

“ You take these caddies; they watch good players, and get hold of a good swing, and they 're not bothered with nerves—"
"Pardon me, but I think you 're back there about ten yards, Mr. Mott."
"So I am! Much obliged! Fore!"
Within a quarter of a mile there was no one who might conceivably have been endangered by Mr, Mott's recovery from the sand-pits, but his warning cry was both mechanical and peremptory. He eyed the flag, three hundred yards in advance, and with his eye still on it he played the mashy-niblick in the stroke which made Edward Ray internationally famous. It made Mr. ”

“ Without another word the old man rose from his chair and strode, leaning on his staff, across the hall, accompanied by his faithful valet and the provost and escorted by a file of soldiers. The mob of spectators flowed out after him at every door into the inner courtyard in front of the ancient palace. ”

“ Stow describes the hall as a fair house. After the Great Fire it was rebuilt (about 1670) by Wren and Jarman, and the west side of the great hall facing Little College Street is of this date. The present College Street front was built in 1886 from designs by Mr. J. Douglass Mathews, architect. It is a very handsome three-storied building of red brick. The door is of remarkably fine carving, of curious form, having the appearance of two doors, the smaller imposed upon the greater. Above the door under a pedimental canopy are the Company’s arms. ”

“ The Soler-halle has been guessed to be Clare Hall, merely because that college was of early foundation, and was called a 'hall.' But a happy find by Mr. Riley tells us better, and sets the question at rest. In the First Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, p. 84, Mr. Riley gives several extracts from the Bursar's Books of King's Hall, in which the word solarium repeatedly occurs, shewing that this Hall possessed numerous solaria, or sun-chambers, used as dwelling-rooms, apparently by the fellows. ”

“ The plans of the architect who designed the City Hall, John McComb, were accepted in the year 1803, but the building was not completed until nine years later.
It is not always an agreeable business to devote one’s time to destroying a myth which has become lodged in the affections of the people, but sometimes it rests on so slight a foundation that there is nothing gained in keeping it alive. ”