Brewer's: Course

Another course would have done it. A little more would have effected our purpose. It is said that the peasants of a Yorkshire village tried to wall in a cuckoo in order to enjoy an eternal spring. They built a wall round the bird, and the cuckoo just skimmed over it. “Ah!” said one of the peasants, “another carse would a' done it.”

“There is a school of moralists who, connecting sundry short-comings ... with changes in manners, endeavour to persuade us that only `another carse' is wanted to wall in the cuckoo.” —Nineteenth Century, December, 1892, p. 920.

Course

To keep on the course. To go straight; to do one's duty in that course [path] of life in which we are placed. The allusion is to racing horses.

“We are not the only horses that can't be kept on the courses- with a good turn of speed, too.” —Boldrewood: Robbery under Arms, chap. xv.

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