"The same, naturally. But it makes him king-pin in golf circles just the same, because nobody can go back on his logic," said Boswell. "Munchausen reasoned it out very logically indeed, and largely, he said, to protect his own reputation. Here is an imaginary warrior, said he, who makes a bully, but wholly imaginary, score at golf. He sends me an imaginary challenge to play him forty-seven holes. I accept, not so much because I consider myself a golfer as because I am an imaginer--if there is such a word."
"Ask Dr. Johnson," said I, a little sarcastically. I always grow sarcastic when golf is mentioned.
"Dr. Johnson be--" began Boswell.
"Boswell!" I remonstrated.
"Dr. Johnson be it, I was about to say," clicked the type-writer, suavely; but the ink was thick and inclined to spread. "Munchausen felt that Bogey was encroaching on his preserve as a man with an imagination."
"I have always considered Colonel Bogey a liar," said I. "He joins all the clubs and puts up an ideal score before he has played over the links."
"That isn't the point at all," said Boswell. "Golfers don't lie.
Realists don't lie. Nobody in polite--or say, rather, accepted--society lies. They all imagine. Munchausen realizes that he has only one claim to recognition, and that is based entirely upon his imagination. So when the imaginary Colonel Bogey sent him an imaginary challenge to play him forty-seven holes at golf--"
"Why forty-seven?" I asked.
"An imaginary number," explained Boswell. "Don't interrupt. As I say, when the imaginary colonel--"
"I must interrupt," said I. "What was he colonel of?"
"A regiment of perfect caddies," said Boswell.
"Ah, I see," I replied. "Imaginary in his command. There isn't one perfect caddy, much less a regiment of the little reprobates."
"You are wrong there," said Boswell. "You don't know how to produce a good caddy--but good caddies can be made."
"How?" I cried, for I have suffered. "I'll have the plan patented."
"Take a flexible brassey, and at the ninth hole, if they deserve it, give them eighteen strokes across the legs with all your strength," said Boswell. "But, as I said before, don't interrupt.
I haven't much time left to talk with you."
"But I must ask one more question," I put in, for I was growing excited over a new idea. "You say give them eighteen strokes across the legs. Across whose legs?"
"Yours," replied Boswell. "Just take your caddy up, place him across your knees, and spank him with your brassey. Spank isn't a good golf term, but it is good enough for the average caddy; in fact, it will do him good."
"Go on," said I, with a mental resolve to adopt his prescription.
"Well," said Boswell, "Munchausen, having received an imaginary challenge from an imaginary opponent, accepted. He went out to the links with an imaginary ball, an imaginary bagful of fanciful clubs, and licked the imaginary life out of the colonel."
"Still, I don't see," said I, somewhat jealously, perhaps, "how that makes him king-pin in golf circles. Where did he play?"
"On imaginary links," said Boswell.
"Poh!" I ejaculated.
"Don't sneer," said Boswell. "You know yourself that the links you imagine are far better than any others."
"What is Munchausen's strongest point?" I asked, seeing that there was no arguing with the man--"driving, approaching, or putting?"