Part 20

“But he doesn't call that golf, does he?” I cried.

“What is it?” demanded Boswell.

“I should call it football,” I said.

“Not at all,” said Boswell. “Not a bit of it. He hasn't any foot on that leg, and he has a golf-club head with a shaft to it. There isn't any rule which says that the shaft shall not look like an inverted nine-pin, nor do any of the accepted authorities require that the club shall be manipulated by the arms. I admit it's bad form the way he plays, but, as Stuyvesant himself says, he never did travel on his shape.”

“Suppose he gets a cuppy lie?” I asked, very much interested at the first news from Hades of the famous old Dutchman.

“Oh, he does one of two things,” said Boswell. “He stubs it out with his toe, or goes back and plays two more. Munchausen plays a good game too. He beat the colonel forty-seven straight holes last Wednesday, and all Hades has been talking about it ever since.”

“Who is the colonel?” I asked, innocently.

“Bogey,” returned Boswell. “Didn't you ever hear of Colonel Bogey?”

“Of course,” I replied, “but I always supposed Bogey was an imaginary opponent, not a real one.”

“So he is,” said Boswell.

“Then you mean--”

“I mean that Munchausen beat him forty-seven up,” said Boswell.

“Were there any witnesses?” I demanded, for I had little faith in Munchausen's regard for the eternal verities, among which a golf-card must be numbered if the game is to survive.

“Yes, a hundred,” said Boswell. “There was only one trouble with 'em.” Here the great biographer laughed. “They were all imaginary, like the colonel.”

“And Munchausen's score?” I queried.

“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.”