back, putting his sting
where it would do the most good"
"Out of what appeared to be a clear sky came the most
extraordinary rain storm you ever saw"
"'I am your slave,' he replied to my greeting, kneeling
before me, 'I yield all to you'"
"I reached the giraffe, raised myself to his back, crawled
along his neck and dropped fainting into the tree"
"They were celebrating Decoration Day, strewing flowers on
the graves of departed missionaries"
"I laughed in the poor disappointed thing's face, and with a
howl of despair he rushed back into the sea"
"This brought my speed down ten minutes to the mile which
made it safe for me to run into a haystack"
"At the first whoop Mr. Bear jumped ten feet and fell over
backward on the floor"
"He used to wind his tail about a fan and he'd wave it to
and fro by the hour"
"Most singular of all was the fact that, consciously or
unconsciously, the insect had butted out a verse"
"Again I swung my red-flagged brassey in front of the angry
creature's face, and what I had hoped for followed"

MR. MUNCHAUSEN

AN ACCOUNT OF HIS RECENT ADVENTURES

I

I ENCOUNTER THE OLD GENTLEMAN

There are moments of supreme embarrassment in the lives of persons
given to veracity,--indeed it has been my own unusual experience in
life that the truth well stuck to is twice as hard a proposition as a
lie so obvious that no one is deceived by it at the outset. I cannot
quite agree with my friend, Caddy Barlow, who says that in a tight
place it is better to lie at once and be done with it than to tell the
truth which will need forty more truths to explain it, but I must
confess that in my forty years of absolute and conscientious devotion
to truth I have found myself in holes far deeper than any my most
mendacious of friends ever got into. I do not propose, however, to
desert at this late hour the Goddess I have always worshipped because
she leads me over a rough and rocky road, and whatever may be the
hardships involved in my wooing I intend to the very end to remain the
ever faithful slave of Mademoiselle Veracite. All of which I state
here in prefatory mood, and in order, in so far as it is possible for
me to do so, to disarm the incredulous and sniffy reader who may be
inclined to doubt the truth of my story of how the manuscript of the
following pages came into my possession. I am qu