en 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. Ther