“Mr. Munchausen,” said Ananias, as he and the famous warrior¹ drove off from the first hole at the Missing Links, “you never seem to weary of the game of golf. What is its precise charm in your eyes,—the health-giving qualities of the game or its capacity for bad lies?”  
“I owe my life to it,” replied the Baron². “That is to say to my precision as a player I owe one of the many preservations³ of my existence which have passed into history. Furthermore it is ever varying in its interest. Like life itself it is full of hazards and no man knows at the beginning of his stroke what will be the requirements of the next. I never told you of the bovine⁴ lie I got once while playing a match with Bonaparte, did I?”
 
“I do not recall it,” said Ananias, foozling his second stroke into the stone wall.
 
“I was playing with my friend Bonaparte, for the Cosmopolitan⁵ Championship,” said Munchausen, “and we were all even at the thirty-sixth hole.  Bonaparte had sliced his ball into a stubble field from the tee, whereat he was inclined to swear, until by an odd mischance I drove mine into the throat of a bull that was pasturing on the fair green two hundred and ninety-eight yards distant. ‘Shall we take it over?’ I asked. ‘No,’ laughed Bonaparte, thinking he had me. ‘We must play the game. I shall play my lie. You must play yours.’ ‘Very well,’ said I. ‘So be it. Golf is golf, bull or no bull.’ And off we went. It took Bonaparte seven strokes to get on the green again, which left me a like number to extricate⁶ my ball from the throat of the unwelcome bovine. It was a difficult business, but I made short work of it. Tying my red silk handkerchief to the end of my brassey I stepped in front of the great creature and addressing an imaginary ball before him made the usual swing back and through stroke. The bull, angered by the fluttering red handkerchief, reared up and made a dash at me. I ran in the direction of the hole, the bull in pursuit for two hundred yards. Here I hid behind a tree while Mr. Bull stopped short and snorted again. Still there  was no sign of the ball, and after my pursuer had quieted a little I emerged from my hiding place and with the same club and in the same manner played three. The bull surprised at my temerity⁹ threw his head back with an angry toss and tried to bellow¹⁰ forth¹¹ his wrath¹², as I had designed he should, but the obstruction¹³ in his throat prevented him. The ball had stuck in his pharynx. Nothing came of his spasm¹⁴ but a short hacking¹⁵ cough and a wheeze—then silence. ‘I’ll play four,’ I cried to Bonaparte, who stood watching me from a place of safety on the other side of the stone wall. Again I swung my red-flagged brassey in front of the angry creature’s face and what I had hoped for followed. The second attempt at a bellow again resulted in a hacking cough and a sneeze, and lo the ball flew out of his throat and landed dead to the hole. The caddies drove the bull away. Bonaparte played eight, missed a putt for a nine, stymied¹⁶ himself in a ten, holed out in twelve and I went down in five.”
 
“Jerusalem!” cried Ananias. “What did Bonaparte say?”
 
“He delivered a short, quick nervous address in Corsican and retired¹⁷ to the club-house where he spent the afternoon drowning his sorrows in Absinthe high-balls. ‘Great hole that, Bonaparte,’ said I when his geniality¹⁸ was about to return. ‘Yes,’ said he. ‘A regular lu-lu, eh?’ said I. ‘More than that, Baron,’ said he. ‘It was a Waterlooloo.’ It was the first pun I ever heard the Emperor make.”
 
“We all have our weak moments,” said Ananias drily, playing nine from behind the wall. “I give the hole up,” he added angrily.
 
“Let’s play it out anyhow,” said Munchausen, playing three to the green.
 
“All right,” Ananias agreed, taking a ten and rimming¹⁹ the cup.
 
Munchausen took three to go down, scoring six in all.
 
“Two up,” said he, as Ananias putted out in eleven.
 
“How the deuce do you make that out? This is only the first hole,” cried Ananias with some show of heat.
 
 “You gave up a hole, didn’t you?” demanded Munchausen.
 
“Yes.”
 
“And I won a hole, didn’t I?”
 
“You did—but—”
 
“Well that’s two holes. Fore⁷!” cried Munchausen.
 
The two walked along in silence for a few minutes, and the Baron resumed.
 
“Yes, golf is a splendid game and I love it, though I don’t think I’d ever let a good canvasback duck get cold while I was talking about it. When I have a canvasback duck before me I don’t think of anything else while it’s there. But unquestionably I’m fond of golf, and I have a very good reason to be. It has done a great deal for me, and as I have already told you, once it really saved my life.”
 
“Saved your life, eh?” said Ananias.
 
“That’s what I said,” returned Mr. Munchausen, “and so of course that is the way it was.”
 
“I should admire to hear the details,” said Ananias.  “I presume you were going into a decline and it restored your strength and vitality²⁰.”
 
“No,” said Mr. Munchausen, “it wasn’t that way at all. It saved my life when I was attacked by a fierce and ravenously²¹ hungry lion. If I hadn’t known how to play golf it would have been farewell forever to Mr. Munchausen, and Mr. Lion would have had a fine luncheon²² that day, at which I should have been the turkey and cranberry²³ sauce and mince²⁴ pie all rolled into one.”
 
Ananias laughed.
 
“It’s easy enough to laugh at my peril²⁵ now,” said Mr. Munchausen, “but if you’d been with me you wouldn’t have laughed very much. On the contrary, Ananias, you’d have ruined what little voice you ever had screeching²⁶.”
 
“I wasn’t laughing at the danger you were in,” said Ananias. “I don’t see anything funny in that. What I was laughing at was the idea of a lion turning up on a golf course. They don’t have lions on any of the golf courses that I am familiar with.”
 
 &l............