THE SURPRISING, UNHEARD-OF, AND NEVER-TO-BE-SURPASSED

ADVENTURES OF

YOUNG MUNCHAUSEN;

RELATED AND ILLUSTRATED BY

C. H. BENNETT,

IN TWELVE STORIES."

I

STORY THE FOURTH-OF SPORTS.

SAY nothing about Croquet-under another name, I have written thereon. I say nothing here; my known love of truth would oblige me to speak of my successes, and that might offend the ladies, whom I love.

SPORTS AND GAMES.

But at Aunt Sally I can tell you I have carried all before me. At the last Derby I knocked the pipe from the fair lady's mouth sideways, cut out the Duke of Richmond's eye, and upset the unworthy proprietor.

Cricket is my favourite game. The last time I played at Lord's, I made nine hundred and fifty-seven runs without stopping, wore out the twenty-four legs of the twelve best scouts, and caused Parr, Lilywhite, and Julius Cæsar to commit suicide from the new bridge at Westminster, in despair at my great success. I pensioned the families of the three unfortunate bowlers, and found twenty-four wooden legs for the scouts.

GOOD PLAY.

BOW.

upon

As my mother's name was Hood, and her father's great grandfather's second cousin's mother's uncle's ancestor Robin of that name, you will readily understand my passion for archery. With a good yew bow and four arrows I once stood on Blackfriars-bridge and did my best. With one shaft I aimed at the railing above the dome of St. DRAWING THE LONG Paul's Cathedral, and took off a fly, that was regaling the back of a bald man's head; with my second, disabled a dishonest person, who was trying to enter the doors of the Crystal Palace without paying his shilling. I planted my third on the right side of the north-east face of the. Westminster clock, just under the figure nine, where it still remains, and can be distinctly seen by daylight; my fourth flew straight down the Thames, to a man whom I dislike, named Smith, who was coming to London by the Gravesend boat, caught him on the calf of his leg, and lamed him for life.

As a mere child, I was fond of games and sports.

I am the last boy who is positively known to have possessed a real "alley tor."

A TOP FULL OF
HONEY.

I had a humming-top: it hummed so loud that all the bees in the parish were taken in by its noise. They settled in it at once,-five and forty different swarms (it was a very large top), and there they remain to this day. The honey is of a beautiful flavour. I played foot-ball till I broke all the shins in the school, but left soon after in disgust, as, in consequence of my good play, we were called the Hobblers. I once at Wimbledon struck a ball out of the trap with such force that nothing could stop it, until it caught Louis Napoleon under the left ear, as he was riding along the Boulevards in Paris, and thereupon caused four innocent Italians, friends of Mazzini, to be arrested on a charge of treason. At "fly the garter," in overing a back of nine-and-forty feet, I so forgot to restrain my jump that I went clean out of WANT OF CAUTION. sight into the next county, where, finding no conveyance handy, I had to walk back alone: this was very tiring work, I assure you.

At quoits I cannot play. I well remember pitching my "shoe," as we used to call the quoit, fairly at the "hob," as I thought, but my bias being wrong, landed the iron ring fairly on to the shoulders of the village constable, then passing by. His head looked surprised at having to grin through such a collar. Neither can I play hockey; enough players cannot be found to stand against me, and I always play single-handed: it is my fancy so to do.

A BAD AIM.

But I am very fond of kite-flying. Once I flew a kite too strong for me, off my legs I went, up in the air far out of sight; what I should have done had I not bumped against Coxwell's balloon, I can't say; but, as it happened, old Glashier, who was looking over the edge of the car, lifted me in, to the great detriment of his scientific apparatus ; but balloons are not quite useless. I am glad to have arrived at that opinion, for some time ago, not then believing in them, BALLOONS USEFUL. I aimed with my famous vulcanized india-rubber catapult, at Nadar's great ærial machine, and as I had charged my curious. substitute for a sling with a sharp-edged piece of granite, I tore a long gash in the upper chamber, discharged the gas, and brought the poor Frenchmen down at a run. Not wishing to take their lives, I had the humanity hastily to wheel a waggon, loaded with greens for the neighbouring market, to the spot where I saw they must inevitably fall. A few bruises and broken limbs, of which you have already been told in the papers, were the only misfortunes they had to endure.

R

But, if I did not believe in balloons, I once kept up a shuttlecock from Christmas Day to Good Friday, and should not then SINGULAR PASSION have let it drop had I not such a passion for hot

FOR BUNS.

breakfast-time.

WALKER.

cross buns, that I felt obliged to give over just before

I need not tell you of my gymnastic feats, although once, when my shoes were thin in the sole, and my feet sore with a long march, I walked nine hundred and ninety-nine miles within a thousand hours, spraining my wrist at the commencement of the thousandth mile. My fencing qualities are as well known: I once picked all the buttons off the buttoned-up coat of a professor of the foils, who was a button-maker's nephew; but fencing to me is a means of warfare rather than a mere sport.

Riding for me a good bare-backed steed on the spreading Llanas of South America. And as for driving, I once drove the mail coach from London to Dover (I was very young then) blindfold, and only upset it once, through the villany of the guard, who cried "Woa!" to my "Gee-up!" Not that I dislike quiet-Oh, no! the gentle sport is quite to my taste. I must say that I prefer fly-fishing, although I do not use the ordinary enticements. In Scotland last year, finding the made flies of no avail, I just hung my cocked hat on to my line, and, of course, as I expected,

THE COCKED-HAT
FLY.

rose a fine salmon the first strike-away he swam, I after him—on he went, on went I-down a hole he dived, and down dived I, till out he came quite exhausted, and by a subterranean water-passage, into the river Tyne at Newcastle, where I caught him, you may be sure.

I have already troubled you with some of my feats of swimming, but one little incident I had almost forgotten.

A love passage.

The lady I adored lived at Dieppe, Is at Dover, and once a week, until the time when she ran off with the King of

A SECOND LEANDER.

two places.

Bavaria, I swam backward and forward between the

As for rowing, I have beaten both the Universities, and all the watermen on the Thames, but I am forced to leave it off, my stroke is too powerful; London sight-seers will not readily forget the last time, when I pulled my boat by sheer force of rowing clean out of

A BAD STROKE.

the water, over the heads of the people, landing it on the roof of the water-side tavern, which had been selected as our goal and resting-place. I was adjudged 'to lose that time, and serve me right too.