"I observe," said Doctor Darwin, looking up from a perusal of an asbestos
copy of the _London Times_--"I observe that an American professor has
discovered that monkeys talk. I consider that a very interesting fact."
"It undoubtedly is," observed Doctor Livingstone, "though hardly new. I
never said anything about it over in the other world, but I discovered
years ago in Africa that monkeys were quite as well able to hold a
sustained conversation with each other as most men are."
"And I, too," put in Baron Munchausen, "have frequently conversed with
monkeys. I made myself a master of their idioms during my brief sojourn
in--ah--in--well, never mind where. I never could remember the names of
places. The interesting point is that at one period of my life I was a
master of the monkey language. I have even gone so far as to write a
sonnet in Simian, which was quite as intelligible to the uneducated as
nine-tenths of the sonnets written in English or American."
"Do you mean to say that you could acquire the monkey accent?" asked
Doctor Darwin, immediately interested.
"In most instances," returned the Baron, suavely, "though of course not
in all. I found the same difficulty in some cases that the German or the
Chinaman finds when he tries to speak French. A Chinaman can no more say
Trocadero, for instance, as the Frenchman says it, than he can fly. That
peculiar throaty aspirate the Frenchman gives to the first syllable, as
though it were spelled trhoque, is utterly beyond the Chinese--and beyond
the American, too, whose idea of the tonsillar aspirate leads him to
speak of the trochedeero, naturally falling back upon troches to help him
out of his laryngeal difficulties."
"You ought to have been on the staff of _Punch_, Baron," said Thackeray,
quietly. "That joke would have made you immortal."
"I _am_ immortal," said the Baron. "But to return to our discussion of
the Simian tongue: as I was saying, there were some little points about
the accent that I could never get, and, as in the case of the German and
Chinaman with the French language, the trouble was purely physical. When
you consider that in polite Simian society most of the talkers converse
while swinging by their tails from the limb of a tree, with a sort of
droning accent, which results from their swaying to and fro, you will see
at once why it was that I, deprived by nature of the necessary apparatus
with which to suspend myself in mid-air, was unable to quite catch the
quality which gives its chief charm to monkey-talk."
"I should hardly think that a man of your fertile resources would have
let so small a thing as that stand in his way," said Doctor Livingstone.
"When a man is able to make a reputation for himself like yours, in which
material facts are never allowed to interfere with his doing what he sets
out to do, he ought not to be daunted by the need of a tail. If you
could make a cherry-tree grow out of a deer's head, I fail to see why you
could not personally grow a tail, or anything else you might happen to
need for the attainment of your ends."
"I was not so anxious to get the accent as all that," returned the Baron.
"I don't think it is necessary for a man to make a monkey of himself just
for the pleasure of mastering a language. Reasoning similarly, a man to
master the art of braying in a fashion comprehensible to the jackass of
average intellect should make a jackass of himself, cultivate his ears,
and learn to kick, so as properly to punctuate his sentences after the
manner of most conversational beasts of that kind."
"Then you believe that jackasses talk, too, do you?" asked Doctor Darwin.
"Why not?" said the Baron. "If monkeys, why not donkeys? Certainly they
do. All creatures have some means of communicating their thoughts to
each other. Why man in his conceit should think otherwise I don't know,
unless it be that the birds and beasts in their conceit probably think
that they alone of all the creatures in the world can talk."
"I haven't a doubt," said Doctor Livingstone, "that monkeys listening to
men and women talking think they are only jabbering."
"They're not far from wrong in most cases if they do," said Doctor
Johnson, who up to this time had been merely an interested listener.
"I've thought that many a time myself."
"Which is perhaps, in a slight degree, a confirmation of my theory," put
in Darwin. "If Doctor Johnson's mind runs in the same channels that the
monkey's mind runs in, why may we not say that Doctor Johnson, being a
man, has certain qualities of the monkey, and is therefore, in a sense,
of the same strain?"
"You may say what you please," retorted Johnson, wrathfully, "but I'll
make you prove what you say about me."
"I wouldn't if I were you," said Doctor Livingstone, in a peace-making
spirit. "It would not be a pleasant task for you, compelling our friend
to prove you descended from the ape. I should think you'd prefer to make
him leave it unproved."
"Have monkeys Boswells?" queried Thackeray.
"I don't know anything about 'em," said Johnson, petulantly.
"No more do I," said Darwin, "and I didn't mean to be offensive, my dear
Johnson. If I claim Simian ancestry for you, I claim it equally for
myself."
"Well, I'm no snob," said Johnson, unmollified. "If you want to brag
about your ancestors, do it. Leave mine alone. Stick to your own
genealogical orchard."
"Well, I believe fully that we are all descended from the ape," said
Munchausen. "There isn't any doubt in my mind that before the flood all
men had tails. Noah had a tail. Shem, Ham, and Japheth had tails. It's
perfectly reasonable to believe it. The Ark in a sense proved it. It
would have been almost impossible for Noah and his sons to construct the
Ark in the time they did with the assistance of only two hands apiece.
Think, however, of how fast they could work with the assistance of that
third arm. Noah could hammer a clapboard on to the Ark with two hands
while grasping a saw and cutting a new board or planing it off with his
tail. So with the others. We all know how much a third hand would help
us at times."
"But how do you account for its disappearance?" put in Doctor
Livingstone. "Is it likely they would dispense with such a useful
adjunct?"
"No, it isn't; but there are various ways of accounting for its loss,"
said Munchausen. "They may have overworked it building the Ark; Shem,
Ham, or Japheth may have had his caught in the door of the Ark and cut
off in the hurry of the departure; plenty of things may have happened to
eliminate it. Men lose their hair and their teeth; why might not a man
lose a tail? Scientists say that coming generations far in the future
will be toothless and bald. Why may it not be that through causes
unknown to us we are similarly deprived of something our forefathers
had?"
"The only reason for man's losing his hair is that he wears a hat all the
time," said Livingstone. "The Derby hat is the enemy of hair. It is
hot, and dries up the scalp. You might as well try to raise watermelons
in the Desert of Sahara as to try to raise hair under the modern hat. In
fact, the modern hat is a furnace."
"Well, it's a mighty good furnace," observed Munchausen. "You don't have
to put coal on the modern hat."
"Perhaps," interposed Thackeray, "the ancients wore their hats on their
tails."
"Well, I have a totally different theory," said Johnson.
"You always did have," observed Munchausen.
"Very likely," said Johnson. "To be commonplace never was my ambition."
"What is your theory?" queried Livingstone.
"Well--I don't know," said Johnson, "if it be worth expressing."
"It may be worth sending by freight," interrupted Thackeray. "Let us
have it."
"Well, I believe," said Johnson--"I believe that Adam was a monkey."
"He behaved like one," ejaculated Thackeray.
"I believe that the forbidden tree was a tender one, and therefore the
only one upon which Adam was forbidden to swing by his tail," said
Johnson.
"Clear enough--so far," said Munchausen.
"But that the possession of tails by Adam and Eve entailed a love of
swinging thereby, and that they could not resist the temptation to swing
from every limb in Eden, and that therefore, while Adam was off swinging
on other trees, Eve took a swing on the forbidden tree; that Adam,
returning, caught her in the act, and immediately gave way himself and
swung," said Johnson.
"Then you eliminate the serpent?" queried Darwin.
"Not a bit of it," Johnson answered. "The serpent was the tail. Look at
most snakes to-day. What are they but unattached tails?"
"They do look it," said Darwin, thoughtfully.
"Why, it's clear as day," said Johnson. "As punishment Adam and Eve lost
their tails, and the tail itself was compelled to work for a living and
do its own walking."
"I never thought of that," said Darwin. "It seems reasonable."
"It is reasonable," said Johnson.
"And the snakes of the present day?" queried Thackeray.
"I believe to be the missing tails of men," said Johnson. "Somewhere in
the world is a tail for every man and woman and child. Where one's tail
is no one can ever say, but that it exists simultaneously with its owner
I believe. The abhorrence man has for snakes is directly attributable to
his abhorrence for all things which have deprived him of something that
is good. If Adam's tail had not tempted him to swing on the forbidden
tree, we should all of us have been able through life to relax from
business cares after the manner of the monkey, who is happy from morning
until night."
"Well, I can't see that it does us any good to sit here and discuss this
matter," said Doctor Livingstone. "We can't reach any conclusion. The
only way to settle the matter, it seems to me, is to go directly to Adam,
who is a member of this club, and ask him how it was."
"That's a great idea," said Thackeray, scornfully. "You'd look well
going up to a man and saying, 'Excuse me, sir, but--ah--were you ever a
monkey?'"
"To say nothing of catechising a man on the subject of an old and
dreadful scandal," put in Munchausen. "I'm surprised at you,
Livingstone. African etiquette seems to have ruined your sense of
propriety."
"I'd just as lief ask him," said Doctor Johnson. "Etiquette? Bah! What
business has etiquette to stand in the way of human knowledge?
Conventionality is the last thing men of brains should strive after, and
I, for one, am not going to be bound by it."
Here Doctor Johnson touched the electric bell, and in an instant the
shade of a buttons appeared.
"Boy, is Adam in the club-house to-day?" asked the sage.
"I'll go and see, sir," said the boy, and he immediately departed.
"Good boy that," said Thackeray.
"Yes; but the service in this club is dreadful, considering what we might
have," said Darwin. "With Aladdin a member of this club, I don't see why
we can't have his lamp with genii galore to respond. It certainly would
be more economical."
"True; but I, for one, don't care to fool with genii," said Munchausen.
"When one member can summon a servant who is strong enough to take
another member and do him up in a bottle and cast him into the sea, I
have no use for the system. Plain ordinary mortal shades are good enough
for me."
As Munchausen spoke, the boy returned.
"Mr. Adam isn't here to-day, sir," he said, addressing Doctor Johnson.
"And Charon says he's not likely to be here, sir, seeing as how his
account is closed, not having been settled for three months."
"Good," said Thackeray. "I was afraid he was here. I don't want to have
him asked about his Eden experiences in my behalf. That's personality."
"Well, then, there's only one other thing to do," said Darwin.
"Munchausen claims to be able to speak Simian. He might seek out some of
the prehistoric monkeys and put the question to them."
"No, thank you," said Munchausen. "I'm a little rusty in the language,
and, besides, you talk like an idiot. You might as well speak of the
human language as the Simian language. There are French monkeys who
speak monkey French, African monkeys who talk the most barbarous kind of
Zulu monkey patois, and Congo monkey slang, and so on. Let Johnson send
his little Boswell out to drum up information. If there is anything to
be found out he'll get it, and then he can tell it to us. Of course he
may get it all wrong, but it will be entertaining, and we'll never know
any difference."
Which seemed to the others a good idea, but whatever came of it I have
not been informed.