(The spirit of Adam is supposed to be visiting New York City
inspecting the dinosaur at the Museum of Natural History)
(1905)
I
It is strange ... very strange. _I_ do not remember this creature.
(_After gazing long and admiringly._) Well, it is wonderful! The
mere _skeleton_ fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet high! Thus
far, it seems, they’ve found only this sample--without doubt a
merely medium-sized one; a person could not step out here into the
Park and happen by luck upon the largest horse in America; no, he
would happen upon one that would look small alongside of the biggest
Normandy. It is quite likely that the biggest dinosaur was ninety
feet long and twenty feet high. It would be five times as long as an
elephant; an elephant would be to it what a calf is to an elephant.
The bulk of the creature! The weight of him! As long as the longest
whale, and twice the substance in him! And all good wholesome pork,
most likely; meat enough to last a village a year.... Think of a
hundred of them in line, draped in shining cloth of gold!--a
majestic thing for a coronation procession. But expensive, for he
would eat much; only kings and millionaires could afford him.
I have no recollection of him; neither Eve nor I had heard of him
until yesterday. We spoke to Noah about him; he colored and changed
the subject. Being brought back to it--and pressed a little--he
confessed that in the matter of stocking the Ark the stipulations
had not been carried out with absolute strictness--that is, in minor
details, unessentials. There were some irregularities. He said the
boys were to blame for this--the boys mainly, his own fatherly
indulgence partly. They were in the giddy heyday of their youth at
the time, the happy springtime of life; their hundred years sat upon
them lightly, and--well, he had once been a boy himself, and he had
not the heart to be too exacting with them. And so--well, they did
things they shouldn’t have done, and he--to be candid, he winked.
But on the whole they did pretty faithful work, considering their
age. They collected and stowed a good share of the really useful
animals; and also, when Noah was not watching, a multitude of
useless ones, such as flies, mosquitoes, snakes, and so on, but they
did certainly leave ashore a good many creatures which might
possibly have had value some time or other, in the course of time.
Mainly these were vast saurians a hundred feet long, and monstrous
mammals, such as the megatherium and that sort, and there was really
some excuse for leaving them behind, for two reasons: (1) it was
manifest that some time or other they would be needed as fossils for
museums and (2) there had been a miscalculation, the Ark was smaller
than it should have been, and so there wasn’t room for those
creatures. There was actually fossil material enough all by
itself to freight twenty-five Arks like that one. As for the
dinosaur----But Noah’s conscience was easy; it was not named in his
cargo list and he and the boys were not aware that there was such a
creature. He said he could not blame himself for not knowing about
the dinosaur, because it was an American animal, and America had not
then been discovered.
Noah went on to say, “I did reproach the boys for not making the
most of the room we had, by discarding trashy animals and
substituting beasts like the mastodon, which could be useful to man
in doing heavy work such as the elephant performs, but they said
those great creatures would have increased our labors beyond our
strength, in the matter of feeding and watering them, we being
short-handed. There was something in that. We had no pump; there was
but one window; we had to let down a bucket from that, and haul it
up a good fifty feet, which was very tiresome; then we had to carry
the water downstairs--fifty feet again, in cases where it was for
the elephants and their kind, for we kept them in the hold to serve
for ballast. As it was, we lost many animals--choice animals that
would have been valuable in menageries--different breeds of lions,
tigers, hyenas, wolves, and so on; for they wouldn’t drink the water
after the salt sea water got mixed with the fresh. But we never lost
a locust, nor a grasshopper, nor a weevil, nor a rat, nor a cholera
germ, nor any of that sort of beings. On the whole, I think we did
very well, everything considered. We were shepherds and farmers; we
had never been to sea before; we were ignorant of naval matters, and
I know this for certain, that there is more difference between
agriculture and navigation than a person would think. It is my
opinion that the two trades do not belong together. Shem thinks the
same; so does Japheth. As for what Ham thinks, it is not important.
Ham is biased. You find me a Presbyterian that isn’t, if you think
you can.”
He said it aggressively; it had in it the spirit of a challenge. I
avoided argument by changing the subject. With Noah, arguing is a
passion, a disease, and it is growing upon him; has been growing
upon him for thirty thousand years, and more. It makes him
unpopular, unpleasant; many of his oldest friends dread to meet him.
Even strangers soon get to avoiding him, although at first they are
glad to meet him and gaze at him, on account of his celebrated
adventure. For a time they are proud of his notice, because he is so
distinguished; but he argues them to rags, and before long they
begin to wish, like the rest, that something had happened to the
Ark.