Chapter VI: Some Theories, Darwinian and Otherwise

A House-Boat on the Styx

by John Kendrick Bangs

"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 today?" 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.