A House-Boat on the Styx

“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.

CHAPTER VII: A DISCUSSION AS TO LADIES’ DAY

“I met Queen Elizabeth just now on the Row,” said Raleigh, as he entered the house-boat and checked his cloak.

“Indeed?” said Confucius.  “What if you did?  Other people have met Queen Elizabeth.  There’s nothing original about that.”

“True; but she made a suggestion to me about this house-boat which I think is a good one.  She says the women are all crazy to see the inside of it,” said Raleigh.