"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 Idiscovered 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.AChinaman 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.
