made one long that it might rend itself and perish, and so end its
troubles. Two Mans being together, they uttered noises at each other
like this: “Haw-haw-haw–dam good, dam good,” together with other sounds
of more or less likeness to these, wherefore ye poets conceived that they
talked, but poets be always ready to catch at any frantic folly, God he
knows. Sometimes this creature goeth about with a long stick ye which it
putteth to its face and bloweth fire and smoke through ye same with a
sudden and most damnable bruit and noise that doth fright its prey to
death, and so seizeth it in its talons and walketh away to its habitat,
consumed with a most fierce and devilish joy.’
“Now was the description set forth by our ancestors wonderfully indorsed
and confirmed by the fossils before us, as shall be seen. The specimen
marked ‘Captain Kidd’ was examined in detail. Upon its head and part of
its face was a sort of fur like that upon the tail of a horse. With
great labor its loose skin was removed, whereupon its body was discovered
to be of a polished white texture, thoroughly petrified. The straw it
had eaten, so many ages gone by, was still in its body, undigested–and
even in its legs.
“Surrounding these fossils were objects that would mean nothing to the
ignorant, but to the eye of science they were a revelation. They laid
bare the secrets of dead ages. These musty Memorials told us when Man
lived, and what were his habits. For here, side by side with Man, were
the evidences that he had lived in the earliest ages of creation, the
companion of the other low orders of life that belonged to that forgotten
time. Here was the fossil nautilus that sailed the primeval seas; here
was the skeleton of the mastodon, the ichthyosaurus, the cave-bear, the
prodigious elk. Here, also, were the charred bones of some of these
extinct animals and of the young of Man’s own species, split lengthwise,
showing that to his taste the marrow was a toothsome luxury. It was
plain that Man had robbed those bones of their contents, since no tooth-
mark of any beast was upon them albeit the Tumble-Bug intruded the remark
that ‘no beast could mark a bone with its teeth, anyway.’ Here were
proofs that Man had vague, groveling notions of art; for this fact was
conveyed by certain things marked with the untranslatable words, ‘FLINT
HATCHETS, KNIVES, ARROW–HEADS, AND BONE ORNAMENTS OF PRIMEVAL MAN.’
Some of these seemed to be rude weapons chipped out of flint, and in a
secret place was found some more in process of construction, with this
untranslatable legend, on a thin, flimsy material, lying by:
“‘Jones, if you don’t want to be discharged from the Musseum, make
the next primeaveal weppons more careful–you couldn’t even fool one
of these sleepy old syentific grannys from the Coledge with the last
ones. And mind you the animles you carved on some of the Bone
Ornaments is a blame sight too good for any primeaveal man that was
ever fooled.–Varnum, Manager.’
“Back of the burial place was a mass of ashes, showing that Man always
had a feast at a funeral–else why the ashes in such a place; and
showing, also, that he believed in God and the immortality of the soil
–else why these solemn ceremonies?
“To, sum up. We believe that Man had a written language. We know that
he indeed existed at one time, and is not a myth; also, that he was the
companion of the cave-bear, the mastodon, and other extinct species; that
he cooked and ate them and likewise the young of his own kind; also, that
he bore rude weapons, and knew something of art; that he imagined he had
a soul, and pleased himself with the fancy that it was immortal. But let
us not laugh; there may be creatures in existence to whom we and our
vanities and profundities may seem as ludicrous.”
END OF PART SECOND
SOME LEARNED FABLES FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS
PART THIRD
Near the margin of the great river the scientists presently found a huge,