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
J