“And in the time when it seemed good to him, Darwin awoke and made two great lights, the greater arc to rule the day and the lesser incandescent to rule the night. And Darwin was the greater and Professor Huxley was the lesser; he made Herbert Spencer also.
“And behold! the man, because he had within him all other men, spoke Henry James English in all its simplicity from his birth up. Mother Earth sang lullabies to him, but the man was sore vexed at his mater’s nonsense verses and comic opera lyrics; he swore a Saxon oath. That being the first word he had uttered, the man was called Adam. And all in the world there was none other like him.
“Now when the evening and the morning were the fifth day, Darwin began to sit up and take notice. He took a leaf from Adam’s birth record and by soaking it in alcohol over night, words became visible and he read that in the primordial epoch when in the transition period Adam was a kangaroo, a woman started to sprout from the seed of truth, but the coming man thought she had better lie a little longer, and so he stunted her truth-telling for all time by thrusting her into the tobacco pouch of his kangaroo hide, knowing that there is no stunt like tobacco.
“Eve was content to come after man for three reasons; first, she knew it was fashionable to arrive late; second, she was timid and wanted Mr. Adam to see how the land lay now that the waters had been divided; third, she was having some clothes made for her debut and even with the assistance of Prof. Huxley, Tailor Darwin had not been able to get them ready on time.
“Though eternal despairs deepened their nights about him, Adam was in a jolly mood and he said: ‘Let us make light of it’—and there was light!
“And when Eden was effulgent Darwin could see the man he had made and he saw that it was good. He was positive of that but was comparatively sure he could do better, so he hypnotized Adam by telling him he had appendicitis and that an operation was necessary for his future well-being as a man, now that he had ceased to be a monkey. Dad had never studied physiology—though he made up for it later by dissecting Eve every chance he got,—and so he did not wonder how it came about that the only portion of his anatomy for which he no longer had a use, having given up climbing trees as being too undignified a diversion, had gotten so far up as to tickle him in the ribs. He remembered that saying about man being fearfully and wonderfully made, and being assured by Dr. Darwin that the operation for the removal of ‘a rag and a bone and a hank of hair’ was as safe as an Hom pill, he quietly fell asleep.
“That is how man came to lose his tail, for contrary to report, Darwin did not give man a tail but took one away; contrary also to the authorized version, woman was made out of man’s tail and not from his rib. Kipling little knew how apt was his descriptive tag, for the tail consisted of a bone covered with a hank of hair and the dinosaur supplied the rag by tying a tin can to Adam’s tail. Thus man evolved like the tadpole, which does not have to hire George Washington to do the woodsman stunt, as Nature arranges for the chopping off of its tail at the accepted time. What Nature does for the tadpole, Dr. Darwin did for man. But he bungled the job and cut the tail off too short. That’s the reason appendicitis is prevalent to-day.
“And when Darwin looked on the woman he forgot his grammar and broke out into superlatives without the justification of the rule of three: ‘This is the most barbarous cut of all.’
“For this unkind reflection on her Marcel Wave and also for the reason that Mr. Darwin spared her costume but not her modesty, Eve condemned man to wear clothes for all time.
“And as the evening and the morning were the sixth day, Darwin called to the woman: ‘This man thou shalt call Adam, surnamed Smith.’ Likewise to the man he said: ‘Whilst thou lovest this woman, her name shall be called Evelyn and her children shall be called the daughters of Evelyn, but when thy love groweth cold like the night, she shall be thy Eve. As the first parents, so shall be all posterity.’