The Conversational Kangaroo

THE CONVERSATIONAL KANGAROO. By PHIL ROBINSON.

O animal takes its ease in such gentlemanly attitudes or with such an elegant appearance of complete luxuriousness as the kangaroo. I should not be surprised if I came upon one smoking a cigarette, or languidly turning over the pages of a magazine. They like to lie on a slope, with their heads higher than their bodies, and they stretch out their legs as if they were thoroughly resting them, crossing their feet one over the other. For sheer animal cosiness nothing in the world can beat a sleeping dormouse. But the kangaroo when doing nothing is the only animal that I know of that seems to have our own human ideas of making itself comfortable. Nor, I fancy, except the monkey, is there any other that leans its head upon its hand, or lies down, as a rule, with its face looking upwards, so that it can see all that is going on. Most animals, to take their ease, turn their noses downwards, and look only at the ground, but the kangaroo likes to have ocular commend of its surroundings, and prefers to look at the sky.

It was thus, comfortably outstretched upon its bedding, that I found my acquaintance of the Zoo, and as I came up, it lifted its head languidly, and turning both its ears towards me with a courteous gesture of attention, put a straw in its mouth and waited for me to speak.

"I've been thinking over a little idea of mine," said I, "and I came to chat it over with you."

"Something in the direction of simplicity?" asked the kangaroo. "Our one idea is that: we are Simplicitarians."

"I don't quite understand you," I replied.

"Well, our notion Is that the less complex we make life the more enjoyable it becomes. We have always striven after getting everything down to one. You can never be really happy if you have any alternatives. To have three courses open to you must be utter wretchedness."

"I am in hopes, then, that my idea may recommend itself to you. It tends rather in the direction you point out, and has increased convenience to the individual as its only object."

"Convenience," said the kangaroo, "is another name for simplicity."

"Well, I was thinking that as you have got so far as having a pouch attached to your bodies, it might be a good idea to have it separate, to button on, you know."

"Buttons! No, thank you. They are at the root of many evils, and are very complicated."

"You mistake me. I meant buttons growing on your bodies on to which you might button your pouches. Of course, I don't mean buttons that come off."

"Ah, I see. Well, then, let us say one button. By eliminating the principle of choice we remove occasions for perplexity—one button."

I now began to perceive that my sententious acquaintance was something of a theorist, and that I was right will be seen later.

"Very good; let us say only one button. The convenience, at times, would be prodigious. For instance, you could hang your pouches up or lay them down while you went about your business. In America the shopkeepers have started rooms where mothers can leave their babies while they shop. It is a great convenience, I am told."

"True; at times the convenience would be prodigious. But has it occurred to you that we should always have to go back to fetch our pouches from where we left them? At times the inconvenience of doing so would be equally prodigious."

"You needn't do that. You could send your husbands for them, or make the children carry them."

"Ah! the husband and wife are one (we are as strictly monogamous as yourselves), and with the pouch attached and the child inside it, there is a sense of unity in the family association which is very agreeable."

"Stuff and nonsense," I said, out of patience at the creature's verbosity, "a family does not become divided by walking about separately. Or even if you carry the child in a pouch, why doesn't our husband carry you both in another. That would be something like unity."

The mild-eyes marsupial looked up, wonderingly, at my warmth. But, letting its head fall back on the straw it went on feebly—

"You have made a great suggestion. Nothing could tend towards simplicity so directly as the course you have hinted at. As for the bag that would take off and on, I am afraid there are many objections to it. They would be getting mislaid, or stolen, or exchanged. You couldn't trust a child to carry its own pouch about. Boys will be boys, you know, and they'd be sure to get into mischief with them. No, I'm afraid the hand-bag idea won't do. But the other scheme of the husband carrying the wife while the wife carries the baby is immense, and well worthy of consideration. It reduces the family, you see, to a unit. There's compactness in it, and monotony (true happiness is not found outside monotony); it has both solidity and solidarity."

"Good gracious!" I thought, "was there ever such a metaphysical beast as this before!"

"By abolishing variety," it went on, "you abolish occasions for thought. With the necessity for thought abolished, existence would be simply perfection."

"But you'd all be idiots. What would be the use of having brains if you're never going to think?"

"There, that is just it. We are trying to do without brains. We have got some way towards it. For our brains haven't got any convolutions, they're smooth. That comes from not worrying. We've never worried about anything, for oh! thousands of years."

"How's that?"

"Well, you see, we have always lived in a country with plenty to eat in it. So that we never had any bother about want of food, which is the real source of nearly every worry in the world, isn't it?"

"Pretty nearly."

"Well, then we had nobody to eat us, or be afraid of. So another great worry of life was spared us."

"There were the natives."

"Oh, yes; but they didn't count. They used to run after us, but we hopped away easily from them. Sometimes there used to be one of us missing when we came to count, but that didn't matter much; for there were so many of us."

"Then there were the dingo-dogs?"

"Yes; but they didn't dare to come near us. We used to catch them if they did, and drown them in water-holes."

"I've heard of that. Do you really do so?"

"Certainly. If we catch a dog and there is a water-hole near, we drown it."

"Then, once upon a time, there was a pouched lion in Australia. He must have eaten a great many of you."

"Apparently not, for he became extinct. I expect they were cannibals and ate each other up. No, we have never had any enemies worth speaking of. Nor really anything serious to worry us. With plenty to eat and drink, and no one to to molest us, until you white men came with your guns and your horses and your sheep, we simply grazed about, lived to prodigious ages, and made the simplification of existence our ideal."

"In what direction?"

"Well, we got rid of two legs, for instance. Four is an absurd number to have. So we did away with two. In time we hope to do away with one of these, and have only one leg."

"Only one leg?"

"Why not? What's the use of two? It only bothers you. Why, I often stop to think which foot I'll scratch myself with. If I'd only one I wouldn't be bothered with thinking. Besides, if we can go faster on two than a horse can on four, who knows how fast we should go If we had only one! What objection can you suggest to having only one leg?"

"None: I really never thought of it before."

"There may be good reasons for having two eyes, and two ears and two hands; but why two legs? Why not two tails or two noses?"

"I'm sure I cant say."

"No; I don't suppose you can. Then again, we have done away with superfluous teeth, and other odds and ends of bones, with a view to the simplification of our skeletons. As for food, we eat grass. Nothing could be simpler than that."

"But if you can't get grass?"

"Why, the next thing to it, leaves. That is our idea of simplicity. We never worry about our eating. Look at the camel; what an idiot he is! He will go about starving all day because he can't find a particular kind of bush. Or the lions and things like that, that have to catch what they want to eat. Why don't they eat grass, or leaves?"

"It is certainly very convenient to be able to eat the first thing you come upon, and when you go to sleep in a field to wake up with your breakfast on your pillow, so to speak. But doesn't it strike you as odd hopping about among what you eat? If I ate grass, I shouldn't like going through a meadow. It would be like walking about upon one's bread and butter. But I suppose it's a matter of habit."

"Certainly—and it's so simple. Depend upon it we are right, my dear sir; and that true happiness will only be found in true simplicity. If you human beings all lived exactly alike, what an immensity of worry you would be saved! And then you could all give over thinking, and let your brains get smaller and smaller, just as we are doing. Some day we shall be able to do without the backs of our heads. For when our brains are all gone, we sha'n't need any brain-pans. And really, when one comes to think of it, I don't see why we shouldn't do away with one of our eyes and one of our ears. It is all in the direction of unity; of simplicity"

"Oh, bother," I broke in, "you'll excuse me; I've got to go. But let me give you something to think about. Your future is not going to be like your past, and unless I'm much mistaken, you'll have to alter your ways and let your brains get bigger instead of smaller. Or, if you don't, I'm afraid you'll find yourselves being gradually pushed off the face of the earth."

"Really! Well, good-morning. I'll think over that idea of yours of the husbands carrying their wives in their pouches. It's so simple, and, as I said before, simp"

But I was off, and left the Simplicitarian to finish its sentence for the edification of a sleepy wallaby.