Gills and Drams.

Some scientists who have followed man back right over the edge and into the sea assert that, originally, every man was a fish. Many men still are, but, speaking un-officiously, a man's life is usually much drier than a fish's, except those people who spend their time floating wild cats and launching bears and bulls. Scientists also say that every human being has the remnants of gills. This may explain the craving some men have to keep the inside of their necks continuously moist. But whether man came from monkeys, fish or fowl doesn't matter much. What does matter is that a happy man is harder to find than a land agent in Venice. If man really rose from the animal world, Nature handed him a gold-brick, for with all the advantages of his glorious “progress,” with all his mutter of mind over matter, he still regards fur, fin and feather with a good deal of envy; and what's more, he has a sneaking suspicion that the animals look down on him as a poor sap who hasn't the courage to live next to Nature nor the brains to see that brains, and not the sweat of his brow, are the real curse of Adam. In proof of this, allow me to tell you a little tale about tails in palsied prose.