“What he says is true, and I will go further and say that it is my belief that you would have found the show business impossible if I had taken that sort of creature aboard.  You’d have got mightily discouraged after your Antediluvians had chewed up a few dozen steam calliopes, and eaten every other able-bodied exhibit you had managed to secure.  I’d have tried to save a couple of Discosaurians if I hadn’t supposed they were able to take care of themselves.  A combination of sea-serpent and dragon, with a neck twenty-two feet long, it seemed to me, ought to have been able to ride out any storm or fall of rain; but there I was wrong, and I am free to admit my error.  It never occurred to me that the sea-serpents were in any danger, so I let them alone, with the result that I never saw but one other, and he was only an illusion due to that unhappy use of stimulants to which, with shocking bad taste, you have chosen to refer.”

“I didn’t mean to call up unpleasant memories,” said Barnum.  “I never believed you got half-seas over, anyhow; but, to return to our muttons, why didn’t you hand down a few varieties of the Therium family to posterity?  There were the Dinotherium and the Megatherium, either one of which would have knocked spots out of any leopard that ever was made, and along side of which even my woolly horse would have paled into insignificance.  That’s what I can’t understand in your selections; with Megatheriums to burn, why save leopards and panthers and other such every-day creatures?”

“What kind of a boat do you suppose I had?” cried Noah.  “Do you imagine for a moment that she was four miles on the water-line, with a mile and three-quarters beam?  If I’d had a pair of Dinotheriums in the stern of that Ark, she’d have tipped up fore and aft, until she’d have looked like a telegraph-pole in the water, and if I’d put ’em amidships they’d have had to be wedged in so tightly they couldn’t move to keep the vessel trim.  I didn’t go to sea, my friend, for the purpose of being tipped over in mid-ocean every time one of my cargo wanted to shift his weight from one leg to the other.”

“It was bad enough with the elephants, wasn’t it, papa?” said Shem.

“Yes, indeed, my son,” returned the patriarch.  “It was bad enough with the elephants.  We had to shift our ballast half a dozen times a day to keep the boat from travelling on her beam ends, the elephants moved about so much; and when we came to the question of provender, it took up about nine-tenths of our hold to store hay and peanuts enough to keep them alive and good-tempered.  On the whole, I think it’s rather late in the day, considering the trouble I took to save anything but myself and my family, to be criticised as I now am.  You ought to be much obliged to me for saving any animals at all.  Most people in my position would have built a yacht for themselves and family, and let everything else slide.”

“That is quite true,” observed Raleigh, with a pacificatory nod at Noah.  “You were eminently unselfish, and while, with Mr. Barnum, I exceedingly regret that the Saurians and Therii and other tribes were left on the pier when you sailed, I nevertheless think that you showed most excellent judgment at the time.”