B270 <=> B272 (BTG XXIII Beelzebub’s fourth sojourn, p. 271)

“You see, my boy, what coincidences occur in our Great Universe.

“The contents of this etherogram concern just your favorites in connection with these terrestrial beings I have just mentioned, that is, these apes.

“It has been sent to me from the planet Mars, and among other things there is communicated in it that the three-centered beinbeings of the planet Earth have again begun to revive what is called the ‘Ape question.’

“I must tell you first of all, that on account of a cause also ensuing from the abnormal being-existence there, there was long ago crystallized, and there is periodically intensified in its functioning in the presences of those strange three-brained beings arising and existing on the planet Earth, a strange factor which from time to time produces in their presences a ‘crescendo impulse,’ owing to which, during the periods of its action, they wish at all cost to find out whether they have descended from these apes or whether these apes have descended from them.

“Judging from the etherogram, this question is this time agitating chiefly those biped beings who breed there on the continent called America.

“Although this question always agitates them from time to time, yet every once in a while it becomes there for a long time, as they express it, ‘the burning question of the day.’

“I very well remember that this ‘agitation of mind’ concerning the origin of these apes occurred there among them for the first time when, as they also like to express it, their ‘center of culture’ was Tikliamish.

“The beginning of that ‘agitation of mind’ there was the wiseacring of a certain ‘learned being’ of new formation there named Menitkel.

“This Menitkel then became a learned being, firstly because his childless aunt was an excellent what is called matchmaker and mixed a great deal with power-possessing beings, and secondly, because when by age he was approaching the ‘threshold of the being’ of a responsible being, he received on his birthday a gift of a book entitled Manual of Bon Ton and Love Letter Writing. Being materially secure and therefore quite free, thanks to an inheritance left him by his uncle, a former pawnshop proprietor, he out of boredom compiled a massive and erudite work in which he ‘spun out,’ concerning the origin of these apes, an elaborate theory with every kind of ‘logical proof,’ but of course with such ‘logical proofs’ as could be perceived and crystallized only in the Reasons of those freaks who have taken your fancy.