THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, steady! steady! Pray! pray! Reflect, I
implore you. It is possible to colonize without exterminating the
natives. Would you treat us less mercifully than our barbarous
forefathers treated the Redskin and the Negro? Are we not, as Britons,
entitled at least to some reservations?

ZOO. What is the use of prolonging the agony? You would perish slowly
in our presence, no matter what we did to preserve you. You were almost
dead when I took charge of you today, merely because you had talked for
a few minutes to a secondary. Besides, we have our own experience to go
upon. Have you never heard that our children occasionally revert to the
ancestral type, and are born shortlived?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_eagerly_] Never. I hope you will not be offended
if I say that it would be a great comfort to me if I could be placed in
charge of one of those normal individuals.

ZOO. Abnormal, you mean. What you ask is impossible: we weed them all
out.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. When you say that you weed them out, you send
a cold shiver down my spine. I hope you don't mean that you--that
you--that you assist Nature in any way?

ZOO. Why not? Have you not heard the saying of the Chinese sage Dee
Ning, that a good garden needs weeding? But it is not necessary for us
to interfere. We are naturally rather particular as to the conditions on
which we consent to live. One does not mind the accidental loss of an
arm or a leg or an eye: after all, no one with two legs is unhappy
because he has not three; so why should a man with one be unhappy