Avon Fantasy Reader No. 11 — page 72: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

that all life, whether monkey or man, went through the stages of attraction and repulsion, desire and cynicism. He came to the real point of his mission. “Ask him,” he requested of Luomo, “why the wood-men destroy the bananas in the Baloonga fields when they have plenty of fruit in the jungle.” The woman and the wood-man made more barking and chattering sounds and finally she translated that it was because the Baloongas killed and ate wood-men, “That,” replied Mogglesby, ‘is because the wood-men carry away the Baloonga girls.” More chattering, and finally old Luomo was irritated again before she finally translated— “Keckechex asks how is it possible to prevent young men from falling into the follies of youth.” "Look here,” ejaculated Mogelesby sharply. “It’s all very well for an old dried up stick to hang in a tree and disapprove folly in general. Tell him the war between the Baloongas and the wood-men is also folly and I have come here looking for enough wisdom to stop it.” This sufficiently stirred the cynicism of the oldest wood-man to make him ask how was it possible for the world to go on unless the men con- tinued to carry off the women. At this answer a kind of dismay went through Mogglesby. He saw the wood-men accepted the assegais of the Negroes as a sort of natural hazard to mating with Baloonga women. The same custom obtained among nearly all primitive people. “Would it not be possible,” ventured the white man, “for you to compel the young wood-men to leave the Baloonga girls alone?” To this Keckechex chattered a negative. He said in the mating season the young wood-men went everywhere. They asked no one. They were not afraid. And when they captured a wood-girl or a Baloonga girl they brought her to the banyan. By this time the creature above him had ceased to be an animal to Mog- glesby. A coherence ran through the replies, and the governot’s agent had hope of bringing about some sort of understanding after all. “How would this do?” he suggested. “Could you order the young wood- men to leave the Baloonga girls alone, and if they did bring one to the banyan, you could make them take her back to the village?’ When Luomo translated this to the oldest man of the simians the gra creature pondered, lifted a hand-like foot to scratch his thigh; finally he said— “Would that not be an infringement upon the natural liberty of all living things to mate with whom they pleased?’ “That may be,” agreed Mopglesby with some warmth, “but wouldn't it be worth your while to do a little infringing if it kept the wood-men out of war with the Baloongas?”’ Keckechex scratched his head with a foot-like hand— 70 Comicbooks.com