How to Tell Your Friends from Apes

Will Cuppy was one of the original staff of Harold Ross''s "New Yorker" and the author of "The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody". He is also, says PG Wodehouse in his introduction to this volume, ''the author of the best thing said about Pekingese, viz. ''I don''t know why they look so conceited. They''re no better than we are.'' This quip sounds the characteristic Cuppy note: concisely expressed misanthropy, A.K.A. pith and vinegar. About the title: ''I grant you there are plenty of old-fashioned and pretty ineffective ways to tell your friends from the Apes'' confesses the author. ''What could be simpler, for instance, when you are at the zoo? The Apes are in cages. Yes, but when you are not at the zoo, what then?'' It''s a question worth pondering. ''Then'' is when we need to be taken by Cuppy''s incomparable hand, which, unlike the Chimpanzee''s, is clean and has an opposable thumb.