From ADAM'S DIARY
after MARK TWAIN
Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl, and make allowances. She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy< she can't speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is colour mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the palid moon sailing through the shredded cloud rack, the star jewels glittering in the wastes of space - none of them is of any practical value, so far as I can see, but because they have colour and majesty, that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them. If she could quiet down and keep still a couple of minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. In that case I think I could enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature - slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once when she was standing marble white and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she was beautiful
Monday Noon
It there is anything on the planet that she is not interested in it is not in my list. There are animals that I am indifferent to, but it is not so with her. She has no discrimination, she takes to all of them, she thinks they are all treasures, every new one is welcome.
When the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded it as an acquisition, I considered it a calamity; that is a good sample of the lack of harmony that prevails in our views of things. She wanted to domesticate it, I wanted to make it a present of the homestead and move out. She believed it could be tamed by kind treatement and would be a good pet; I said a pet; I said a pet twentyone feet high and eighty - four long would be no proper thing to have about the place, because, even with the best intentions and without meaning any harm, it could sit down on the house and mash it, for any one could see by the look of its eye that it was absent-minded.
Still, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she couldn't give it up. She thought we could start a dairy with it, and wanted me to help her milk it, but I wouldn't; it was too risky. The sex wasn't right and we hadn't any ladder anyway. Then she wanted to ride it, and look at the scenery. Thirty or forty feet of its tail was lying on the ground, like a fallen tree, and she thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken, when she got to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and would have hurt herself but for me.
From EVE'S DIARY
AFTER THE FALL
When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me. It was beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful;enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, and I shall not see it any more.
The Garden is lost, but I have found him, and am content. He loves me as well as he can; I love him with all the strength of my passionate nature, and this, I think, is proper to my youth and sex. If I ask myself why I love him, I find I do not know, and I do not really much care to know.
It is not on account of his gracious and considerate ways and his delicacy that I love him. No, he has lacks in these regards, but he is well enough just so, and is improving.
It is not on account of his industry that I love him - no, it is not that. I think he has it in him, and I do not know why he conceals it from me. It is only pain. Otherwise he is frank and open with me, now. I am sure he keeps nothing from me but this. It grieves me that he should have a secret from me, and sometimes it spoils my sleep, thinking of it, but I will put it out of my mind; it shall not trouble my happiness, which is otherwise full to overflowing.
It is not on account of his education that I love him - no, it is not that. He is self-educated, and does really know a multitude of things, but they are not no.
It is not on account of his chivalry that I love him - no, it is not that. He told on me, but I do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex, I think. Of course I would not have told on him, I would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity of sex, too, and I do not take credit for it.
Then why is it that I love him ? Merely because he is masculine, I think.
At bottom he is good, and i love him for that, but I could love him without it. If he should beat me and abuse, I should go on loving him. I know it. It is a matter of sex, I think.
He is strong and handsome, and I love him for that, and I admire him and am proud of him, but I could love him without those qualities. If he were plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should love him; and I would work for him, and slave over him and pray for him, and watch by his bedside until I died.
Yes, I think I love him merely because he is mine and is masculine. There is no other reason, I suppose . It just comes, none knows whence - and cannot explain itself. And doesn't need to.
It is what I think. But I am only a girl, and the first that has examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience I have not got it right.
FORTY YEARS LATER
It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together - a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.
But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to me - life without him would not be life; how could I endure it ? This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race continues. I am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be repeated.
At Eve's Grave
Adam. Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.
