not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant
to lie among when a person hasn’t anything on.
Sunday
Pulled through.
Tuesday
She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad,
for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them;
and I am glad, because the snake talks, and this enables me to
get a rest.
Friday
She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of that tree, and
says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. I
told her there would be another result, too–it would introduce
death into the world. That was a mistake–it had been better to
keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea–she could
save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent
lions and tigers. I advised her to keep away from the tree. She
said she wouldn’t. I foresee trouble. Will emigrate.
Wednesday
I have had a variegated time. I escaped that night, and rode a
horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear out of
the Park and hide in some other country before the trouble should
begin; but it was not to be. About an hour after sunup, as I was
riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were
grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their
wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises,
and in one moment the plain was in a frantic commotion and every
beast was destroying its neighbor. I knew what it meant–Eve had
eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world. … The
tigers ate my horse, paying no attention when I ordered them to
desist, and they would even have eaten me if I had stayed–which
I didn’t, but went away in much haste. … I found this place,
outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but
she has found me out. Found me out, and has named the place
Tonawanda–says it looks like that. In fact, I was not sorry she
came, for there are but meagre pickings here, and she brought some
of those apples. I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry. It
was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real
force except when one is well fed. … She came curtained in
boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she meant
by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she
tittered and blushed. I had never seen a person titter and blush
before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic. She said I
would soon know how it was myself. This was correct. Hungry as
I was, I laid down the apple half eaten–certainly the best one I
ever saw, considering the lateness of the season–and arrayed
myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her
with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not
make such a spectacle of herself. She did it, and after this we
crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected
some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper
for public occasions. They are uncomfortable, it is true, but
stylish, and that is the main point about clothes. … I find
she is a good deal of a companion. I see I should be lonesome and
depressed without her, now that I have lost my property. Another
thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter.
She will be useful. I will superintend.
Ten Days Later
She accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with
apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that
the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I said I
was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said
the Serpent informed her that “chestnut” was a figurative term
meaning an aged and mouldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I
have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could