Eve's Diary, Part 3
Page 1
Produced by David Widger and Cindy Rosenthal
EVE'S DIARY
By Mark Twain
Illustrated by Lester Ralph
Translated from the Original
Part 3.
EXTRACT FROM ADAM'S DIARY
Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and makeallowances. She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is toher a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delightwhen she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell itand talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she iscolor-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky;the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the goldenislands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailingthrough the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in thewastes of space--none of them is of any practical value, so far as I cansee, but because they have color and majesty, that is enough for her,and she loses her mind over them. If she could quiet down and keep stilla couple minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. In thatcase I think I could enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, forI am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature--lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and oncewhen she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, withher young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching theflight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she was beautiful.
MONDAY NOON.--If there is anything on the planet that she is notinterested in it is not in my list. There are animals that I amindifferent 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 newone is welcome.
When the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded it asan acquisition, I considered it a calamity; that is a good sample of thelack of harmony that prevails in our views of things. She wanted todomesticate it, I wanted to make it a present of the homestead and moveout. She believed it could be tamed by kind treatment and would be agood pet; I said a pet twenty-one feet high and eighty-four feet longwould be no proper thing to have about the place, because, even with thebest intentions and without meaning any harm, it could sit down on thehouse and mash it, for any one could see by the look of its eye that itwas absent-minded.
Still, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she couldn't giveit up. She thought we could start a dairy with it, and wanted me tohelp 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 lookat the scenery. Thirty or forty feet of its tail was lying on theground, like a fallen tree, and she thought she could climb it, but shewas mistaken; when she got to the steep place it was too slick and downshe came, and would have hurt herself but for me.
Was she satisfied now? No. Nothing ever satisfies her butdemonstration; untested theories are not in her line, and she won't havethem. It is the right spirit, I concede it; it attracts me; I feel theinfluence of it; if I were with her more I think I should take it upmyself. Well, she had one theory remaining about this colossus: shethought that if we could tame it and make him friendly we could stand inthe river and use him for a bridge. It turned out that he was alreadyplenty tame enough--at least as far as she was concerned--so she triedher theory, but it failed: every time she got him properly placed inthe river and went ashore to cross over him, he came out and followedher around like a pet mountain. Like the other animals. They all dothat.
Tuesday--Wednesday--Thursday--and today: all without seeing him. It isa long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone than unwelcome.