by Mark Twain
One with red legs stood wagging a club about his head, which from time to time he struck upon the ground, then wagged he it again. Behind him bent one with blue legs that did spit much upon his hands, and was called a Catcher. Beside him bent one called Umpire, clothed in the common fashion of the time, who marked upon the ground with a stick, yet accomplished nothing by it that I could make out. Saith this one, "Low Ball." Whereat one with blue legs did deliver a ball with vicious force straight at him that bore the club, but failed to bring him down, through some blemish of his aim. At once did all that are called Basemen and Fielders spit upon their hands and stoop and watch again. He that bore the club did suffer the ball to be flung at him divers times, but did always bend in his body or bend it out and so save himself, whilst the others spat upon their hands, he at the same instant endeavoring to destroy the Umpire with his bludgeon, yet not succeeding, through grievous awkwardness. But in the fullness of time was he more fortunate, and did lay the Umpire dead, which mightily pleased me, yet fell himself, he failing to avoid the ball, which this time cracked his skull, to my deep gratitude and satisfaction. Conceiving this to be the end, I did crave my father's leave to go, and got it, though all beside me did remain, to see the rest disabled. Yet had I seen a sufficiency, and shall visit this sport no more, forasmuch as the successful hits come too laggingly, wherefore the game doth lack excitement. Moreover was Jebel there, windy with scorn of these modern players, and boastful of certain mighty Nines he knew three hundred years gone by -- dead now, and rotten, praise God, who doeth all things well.
* This is not translatable into English, but it is about equivalent to
"Lo, he is whitewashed." -- THE EDITOR [M. T.]
Twelfth Day -- The rumor that has been steadily gathering strength these twenty years, that the head of our princely house, the father of the nations of the earth, the most noble, most august and venerable ADAM, (on whom be peace!) willeth to visit my father in this his capital city, is rumor no more, but verity. The embassage approacheth with the ridings. Exceeding great is the tumult of the city for joy and thanksgiving. My father commandeth his chief minister to make due preparation.
Thirteenth Day -- Came men of trust this day, that report the embassage as tarrying by the oasis Balka, eighteen days' journey hence, toward the south.
Fourteenth Day -- There is no talk but of the great news and of the embassage.
At the rising of the sun went my father's envoys forth in gorgeous state, to take the road, they bearing presents of gold and precious stones, spices and robes of honor. With banners and with sound of martial music went they, a glittering host, marching past until I wearied of the numbers and the noise. The multitudes that massed themselves upon the housetops or followed shouting were beyond the power of man to estimate. 'Tis a great day.
Fifteenth Day -- My father hath commanded that the Palace of the Palms be new garnished for the ambassador that cometh, and his following. Eight hundred artisans and artists will set to work with all dispatch to paint and gild and renovate.
Sixteenth Day -- To the museum, to see the raiments of fig leaves and of strange untanned skins of beasts our parents wore in Eden, in the olden time. Likewise the Flaming Sword the which the Angel bore. Now that the city is so wrought upon by the growing excitement, 'tis said the museum cannot accommodate more than some few thousands of the hosts that now daily clamor for admittance to the relics. That I might see as the simple see, and hear as the simple hear, and not be myself a show and plagued with the attentions due my state and dignity, went I disguised as a mere mohac,* not even clogged with a servant. Some hundreds of guides walked the prodigious ranges of apartments, with eager troops of people following, and made explanation of the gathered marvels. I perceived that these touched not upon their wares at random, but in rigid sequence, and that their speech by old habit had formed itself into an unchangeable sequence of words, hard, inflectionless, and void of all heart and expression as if a machine had made it. He whom I did follow had held his post four hundred years, clacking the same speech, day in, day out, through all that weary time, till now was he no more master of his jaws; once they set themselves awagging, only God could stop them before the speech was done. The foolish rhetoric and flourish of it, that once had had a sort of showy sound, mayhap, was now like to make one laugh for derision or cry for pity, so flat and lifeless was it. Poor, old withered ass, thrice did I interrupt, to test him. 'Twas as I had conceived; it threw him out, and he was forced to go back and begin again at the beginning. It was on this wise: Saith he, "Lo, this dread weapon, grim memorial of that awful day; flaming with consuming fires that o'er the darkening fields of Eden cast their lurid ray --" I, interrupting, did inquire about a huge thing that bore the legend, The Similitude and Likeness of the Key of the Garden, the Original whereof lieth in the Treasure House of Cain in the far City of Enoch. The aged guide was sore troubled with this, and did try to answer me, but failing once and yet again, did then endeavour to find the place whereat he had late left off in his wretched speech; but not succeeding, went he back again and rasped out as formerly: "Lo, this dread weapon, grim memorial of that awful day; flaming with consuming fires that o'er the darkening fields of Eden cast their lurid ray --" I, interrupting yet twice again, each time returned he to his accursed "Lo, this dread weapon." Then suddenly being wroth, perceiving by signs of merriment among the crowd that he was being played upon, turned he upon me, saying, "Though I be of mean estate and lowly calling, it yet ill becometh one of but mohac degree and graceless youth to shame mine age with scorn." Being angered, I never having known insult before, I was near to saying, "By the law, whoso offends any of the royal house his head is forfeit." But I remembered myself in time and spake not, purposing at another season to have him crucified, together with his family.
* Untranslatable. It means something better than a professional man, and not so good as an artist. Thus fine were the caste distinctions of the time. -- THE EDITOR [M. T.]
I saw no curiosity that riveted the people's gaze like to the Fig Leaves. Yet are they not leaves, in truth, but only the skeletons thereof, instead, the fabric all decayed and gone save only the ribs or veinings. There be cavilers that say we shall not lack for the original garments of the Garden whilst fig trees grow and beasts remain to renew these sacred treasures withal. As for me, I say nothing, since that is most discreet. Yet am I pained to remember that there exists at this day, in each of seven cities, the Only True and Original Flaming Sword of Expulsion. This moveth one to doubt.
Presently came the sweet idolater by, and was swallowed up and lost in the crowd. Straightway began I to dream and muse, and so, losing zest for the marvels treasured about me, betook me home.
Twentieth Day -- God send that embassage come soon, else cannot the people contain themselves. There is naught but talk of this great thing, and preparation for it.
Still, many days must yet elapse before these expectations bring their fruit.
Twenty-seventh Day -- Perish the generation of Jabal! Let the hand wither that ceased not with contriving the noble organ and the charming harp, but must shut up an unappeasable devil in the bowels of a box, with privilege to vagrants to grind anguish out of him with a crank and name it Music. This new thing, being not yet a century invented, has yet spread to all parts like to a pestilence; so that at this day in every city shall you see vagabonds from strange lands grinding these dread boxes, in the company and companionship of a monkey. 'Twere endurable, were there variety in the Music; but alack, they seem all to play but the one tune -- the new one that did come into favor some thirty years agone and seems not like to go out again before the world shall drown in that silly deluge whereof overpious fools with ill digestion do prate and prophesy from time to time. 'Tis said the new excitement hath increased our horde of grinders mightily, so that there be in the city now full eighty thousand, which do all grind, without ceasing, that one tearful ditty: "O, Kiss Haggag for His Mother." Verily is this time waxing intolerable to me. Though
Haggag were damned, yet could I not be content, so sore is my rage that he was ever bom, since without him this infliction had not come upon us.
Second Day of the Sixth Month of the Year 747 -- Yesterday arrived my father's envoys, bringing the august embassage, whom my father received in mighty state at the city gates. Vast was the procession, and curious the garbs, and everything very fine and noble to see. The city was mad with exultation. Nothing like to this noise and confusion have I seen before. Every house and street and all the palaces were blazing with light all the night; and such as stood upon the distant eastward mountains said the city had the seeming of a far-off plain frosted thick with cut gems that glowed and winked with a bewitching soft radiance.
The ambassador hath delivered his tidings, and now there is not any more doubt.
Adam indeed will come, the time is set: the year 787 cr the year that followeth it. Public proclamation was made and all the city is clamorous with delight. My father's orders have gone forth to set in train the preparations due to so majestic an event.
Now will begin the games and other pleasures meet for the entertainment of the ambassador, so my father has commanded public holiday during the two months which this must last.
Ill EXTRACT FROM EVE'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Returning to the archives shortly after 1890, the translator determined to go back of Methuselah to their common ancestor, the founder of the damned human race. Readers of Mark Twain will remember his lifelong affection for Adam, his many allusions to him, his proposal to erect a monument to him, and other enterprises undertaken on his behalf. Always excepting Jehovah and Satan, Adam interested him more than any other character in Biblical society. At some time before March 22, 1893, he completed his translation of Adam's diary, which was first published in The Niagara Book (1893), and which, somewhat amended, is now a part of The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906).
In the summer of 1905 Mark made his translation of "Eve's Diary." It was first published as part of Their Husbands' Wives , a collection of novelettes edited by William Dean Howells and Henry M. Alden.
"Eve's Autobiography," which follows, is troublesome to the editor and seems to have been no less so to the translator. With this manuscript he encountered serious textual variants in the Adam papers. It is not surprising that traditions should become confused in the course of a thousand years, and there is less confusion in the private family archives than in the Book of Genesis. But the Father of History himself could not straighten out the three different accounts of Eden before the Fall that he found in the archives or determine which of them were apocryphal. No doubt legendary elements and copyists' errors have crept into all three, and Mark Twain's decision was that they do not matter. He recognized in "Eve's Diary," which he translated in 1905, an idyllic love story, a fragment whose place in the papers is similar to that of the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament. Possibly apocryphal and certainly without bearing on the historical processes whose exemplification in the papers had interested him thirty years before, it was nevertheless a charming bit of mythology and he published it as such.
He appears to have returned immediately to the archives and to have begun a research into the year 920 After Creation. On the way to it, perhaps as a background study, he translated part of the longest manuscript in the archives, "Eve's Autobiography." I omit part of the translation, about four thousand words at the beginning and about a hundred words where the manuscript abruptly breaks off. I leave out the first part not only because the account of Eve's earliest days with Adam contradicts the account in the "diaries" already published (as the foreshadowing of the Temptation is inconsistent with the fragments of Eve's diary and Satan's diary now published in Europe and Elsewhere ) but also because stretches of it are dull and sentimental. The translator seems to have recognized that weakness -- and he was, besides, principally interested in getting on toward Eve's last years, to the Great Society whose collapse is foreshadowed in the remaining papers.
Notes that summarize untranslated parts of her autobiography show that Eve understood what was happening to her people quite as clearly as the Mad Prophet did. In particular she intended to discuss the cyclical reappearance of a thaumaturgy which the Father of History identified as a form of Christian Science. The rise of such magic, she thought, signified the decline of genuine religious feeling and therefore the weakening of religious sanctions. If was evidence of decay and all through history it had been a forerunner of catastrophe. When men begin to preach such religions, civilization is dying and it is time for the Flood. This is only one of many cyclical phenomena which appear in intricate relationships when civilization is beginning to go down. The Mad Prophet was to summarize them very soon now.
The structure of the omitted portion of the autobiography can be made out from the part printed here. At some time after the year 900, Eve is looking back over the course of her life. Her narrative is interspersed with quotations from old diaries, and the part which I print becomes, halfway along, a single sustained quotation. Readers will perceive that her story is occasionally inconsistent with previously published versions of it, but there is no important contradiction. There is, however, one flagrant textual error, probably the translator's. On page 109 Eve speaks of Adam as already dead, whereas the next chapter makes clear that he was alive when she was writing. The translation was abandoned, I believe, because of her leisureliness. After nine thousand words she had not yet got out of Eden -- and Mark's interest was centered on events nearly a thousand years later than the Fall. (Note, however, in a later chapter, that the Mad Prophet has read more of the "Autobiography" than Mark translated.)
This translation cannot be certainly dated. Paine gives it two dates, both unimpeachable: "1900's"
and "about 1905." I believe that it is later than "Eve's Diary" (summer of 1905) and that it was written in the fall of 1905 or in 1906. B.DV.
. . . Love, peace, comfort, measureless contentment -- that was life in the Garden. It was a joy to be alive. Pain there was none, nor infirmity, nor any physical signs to mark the flight of time; disease, care, sorrow -- one might feel these outside the pale, but not in Eden. There they had no place, there they never came. All days were alike, and all a dream of delight.
Interests were abundant; for we were children, and ignorant; ignorant beyond the conception of the present day. We knew nothing -- nothing whatever. We were starting at the very bottom of things -- at the very beginning; we had to learn the A B C of things.
Today the child of four years knows things which we were still ignorant of at thirty. For we were children without nurses and without instructors. There was no one to tell us anything. There was no dictionary, and we could not know whether we used our words correctly or not; we liked large ones, and I know now that we often employed them for their sound and dignity, while quite ignorant of their meaning; and as to our spelling, it was a profligate scandal. But we cared not a straw for these trifles; so that we accumulated a large and showy vocabulary, we cared nothing for the means and the methods.
But studying, learning, inquiring into the cause and nature and purpose of everything we came across, were passions with us, and this research filled our days with brilliant and absorbing interest. Adam was by constitution and proclivity a scientist; I may justly say I was the same, and we loved to call ourselves by that great name. Each was ambitious to beat the other in scientific discovery, and this incentive added a spur to our friendly rivalry, and effectively protected us against falling into idle and unprofitable ways and frivolous pleasure-seeking.
Our first memorable scientific discovery was the law that water and like fluids run downhill, not up. It was Adam that found this out. Days and days he conducted his experiments secretly, saying nothing to me about it; for he wanted to make perfectly sure before he spoke. I knew something of prime importance was disturbing his great intellect, for his repose was troubled and he thrashed about in his sleep a good deal.
But at last he was sure, and then he told me. I could
not believe it, it seemed so strange, so impossible. My astonishment was his triumph, his reward. He took rne from rill to rill -- dozens of them -- saying always, "There -- you see it runs downhill -- in every case it runs downhill, never up. My theory was right; it is proven, it is established, nothing can controvert it." And it was a pure delight to see his exultation in this great discovery.
In the present day no child wonders to see the water run down and not up, but it was an amazing thing then, and as hard to believe as any fact I have ever encountered.
