ADAM AND EVE.
AFTER God had expended five days creating this
little dog-kennel of a world, and one in manufacturing the
remainder of the majestic universe out of a job-lot of
political boom material, he “planted a garden
eastward in Eden, and there he put the man he had
formed.” Adam was at that time a bachelor,
therefore, his own boss. He was monarch of all he
surveyed and his right there was none yet to dispute. He
could stay out and play poker all night in perfect
confidence that when he fell over the picket fence at 5
G.M. he would find no vinegar-faced old female nursing a
curtain lecture to keep it warm, setting her tear-jugs in
order and working up a choice assortment of snuffles.
There were no lightning-rod agents to inveigle him into
putting $100 worth of pot metal corkscrews on a $15
barn. He didn't care a rap about the “law of
rent,” nor who paid the “tariff tax,” and
no political Buzfuz bankrupted his patience trying to
explain the silver problem. He didn't have to anchor his
smokehouse to the center of gravity with a log chain, set
a double-barreled bear trap in the donjon-keep of his hennery
nor tie a brace of pessimistic bull-dogs in his melon
patch, for the nigger preacher had not yet arrived with
his adjustable morals and omnivorous mouth. No female
committees of uncertain age invaded his place of
business and buncoed him out of a double saw-buck for
the benefit of a pastor who would expend it seeing what
Parkhurst saw and feeling what Parkhurst felt. Collectors
for dry-goods emporiums and millinery parlors did not
haunt him like an accusing conscience, and the
pestiferous candidate was still happily hidden in the
womb of time with the picnic pismire and the partisan
newspaper. Adam could express
an honest opinion without colliding with the platform of
his party or being persecuted by the professional heresy—
hunters. He could shoot out the lights and yoop without
getting into a controversy with the chicken-court and
being fined one dollar for the benefit of the state and
fleeced out of forty for the behoof of thieving officials.
He had no collar-buttons to lose, no upper vest pockets
to spill his pencils and his patience, and his breeches
never bagged at the knees. There were no tailors to
torment him with scraps of ancient history, no almond-eyed he-washer-woman to starch the tail of his Sunday
shirt as stiff as a checkerboard.
Adam was more than 100 years old when he
lost a rib and gained a wife. Genesis does not say so in
exact words, but I can make nothing else of the
argument. Our first parents received special instructions
to “be fruitful and multiply.” They were given
distinctly to understand that was what they were here
for. They were brimming with health and strength, for
disease and death had not yet come into the world.
Their blood was pure and thrilled with the passion that is
the music of physical perfection—yet Adam was 130
years old when his third child was born. If Adam and
Eve were of equal age a marriage in American “high
life”—the mating of a scorbutic dude with a milliner's
sign—could scarce make so poor a record. After the birth
of Seth the first of men “begat sons and
daughters”—seems to have become imbued with an
ambition to found a family. As the first years of a
marriage are usually the most fruitful, we may fairly
conclude that our common mother was an old man's
darling. Woman does not appear to have been included
in the original plan of creation. She was altogether
unnecessary, for if God could create one man out of the
dust of the earth without her assistance he could make a
million more—could keep on
manufacturing them as long as his dust lasted. But
multiplication of “masterpieces” was no part of
the Creator's plan. Adam was to rule the earth even as
Jehovah rules the heavens. As there is but one Lord of
Heaven, there should be but one lord of earth—one only
Man, who should live forever, the good genius of a globe
created, not for a race of marauders and murderers but
for that infinitely happier life which we denominate the
lower animals. This beautiful world was not built for
politicians and preachers, kings and cuckolds; but for the
beasts and birds, the forests and the flowers, and over all
of life, animate and inanimate, the earthly image of
Almighty God was made the absolute but loving lord.
The lion should serve him and the wild deer come at his
call. The bald eagle, whose bold wings seem to fan the
noonday sun to fiercer flame, should bend from the
empyrean at his bidding, and the roc bear him over land
and sea on its broad pinions. As his great Archetype
rules the Cherubim and Seraphim, so should Man, a god
in miniature, reign over the earth-born, the inhabitants of
a lesser heaven. As no queen shares God's eternal
throne, so none should divide the majesty of earth's
diadem. There is neither marrying nor giving in marriage,
we are told, among the angels. They rise above sex, into
the realm of the purely spiritual, scorning the sensual joys
that are the heritage of bird and beast, for intellectual
pleasures that never pall; and why should Man, the
especial object of God's providence, be grosser than his
ministers?
Were I a poet I would ask no grander theme
than Adam's first century upon the earth—that age of
gold when Man was sufficient unto himself. A century
undisputed master of the world! A century of familiar
converse in Eden's consecrated groves with the great
First Cause—the omnipresent and omnipotent God.
Picture
one day of such existence! Ambition and Avarice,
Jealousy and Passion, those demons that have deluged the
world with blood and tears, have no place in Adam's
peaceful bosom. He is not in the Grove of Daphne,
where lust is law, but in the Garden of God where love is
life. His subjects, not dumb as now, or speaking a
language strange to our dull ears, greet him as he comes
forth at break of day from his aromatic bower. A
thousand feathered songsters drown his soul in melody
divine, while every bud and blossom, a living censer,
sways in the balmy breath of morn and pours forth its
grateful perfume. The forest monarch lays his massy
head on Adam's knee, the spotted leopard purrs about
him and the fawn nestles between his feet. High above
the Caucasian peaks a condor poises motionless in mid-heaven, the unrisen sun gilding him as with beaten gold.
Now the sawlike summits, cloud-kissing and crowned
with eternal snow, burst into the brilliant sea and gleam
like the brow of God, while the purple mists are drawn up
from the deep valleys as though the giants fain would
hide from earth their splendors, reserving them alone for
Heaven. Higher and higher wheels the great sun, driving
the river mist before it and sending down through the
softly whispering foliage a thousand shafts of burnished
gold that seek out the violet, drain the nectareous
dewdrop from its chalice and kiss the grape until its
youthful sap changes to empurpled blood beneath the
passionate caress. In the cool shadows by the great
spring—a magic mirror in whose pellucid depths are
reflected heaven's imperial concave and Eden's virgin
splendors—God walks familiar with Adam as with a
younger brother, explains to him the use and beauty of
all that is, and spreads before his wondering eyes
Creation's mighty plan.
And yet God suspects that Adam is not
content, for we hear him soliloquizing: “It is not
good that the man
should be alone.” The clay of which the first of men
is formed is beginning to assert itself. He watches the
panther fondling his playful cubs, the eagle's solicitude
for his imperial brood perched on the beetling crag, and
the paternal instinct awakes within him. He hears the
mocking-bird trilling to his mate, the dove pitying the
loneliness of Creation's mystic lord, and a fierce longing
for a companionship dearer than he has yet known takes
possession of him. To the swarming life about him his
high thoughts are incomprehensible; in God's presence
his soul swoons beneath an intellectual glory to which he
cannot rise, encumbered as he is by earthly clay. He
sends his swift-winged messenger forth to summon
before his throne every fowl of the air and every beast of
the field. Down through the gates of the garden they
come, countless thouands,{sic} and pass before their
king. “But for Adam there was not found a
helpmeet for him.” Sick at heart he turns away.
The sunset has lost its glory, the spheres their music, life
its sweetness. The beams of the moon chill his blood
and Arcturus leads forth his shining sons but to mock his
barrenness. The flowers that wreathe his couch stifle
him with their sensuous perfume and he flies from the
nightingale's passionate song as the slave flees the
scourge. Through the dark paths and over the moss—
grown bowlders he stumbles on, across the fields where
the fireflies glow like showers of flame, beneath the tall
cedars whose every sigh seems drawn from the depths
of an accepted lover's soul. Exhausted, he sinks down
where the waters burst from the foundations of the earth
and, dividing into four, seem to reiterate in ceaseless
monotone, “Behold my mighty sons.” A feeling
of utter loneliness, of hopeless desolation falls upon him,
such as hammers at the heart when Death has despoiled
us of all that Life held dear. He pillows his head upon the
sleeping lion and
shields himself from the sharp night air with the tawny
mane. A cub, already hunting in dreams, comes whining
and nestles down over his heart, while Love's brilliant
star pours its splendors full upon his face. The long
black lashes, burdened with unshed tears, drop low, a
drowsiness falls upon him and Adam sleeps. The
heavens are rolled together like a scroll and God
descends in the midst of a legion of Angels, brightest of
whom is Lucifer, Son of the Morning, not yet forever
fallen. “It is not good that the man should be
alone.” The fitful slumber deepens; the winds are
hushed; the song of the nightingale sinks lower and
lower, then ceases with an awe-struck sigh; the lynx and
the jackal, the horned owl and the scaly serpent slink
away into the deepest wood, while Love's emblem glows
like a globe of molten gold. Then comes a burst of
melody divine, beneath which the earth trembles like a
young maid's heart when, half in ecstasy, half in fear,
she first feels burning upon her own the bearded lips of
her life's dear lord. It is the Morning Stars singing
together! There is a perfumed air on Adam's cheek,
sweeter than ever swooned in the rose garden of
Cashmere or the jasmine bowers of Araby the Blest;
there is a touch upon his forehead softer than the white
dove's fluttering bosom; there is a voice in his ear more
musical than Israfil's marshaling the Faithful in fields of
asphodel, crying, “Awake, my lord!” and the
first of men is looking with enraptured soul upon the last,
best work of an all-wise God, a beautiful woman.
