Extracts From Adams Diary | Page 3

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 have been of that sort, though I had
honestly supposed that they were new when I made them. She asked
me if I had made one just at the time of the catastrophe. I was obliged
to admit that I had made one to myself, though not aloud. It was this. I
was thinking about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful it is
to see that vast body of water tumble down there!" Then in an instant a
bright thought flashed into my head, and I let it fly, saying, "It would
be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble up there!"--and I was just
about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature broke loose in
war and death, and I had to flee for my life. "There," she said, with
triumph, "that is just it; the Serpent mentioned that very jest, and called
it the First Chestnut, and said it was coeval with the creation." Alas, I
am indeed to blame. Would that I were not witty; oh, would that I had
never had that radiant thought!
Next Year
We have named it Cain. She caught it while I was up country trapping
on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber a couple of miles
from our dug-out--or it might have been four, she isn't certain which. It
resembles us in some ways, and may be a