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 A.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
thousands, 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.
* * *
WORKING FASHION'S FOOLS.
Miss Sallie H.--s is one of the very few society women
who, aided by nothing but their beauty, wit and talent, lift
themselves into national prominence and attain something
like fame. Miss H--s has been for several seasons
the acknowledged belle of New York, and her position has
not been disputed. She is a dark beauty, her features of
classical purity, her profile very delicate and her figure
superb. She is a brilliant talker, and her talents are many
and varied. Presumably she has been the object of many
masculine attentions and the subject of many masculine
quarrels; but she has kept her head and hand to herself.
At least she has done so until a few weeks ago. Then the
announcement of her engagement to Mr. Duncan E--t was
made public. She is to be married at Newport, September
15, and the wedding is to be as quiet an affair as possible.
Mr. E--t is a young New York business man, good looking
and talented. He goes in for athletics.-- Chicago News.
The above slug of "taffy" was accompanied by a woodcut
portrait of Miss H--s which made her resemble a half-naked
Indian squaw suffering with an acute attack of mulligrubs,
superinduced by an overfeed of baked dog. If Miss H--s'
face does not hurt her for very homeliness, any male jury in
the country would award her damages against the News
in the sum of a million dollars, and help her collect it with a
shotgun.
But those guileless innocents who imagine Miss H--s
entitled to sympathy are sadly mistaken. She, her fool
friends or relatives paid a good round price for that "puff,"
and fully expected that the "artist," as well as the penny-a-
liner, would indulge in a little fulsome flattery instead of
turning state's evidence and convicting his co-laborer of
perjury.
Nearly every metropolitan daily is now engaged in this
nauseous puffery business, and the infection is rapidly
spreading to the illustrated weeklies and magazines. No
wonder that foreigners have much to say about our
bad manners, worse taste, lack of refinement and offensive
"loudness," when the "leading society ladies" of the land
will pay big prices to have themselves written up like variety
actresses or prize cattle, when they will pay to have their
portraits paraded in the public prints and their personal
charms proclaimed much as auctioneers in antebellum days
expatiated upon the physical perfection of slaves put upon
the block; when they will beg the attention of the world and
pour into its unwilling ear an exaggerated tale of their love
affairs,--not omitting the suggestion that certain silly
masculine inanities have fought for their favors!
The present nauseating puffery of "society belles" has
grown out of the unpardonable bad taste--not to say
presumptuous insolence--which the American press has
ever displayed in dealing with the fair sex. First it was "the
accomplished" or "the vivacious" Miss So-and-so. That
"caught." Every woman likes to be thought accomplished
or interesting, just as every man delights to see himself
paraded in the papers as a "public-spirited citizen." Then
the press grew bolder and introduced the adjectives
"charming," "fascinating," "beautiful," etc. That "took" still
better. The next step was the "write up" in extenso; next
the portrait. Thus, in a ratio of geometrical progression, the
bad habit has grown from the daring but courtly compliment
to its present disguising proportions, and the vanity and
folly of the fair followers of fashion have grown with it.
What will be its ultimate development? Where will the
rivalry of "enterprising journals," their determination to
outdo each other in fulsome flattery of female fools who
have money to pay for it, finally land them? Already they
are freely commenting upon the form and features of
the fair sex. What can they do next but go into particulars
and inform us how much their patron measures around the
bust (they have already told us of the snowy whiteness of
her bosom); the actual size of the "tiny little foot" as sworn
to by the bootmaker, and how many inches of elastic it
requires to make her garter? When this becomes
commonplace, perhaps it will be necessary, in order to
command attention, to publish portraits of their patrons
posing as Venuses, Eves, Hebes, etc., in puris naturalibus!
Is it not strange that a man will pay newspapers to say
publicly about his wife or daughter things that he would
knock his best friend down for saying to him privately; that
he will deliberately set every scurrilous tongue wagging
about the woman he loves and professes to honor; cause
her form and features to be discussed in every dive?
Should one of our American women overhear a male
acquaintance commenting on the whiteness of her bosom,
the size of her foot, the shape of her waist and the "latent
passion in her dark eyes," she would want him
horsewhipped or shot; yet she will pay a rank stranger a
dollar a line to say these things in the public prints. Verily
'tis a strange world--and sadly in need of a few more
industrious fool killers!
* * *
THE PUBLIC PEDAGOGUE.