[Illustration]

Extracts From Adam’s Diary

Translated from the original MS.

by Mark Twain




[NOTE.—I translated a portion of this diary some years ago, and a
friend of mine printed a few copies in an incomplete form, but the
public never got them. Since then I have deciphered some more of Adam’s
hieroglyphics, and think he has now become sufficiently important as a
public character to justify this publication.—M. T.]




Monday


This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is
always hanging around and following me about. I don’t like this; I am
not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals.
Cloudy to-day, wind in the east; think we shall have rain…. Where did I
get that word?… I remember now—the new creature uses it.




Tuesday


Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing on the
estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls—why, I am sure
I do not know. Says it looks like Niagara Falls. That is not a reason;
it is mere waywardness and imbecility. I get no chance to name anything
myself. The new creature names everything that comes along, before I
can get in a protest. And always that same pretext is offered—it looks
like the thing. There is the dodo, for instance. Says the moment one
looks at it one sees at a glance that it “looks like a dodo.” It will
have to keep that name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret about it, and
it does no good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than I do.




Wednesday


Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to myself in
peace. The new creature intruded. When I tried to put it out it shed
water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it away with the back
of its paws, and made a noise such as some of the other animals make
when they are in distress. I wish it would not talk; it is always
talking. That sounds like a cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur;
but I do not mean it so. I have never heard the human voice before, and
any new and strange sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of
these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. And
this new sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at
my ear, first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only to
sounds that are more or less distant from me.




Friday


The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. I had a
very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty
—GARDEN-OF-EDEN. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not any
longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and rocks and
scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. Says it looks
like a park, and does not look like anything but a park. Consequently,
without consulting me, it has been new-named —NIAGARA FALLS PARK. This
is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. And already there is a
sign up:

KEEP OFF THE GRASS

My life is not as happy as it was.




Saturday


The new creature eats too much fruit. We are going to run short, most
likely. “We” again—that is its word; mine too, now, from hearing it so
much. Good deal of fog this morning. I do not go out in the fog myself.
The new creature does. It goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in
with its muddy feet. And talks. It used to be so pleasant and quiet
here.




Sunday


Pulled through. This day is getting to be more and more trying. It was
selected and set apart last November as a day of rest. I already had
six of them per week, before. This morning found the new creature
trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree.




Monday


The new creature says its name is Eve. That is all right, I have no
objections. Says it is to call it by when I want it to come. I said it
was superfluous, then. The word evidently raised me in its respect; and
indeed it is a large, good word, and will bear repetition. It says it
is not an It, it is a She. This is probably doubtful; yet it is all one
to me; what she is were nothing to me if she would but go by herself
and not talk.




Tuesday


She has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive
signs:

THIS WAY TO THE WHIRLPOOL.

THIS WAY TO GOAT ISLAND.

CAVE OF THE WINDS THIS WAY.

She says this park would make a tidy summer resort, if there was any
custom for it. Summer resort—another invention of hers—just words,
without any meaning. What is a summer resort? But it is best not to ask
her, she has such a rage for explaining.




Friday


She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls. What harm
does it do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why. I have always done
it—always liked the plunge, and the excitement, and the coolness. I
supposed it was what the Falls were for. They have no other use that I
can see, and they must have been made for something. She says they were
only made for scenery—like the rhinoceros and the mastodon.

I went over the Falls in a barrel—not satisfactory to her. Went over in
a tub—still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and the Rapids in a
fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious complaints about my
extravagance. I am too much hampered here. What I need is change of
scene.




Saturday


I escaped last Tuesday night, and travelled two days, and built me
another shelter, in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks as well
as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which she has
tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise again, and
shedding that water out of the places she looks with. I was obliged to
return with her, but will presently emigrate again, when occasion
offers. She engages herself in many foolish things: among others,
trying to study out why the animals called lions and tigers live on
grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they wear would
indicate that they were intended to eat each other. This is foolish,
because to do that would be to kill each other, and that would
introduce what, as I understand it, is called “death;” and death, as I
have been told, has not yet entered the Park. Which is a pity, on some
accounts.




Sunday


Pulled through.




Monday


I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest up
from the weariness of Sunday. It seems a good idea…. She has been
climbing that tree again. Clodded her out of it. She said nobody was
looking. Seems to consider that a sufficient justification for chancing
any dangerous thing. Told her that. The word justification moved her
admiration—and envy too, I thought. It is a good word.




Thursday


She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. This is at
least doubtful, if not more than that. I have not missed any rib…. She
is in much trouble about the buzzard; says grass does not agree with
it; is afraid she can’t raise it; thinks it was intended to live on
decayed flesh. The buzzard must get along the best it can with what is
provided. We cannot overturn the whole scheme to accommodate the
buzzard.




Saturday


She fell in the pond yesterday, when she was looking at herself in it,
which she is always doing. She nearly strangled, and said it was most
uncomfortable. This made her sorry for the creatures which live in
there, which she calls fish, for she continues to fasten names on to
things that don’t need them and don’t come when they are called by
them, which is a matter of no consequence to her, as she is such a
numskull anyway; so she got a lot of them out and brought them in last
night and put them in my bed to keep warm, but I have noticed them now
and then all day, and I don’t see that they are any happier there than
they were before, only quieter. When night comes I shall throw them
out-doors. I will not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy and
unpleasant to lie among when a person hasn’t anything on.




Sunday


Pulled through.




Tuesday


She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad, for she
was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and I am glad,
because the snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest.




Friday


She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of that tree, and says
the result will be a great and fine and noble education. I told her
there would be another result, too—it would introduce death into the
world. That was a mistake—it had been better to keep the remark to
myself; it only gave her an idea—she could save the sick buzzard, and
furnish fresh meat to the despondent lions and tigers. I advised her to
keep away 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 relation. That is what she
thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment. The difference in size
warrants the conclusion that it is a different and new kind of animal—a
fish, perhaps, though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and
she plunged in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the
experiment to determine the matter. I still think it is a fish, but she
is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have it to try. I
do not understand this. The coming of the creature seems to have
changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable about experiments.
She thinks more of it than she does of any of the other animals, but is
not able to explain why. Her mind is disordered—everything shows it.
Sometimes she carries the fish in her arms half the night when it
complains and wants to get to the water. At such times the water comes
out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and she pats the
fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and
betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. I have never seen her
do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. She used
to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them, before we lost
our property; but it was only play; she never took on about them like
this when their dinner disagreed with them.




Sunday


She doesn’t work Sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes to
have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to amuse it,
and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh. I have not seen
a fish before that could laugh. This makes me doubt…. I have come to
like Sunday myself. Superintending all the week tires a body so. There
ought to be more Sundays. In the old days they were tough, but now they
come handy.




Wednesday


It isn’t a fish. I cannot quite make out what it is. It makes curious,
devilish noises when not satisfied, and says “goo-goo” when it is. It
is not one of us, for it doesn’t walk; it is not a bird, for it doesn’t
fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn’t hop; it is not a snake, for it
doesn’t crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish, though I cannot get a
chance to find out whether it can swim or not. It merely lies around,
and mostly on its back, with its feet up. I have not seen any other
animal do that before. I said I believed it was an enigma, but she only
admired the word without understanding it. In my judgment it is either
an enigma or some kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart and
see what its arrangements are. I never had a thing perplex me so.




Three Months Later


The perplexity augments instead of diminishing. I sleep but little. It
has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs now. Yet
it differs from the other four-legged animals in that its front legs
are unusually short, consequently this causes the main part of its
person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air, and this is not
attractive. It is built much as we are, but its method of travelling
shows that it is not of our breed. The short front legs and long hind
ones indicate that it is of the kangaroo family, but it is a marked
variation of the species, since the true kangaroo hops, whereas this
one never does. Still, it is a curious and interesting variety, and has
not been catalogued before. As I discovered it, I have felt justified
in securing the credit of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and
hence have called it Kangaroorum Adamiensis…. It must have been a young
one when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since. It must be five
times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented is able to
make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made at first.
Coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary effect. For this
reason I discontinued the system. She reconciles it by persuasion, and
by giving it things which she had previously told it she wouldn’t give
it. As already observed, I was not at home when it first came, and she
told me she found it in the woods. It seems odd that it should be the
only one, yet it must be so, for I have worn myself out these many
weeks trying to find another one to add to my collection, and for this
one to play with; for surely then it would be quieter, and we could
tame it more easily. But I find none, nor any vestige of any; and
strangest of all, no tracks. It has to live on the ground, it cannot
help itself; therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track?
I have set a dozen traps, but they do no good. I catch all small
animals except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of
curiosity, I think, to see what the milk is there for. They never drink
it.




Three Months Later


The kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and
perplexing. I never knew one to be so long getting its growth. It has
fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly like our hair,
except that it is much finer and softer, and instead of being black is
red. I am like to lose my mind over the capricious and harassing
developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak. If I could catch
another one—but that is hopeless; it is a new variety, and the only
sample; this is plain. But I caught a true kangaroo and brought it in,
thinking that this one, being lonesome, would rather have that for
company than have no kin at all, or any animal it could feel a nearness
to or get sympathy from in its forlorn condition here among strangers
who do not know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it feel that
it is among friends; but it was a mistake—it went into such fits at the
sight of the kangaroo that I was convinced it had never seen one
before. I pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing I can
do to make it happy. If I could tame it—but that is out of the
question; the more I try, the worse I seem to make it. It grieves me to
the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and passion. I
wanted to let it go, but she wouldn’t hear of it. That seemed cruel and
not like her; and yet she may be right. It might be lonelier than ever;
for since I cannot find another one, how could it?




Five Months Later


It is not a kangaroo. No, for it supports itself by holding to her
finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then falls
down. It is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has no tail—as
yet—and no fur, except on its head. It still keeps on growing—that is a
curious circumstance, for bears get their growth earlier than this.
Bears are dangerous—since our catastrophe—and I shall not be satisfied
to have this one prowling about the place much longer without a muzzle
on. I have offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go,
but it did no good—she is determined to run us into all sorts of
foolish risks, I think. She was not like this before she lost her mind.




A Fortnight Later


I examined its mouth. There is no danger yet; it has only one tooth. It
has no tail yet. It makes more noise now than it ever did before—and
mainly at night. I have moved out. But I shall go over, mornings, to
breakfast, and to see if it has more teeth. If it gets a mouthful of
teeth, it will be time for it to go, tail or no tail, for a bear does
not need a tail in order to be dangerous.




Four Months Later


I have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that she
calls Buffalo; I don’t know why, unless it is because there are not any
buffaloes there. Meantime the bear has learned to paddle around all by
itself on its hind legs, and says “poppa” and “momma.” It is certainly
a new species. This resemblance to words may be purely accidental, of
course, and may have no purpose or meaning; but even in that case it is
still extraordinary, and is a thing which no other bear can do. This
imitation of speech, taken together with general absence of fur and
entire absence of tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind
of bear. The further study of it will be exceedingly interesting.
Meantime I will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the
North and make an exhaustive search. There must certainly be another
one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company
of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will muzzle this one
first.




Three Months Later


It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no success. In the mean
time, without stirring from the home estate, she has caught another
one! I never saw such luck. I might have hunted these woods a hundred
years, I never should have run across that thing.




Next Day


I have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is perfectly
plain that they are the same breed. I was going to stuff one of them
for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some reason or
other; so I have relinquished the idea, though I think it is a mistake.
It would be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away. The
old one is tamer than it was, and can laugh and talk like the parrot,
having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, and
having the imitative faculty in a highly developed degree. I shall be
astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot, and yet I ought
not to be astonished, for it has already been everything else it could
think of, since those first days when it was a fish. The new one is as
ugly now as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat
complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. She calls
it Abel.




Ten Years Later


They are boys; we found it out long ago. It was their coming in that
small, immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. There
are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had stayed a bear
it would have improved him. After all these years, I see that I was
mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the
Garden with her than inside it without her. At first I thought she
talked too much; but now I should be sorry to have that voice fall
silent and pass out of my life. Blessed be the chestnut that brought us
near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the
sweetness of her spirit!