Before Adam

t always know the order of events;-or can I tell, between some events, whether one, two, or four or five years have el

r and I were treed by the wild pigs and fled and fell in the days before I made the acquaintance of Lop-Ear, who became

erished shortly after the adventure with the wild pigs. That it must have been an untimely end, there is no discussion. He was in full vigor, and only sudden and violent death could have taken

other knew my father's end, she never told me. For that matter I doubt if she had a vocabulary adequate to

er were tools of speech not yet invented. Instead of qualifying nouns or verbs by the use of adjectives and adverbs, we qualified sounds by intonation,

lly beyond our thinking; and when one did happen to think one, he was hard put to communicate it to his fellows. There were no sounds for it. He was pressing beyond the limits of his vocabulary. If he invented

w sounds wherewith to express the new thought. Sometimes, however, we thought too long a distance in advance of our sounds, managed to achi

ur shoulders with ease. We could throw stones with our feet. I have done it many a time. And for that matter, I could keep my knees straight, bend forward from the hips, and touch, not the ti

o herself a second husband. I have few recollections of him, and they are not of the best. He was a light fellow. There was no solidity to him. He was too voluble. His infernal chattering worries me eve

to time stray from her, and stray farther and farther. And these were the opportunities that the Chatterer waited for. (I may as well explain that we bore no names in those days; were not known by any name. For the sake of convenience I have myself

occasion he was not above biting me. Often my mother interfered, and the way she made his fur fly was a joy to s

in the modern sense of the term. My home was an association, not a habitation. I lived in my mother's

for her. Of course, we had one particular tree in which we usually roosted, though we often roosted in other trees when nightfall caught us. In a convenient fork was a sort of rude platform of twigs and branches and creeping

ual, helter-skelter sort of way. Above the fork of the tree whereon we rested was a pile of dead branches and brush. Four or five adjacent forks held what I may term the various ridge-poles. These were merely stout sticks

which he held steadfastly for longer than five minutes. Also, as time went by, my mother was less eager in her defence of me. I think, what of the continuous rows raised by the Chatterer, that I must have become a nuisance to her. At any rate,

swamp. He must have planned the whole thing, for I heard him returning alone through the forest, roaring with self-induced rage as he came. Like a

ee-and began to climb up. And he never ceased for a moment from his infernal row. As I have said, our language was extremely meagre, and he must hav

small twigs and leaves. The Chatterer was ever a coward, and greater always than any anger he ever worked up was his caution. He was afraid to follo

s face, his beady eyes gleaming with cruel intelligence, he began teetering. Teetering!-and with me out on the very

oke at the same time, and I fell, back-downward, looking up at him, my hands and feet still clutching the br

ttle bed, where, perchance, I lie sweating and trembling and hear the cuckoo clock calling the hour in the hall. But this dream of my leaving home I hav

up a demoniacal chant of joy and was keeping time to it with his teetering. I quickly hushed my whimpering. I was no longer in the

my fall. I had lost some hair and hide, here and there; the sharp and jagged end of a broken branch had thrust fully an inch into my forearm; and my right hip, which had borne the brunt of my contact with the ground, was aching intolerab

o my mother and the Chatterer. I would go far away through the terrible forest, and find some tree for myself in which to roost. As for food, I kn

still chanting and teetering. It was not a pleasant sight. I knew pretty well how

dered on amongst them for hours, passing from tree to tree and never touching the ground. But I did not go in any particular direction, nor did I travel stea

ch has my other-self forgotten, and particularly at this very period. Nor have I been able to frame up

a time. I especially dream of my misery in the rain, and of my sufferings from hunger and how I appeased it. One very strong impression is of hunting little lizards on the rocky top of an open knoll. They ran under the rocks, and most of them escaped; but occ

I remember most distinctly suffering from a stomach-ache. It may have been caused by the green nuts, and maybe by the lizards. I do no