The Autobiography of Methuselah

bers of the family for reasons sufficiently obvious to need no mention here. Every family must sooner or later develop an undesirable

l characteristics of the parents who so leave them, but as a social custom to be commended it is an entire failure, and was adopted by Eve not from choice, but from necessity. It was not through any desire to shine in society as a constant attendant at the Five O'Clock teas of her time, or, because she deemed that her duty lay in trying to secure the alleged Emancipation of her Sex from imaginary shackles at the expense of her home life and its responsibilities; or, because she believed that the primary duty of a mother was to provide her offspring with a maternal relative who could expound the most abstruse philosophies of the age with her eyes shut, that led Mother Eve into an apparent neglect of her children. It was simply the inevitable result of the life of her time. One can hardly be all that she had to be whether she wanted to be it or not and at the same time fulfill all the functions of motherhood. The daily labors of a large ranch such as the world practically was at that time were of enormous proportions, and with all due respect to Adam it has always been my profound belief that a good ninety per cent. of them were performed by Eve. It was she who had to look after the domestic details of the hour, day in and day out, while he after the fashion of mankind, led the freer life of the open. Indeed I have never found that in the matter of manual labor Adam was in any wise noted. The naming of the animals was a purely intellectual achievement, and while, of course, he was the provider when it came to getting in the food supply, I have never observed that any man yet created ever regarded a day on a trout stream with a fly and a rod, or a chase through t

Inspi

ities of service in their souls are treading dangerously near to the footsteps of the original scapegrace for lack of attention; that I have been led into this garrulous homily. It must not be supposed, either from what I have said that there was never any discipline in the Ho

appeared in modified form many times since. Even that illustrious pundit, Senator Chauncey M. DeMagog uses it as his most effective peroration at this season's public banquets. I heard him myself get it off at The Egyptian Society Dinner last month, as well as at the Annual Banquet of The Sons and Daughters of the Pre-Adamite Evolution, the month before, changing the answer, however, to "when it's a jar"-which I personally do not consider an improvement, for when a door becomes a jar I must confess I cannot see. A jar, as I understand it, is a vessel, a receptacle, a jug, a sort of demijohn, or decanter that people use to store up water, or to keep the juice of the grape in, like a pitcher, or an amphora; and how by any

le, possesses not only true humor but is at the same time educational, as the best humor must always be, in that it teaches the young certain indubitable facts in the Science of Natural

lee of Cain's persistent habit of asking questions of his father, some of which used to tax all the old gent

on, when the whole family were off on a pi

of olives from a neighboring tree, and placing

ve any sisters?"

mother had no sisters,

ession coming over his face as he scratched his ba

likely to become, had Adam been surrounded at the beginning with inquiring minds like those of Cain and Abel, not necessarily to dispute his conclusions or his judgments, but to seek explanations. Why, for instance, should a creature that is found chiefly on the Nile, and never under any circumstances on the Rhine, be called a Rhinoceros? And why should a Caribou be called a Caribou entirely irrespective of its sex? There are Caribou of both sexes, when we might have had Caribou for one and Billibou for the other, and yet Adam has feminized the whole Bou family with no appar

lar ones, were brought to Adam's attention at one time or another by his sons, and not always in a way that was pleasing to him. Indeed, as we read these notes we observe a

ithout his supper for asking his father why he

iring of Adam why he called the Yak a Yak when everybody knew he looked more

instead of a sealephant. I judge from Abel's blubbering that his father is giving him an object lesson in the place where it is most likely to impress itself forcibly on his u

y more questions about the names of the animals, Cain hav

e dollars,

got stung on the guinea-pigs, then

humor found its origin in an early remark of Abel's, if his mother's Diary is to be believed. A visitor once interrupted him i

," replied Abe

d the visitor. "And do

Mother-in-Law around the ho

mother had clipped from an Egyptian paper and pasted in her book. It seems to me t

pose that C

mannerly

read by those

when none had

manner un

oulders they'

dinosaurs

while themselv

acked their li

tarpon and sp

e other wou

got the f

in my brain

flapjacks wit

ir mother fa

d forks were

pie, I fear t

Pa'd alread

n fashion

puddings they

ieve that e

at lunch to f

iscuit grace

ess than fig

beans-no doub

to snap a

s they ate

some raw pri

Serpent cam

emarks abou

y criticised

fruit when no

ey'd soup-O

otion make

oungsters let

subjects m

e poet ever sees this I hope he will be glad to know that I heartily agree

cribe has had b