Ch. 4: Grandmother Eve

Very different in almost every imaginable respect from Adam was his attractive lady, Madame Eve. Indeed, so radically different from each other were this rather ill-assorted pair that it was always difficult for us to believe that they were related even by marriage, and I hesitate to say what I think would have been the outcome of their little romance had there been any competition for the lady's hand when Adam set out to win it. I have personally always had a feeling that this first of hymeneal experiments was rather a marriage of convenience than anything else, and I have heard my great-great-great-grandmother say that in the old pioneer days there was very little for a woman to choose from in the matter of men's society.

"For a long time," she remarked, "Adam was the only man in sight, and I was a young thing entirely without experience in worldly matters. He seemed to my girlish fancy to be all that a man should be. His habits were good. He neither smoked nor drank, cared apparently nothing for cards, and barring an interest in Discosaurus Racing, had very few sporting proclivities. We were thrown together a great deal, and inasmuch as the life in the Garden was a somewhat lonely one, we took considerable pleasure in each other's society. For myself, I was not particularly anxious to be married, preferring the free and independent life of the spinster, but as time went on and we came to realize that the people of future generations might misunderstand us and, as people will do, talk about us, we decided that the best way to avoid all gossip was to announce our engagement, and at the end of the usual period, settle down together as man and wife. I don't know that I have ever regretted the step, though I will say that I think it is undesirable for a young girl to enter too hastily into the obligations of matrimony, or to marry the first man that comes along, unless she is absolutely sure that he is the only man she could possibly endure through three meals a day for the balance of her life."

It must not be assumed from this little reminiscence of this first lady in the land that her marriage was an unhappy one. I think, that as a matter of fact, it was quite the contrary, for subsequent to the wedding each was too busy with other matters to get thinking either morbidly or otherwise on the subject of their individual happiness. They took it as a matter of course, and in the division of labor which the social conditions of the day involved, found too much to occupy them to worry over such unimportant abstractions as mere personal felicity.

"We were spared one of the direst afflictions of modern social life," Madame Eve once remarked to my mother, in talking over the old days, "in the absence of domestic servants from our family circle. Adam was head of the house, general provider, hired-man, stable-boy, head-gardener, coach-man, night-watchman and everything else of the male