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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?