perhaps i ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and make allowances. she is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. and she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the wastes of space—none of them is of any practical value, so far as i can see, but because they have color and majesty, that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them. if she could quiet down and keep still a couple minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. in that case i think i could enjoy looking at her; indeed i am sure i could, for i am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature—lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, i recognized that she was beautiful.
monday noon.—if there is anything on the planet that she is not interested in it is not in my list. there are animals that i am indifferent to, but it is not so with her. she has no discrimination, she takes to all of them, she thinks they are all treasures, every new one is welcome.
when the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded it as an acquisition, i considered it a calamity; that is a good sample of the lack of harmony that prevails in our views of things. she wanted to domesticate it, i wanted to make it a present of the homestead and move out. she believed it could be tamed by kind treatment and would be a good pet; i said a pet twenty-one feet high and eighty-four feet long would be no proper thing to have about the place, because, even with the best intentions and without meaning any harm, it could sit down on the house and mash it, for any one could see by the look of its eye that it was absent-minded.
still, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she couldn't give it up. she thought we could start a dairy with it, and wanted me to help milk it; but i wouldn't; it was too risky. the sex wasn't right, and we hadn't any ladder anyway. then she wanted to ride it, and look at the scenery. thirty or forty feet of its tail was lying on the ground, like a fallen tree, and she thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken; when she got to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and would have hurt herself but for me.
was she satisfied now? no. nothing ever satisfies her but demonstration; untested theories are not in her line, and she won't have them. it is the right spirit, i concede it; it attracts me; i feel the influence of it; if i were with her more i think i should take it up myself. well, she had one theory remaining about this colossus: she thought that if we could tame it and make him friendly we could stand in the river and use him for a bridge. it turned out that he was already plenty tame enough—at least as far as she was concerned—so she tried her theory, but it failed: every time she got him properly placed in the river and went ashore to cross over him, he came out and followed her around like a pet mountain. like the other animals. they all do that.
tuesday—wednesday—thursday—and today: all without seeing him. it is a long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone than unwelcome.
friday—i had to have company—i was made for it, i think—so i made friends with the animals. they are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose. i think they are perfect gentlemen. all these days we have had such good times, and it hasn't been lonesome for me, ever.
lonesome! no, i should say not. why, there's always a swarm of them around—sometimes as much as four or five acres—you can't count them; and when you stand on a rock in the midst and look out over the furry expanse it is so mottled and splashed and gay with color and frisking sheen and sun-flash, and so rippled with stripes, that you might think it was a lake, only you know it isn't; and there's storms of sociable birds, and hurricanes of whirring wings; and when the sun strikes all that feathery commotion, you have a blazing up of all the colors you can think of, enough to put your eyes out.
we have made long excursions, and i have seen a great deal of the world; almost all of it, i think; and so i am the first traveler, and the only one. when we are on the march, it is an imposing sight—there's nothing like it anywhere. for comfort i ride a tiger or a leopard, because it is soft and has a round back that fits me, and because they are such pretty animals; but for long distance or for scenery i ride the elephant. he hoists me up with his trunk, but i can get off myself; when we are ready to camp, he sits and i slide down the back way.
the birds and animals are all friendly to each other, and there are no disputes about anything. they all talk, and they all talk to me, but it must be a foreign language, for i cannot make out a word they say; yet they often understand me when i talk back, particularly the dog and the elephant. it makes me ashamed. it shows that they are brighter than i am, for i want to be the principal experiment myself—and i intend to be, too.
i have learned a number of things, and am educated, now, but i wasn't at first. i was ignorant at first. at first it used to vex me because, with all my watching, i was never smart enough to be around when the water was running uphill; but now i do not mind it. i have experimented and experimented until now i know it never does run uphill, except in the dark. i know it does in the dark, because the pool never goes dry, which it would, of course, if the water didn't come back in the night. it is best to prove things by actual experiment; then you know; whereas if you depend on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you never get educated.
some things you can't find out; but you will never know you can't by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can't find out. and it is delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting. if there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out, and i don't know but more so. the secret of the water was a treasure until i got it; then the excitement all went away, and i recognized a sense of loss.
by experiment i know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers, and plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence you know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply knowing it, for there isn't any way to prove it—up to now. but i shall find a way—then that excitement will go. such things make me sad; because by and by when i have found out everything there won't be any more excitements, and i do love excitements so! the other night i couldn't sleep for thinking about it.
at first i couldn't make out what i was made for, but now i think it was to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy and thank the giver of it all for devising it. i think there are many things to learn yet—i hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying too fast i think they will last weeks and weeks. i hope so. when you cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight; then you throw up a clod and it doesn't. it comes down, every time. i have tried it and tried it, and it is always so. i wonder why it is? of course it doesn't come down, but why should it seem to? i suppose it is an optical illusion. i mean, one of them is. i don't know which one. it may be the feather, it may be the clod; i can't prove which it is, i can only demonstrate that one or the other is a fake, and let a person take his choice.
by watching, i know that the stars are not going to last. i have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky. since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same night. that sorrow will come—i know it. i mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as i can keep awake; and i will impress those sparkling fields on my memory, so that by and by when they are taken away i can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again, and double them by the blur of my tears.
after the fall
when i look back, the garden is a dream to me. it was beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, and i shall not see it any more.
the garden is lost, but i have found him, and am content. he loves me as well as he can; i love him with all the strength of my passionate nature, and this, i think, is proper to my youth. if i ask myself why i love him, i find i do not know, and do not really much care to know; so i suppose that this kind of love is not a product of reasoning and statistics, like one's love for other reptiles and animals. i think that this must be so. i love certain birds because of their song; but i do not love adam on account of his singing—no, it is not that; the more he sings the more i do not get reconciled to it. yet i ask him to sing, because i wish to learn to like everything he is interested in. i am sure i can learn, because at first i could not stand it, but now i can. it sours the milk, but it doesn't matter; i can get used to that kind of milk.
it is not on account of his brightness that i love him—no, it is not that. he is not to blame for his brightness, such as it is, for he did not make it himself; he is as god make him, and that is sufficient. there was a wise purpose in it, that i know. in time it will develop, though i think it will not be sudden; and besides, there is no hurry; he is well enough just as he is.
it is not on account of his gracious and considerate ways and his delicacy that i love him. no, he has lacks in this regard, but he is well enough just so, and is improving.
it is not on account of his industry that i love him—no, it is not that. i think he has it in him, and i do not know why he conceals it from me. it is my only pain. otherwise he is frank and open with me, now. i am sure he keeps nothing from me but this. it grieves me that he should have a secret from me, and sometimes it spoils my sleep, thinking of it, but i will put it out of my mind; it shall not trouble my happiness, which is otherwise full to overflowing.
it is not on account of his education that i love him—no, it is not that. he is self-educated, and does really know a multitude of things, but they are not so.
it is not on account of his chivalry that i love him—no, it is not that. he told on me, but i do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex, i think, and he did not make his sex. of course i would not have told on him, i would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity of sex, too, and i do not take credit for it, for i did not make my sex.
then why is it that i love him? merely because he is masculine, i think.
at bottom he is good, and i love him for that, but i could love him without it. if he should beat me and abuse me, i should go on loving him. i know it. it is a matter of sex, i think.
he is strong and handsome, and i love him for that, and i admire him and am proud of him, but i could love him without those qualities. if he were plain, i should love him; if he were a wreck, i should love him; and i would work for him, and slave over him, and pray for him, and watch by his bedside until i died.
yes, i think i love him merely because he is mine and is masculine. there is no other reason, i suppose. and so i think it is as i first said: that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. it just comes—none knows whence—and cannot explain itself. and doesn't need to.
it is what i think. but i am only a girl, the first that has examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience i have not got it right.
forty years later
it is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together—a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.
but if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be i; for he is strong, i am weak, i am not so necessary to him as he is to me—life without him would not be life; how could i endure it? this prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race continues. i am the first wife; and in the last wife i shall be repeated.
