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<h1>Extracts From Adam’s Diary</h1>
<h3>Translated from the original MS.</h3>
<h2 class="no-break">by Mark Twain</h2>
<hr />
<p class="letter">
[NOTE.—I translated a portion of this diary some years ago, and a friend
of mine printed a few copies in an incomplete form, but the public never got
them. Since then I have deciphered some more of Adam’s hieroglyphics, and
think he has now become sufficiently important as a public character to justify
this publication.—M. T.]</p>
<h2>Monday</h2>
<p>This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always
hanging around and following me about. I don’t like this; I am not used
to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals. Cloudy to-day, wind in
the east; think we shall have rain…. Where did I get that word?… I remember
now—the new creature uses it.</p>
<h2>Tuesday</h2>
<p>Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing on the estate, I
think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls—why, I am sure I do not
know. Says it looks like Niagara Falls. That is not a reason; it is mere
waywardness and imbecility. I get no chance to name anything myself. The new
creature names everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest. And
always that same pretext is offered—it looks like the thing. There is the
dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that
it “looks like a dodo.” It will have to keep that name, no doubt.
It wearies me to fret about it, and it does no good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no
more like a dodo than I do.</p>
<h2>Wednesday</h2>
<p>Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to myself in peace.
The new creature intruded. When I tried to put it out it shed water out of the
holes it looks with, and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a
noise such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress. I wish
it would not talk; it is always talking. That sounds like a cheap fling at the
poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so. I have never heard the human
voice before, and any new and strange sound intruding itself here upon the
solemn hush of these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note.
And this new sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my
ear, first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only to sounds that
are more or less distant from me.</p>
<h2>Friday</h2>
<p>The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. I had a very good
name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty —GARDEN-OF-EDEN.
Privately, I continue to call it that, but not any longer publicly. The new
creature says it is all woods and rocks and scenery, and therefore has no
resemblance to a garden. Says it looks like a park, and does not look like
anything but a park. Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named
—NIAGARA FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me.
And already there is a sign up:</p>
<h5>KEEP OFF THE GRASS</h5>
<p>My life is not as happy as it was.</p>
<h2>Saturday</h2>
<p>The new creature eats too much fruit. We are going to run short, most likely.
“We” again—that is its word; mine too, now, from hearing it
so much. Good deal of fog this morning. I do not go out in the fog myself. The
new creature does. It goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in with its
muddy feet. And talks. It used to be so pleasant and quiet here.</p>
<h2>Sunday</h2>
<p>Pulled through. This day is getting to be more and more trying. It was selected
and set apart last November as a day of rest. I already had six of them per
week, before. This morning found the new creature trying to clod apples out of
that forbidden tree.</p>
<h2>Monday</h2>
<p>The new creature says its name is Eve. That is all right, I have no objections.
Says it is to call it by when I want it to come. I said it was superfluous,
then. The word evidently raised me in its respect; and indeed it is a large,
good word, and will bear repetition. It says it is not an It, it is a She. This
is probably doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me
if she would but go by herself and not talk.</p>
<h2>Tuesday</h2>
<p>She has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive signs:</p>
<h5>THIS WAY TO THE WHIRLPOOL.</h5>
<h5>THIS WAY TO GOAT ISLAND.</h5>
<h5>CAVE OF THE WINDS THIS WAY.</h5>
<p>She says this park would make a tidy summer resort, if there was any custom for
it. Summer resort—another invention of hers—just words, without any
meaning. What is a summer resort? But it is best not to ask her, she has such a
rage for explaining.</p>
<h2>Friday</h2>
<p>She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls. What harm does it
do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why. I have always done it—always
liked the plunge, and the excitement, and the coolness. I supposed it was what
the Falls were for. They have no other use that I can see, and they must have
been made for something. She says they were only made for scenery—like
the rhinoceros and the mastodon.</p>
<p>I went over the Falls in a barrel—not satisfactory to her. Went over in a
tub—still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and the Rapids in a
fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious complaints about my
extravagance. I am too much hampered here. What I need is change of scene.</p>
<h2>Saturday</h2>
<p>I escaped last Tuesday night, and travelled two days, and built me another
shelter, in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks as well as I could, but
she hunted me out by means of a beast which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and
came making that pitiful noise again, and shedding that water out of the places
she looks with. I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate
again, when occasion offers. She engages herself in many foolish things: among
others, trying to study out why the animals called lions and tigers live on
grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they wear would
indicate that they were intended to eat each other. This is foolish, because to
do that would be to kill each other, and that would introduce what, as I
understand it, is called “death;” and death, as I have been told,
has not yet entered the Park. Which is a pity, on some accounts.</p>
<h2>Sunday</h2>
<p>Pulled through.</p>
<h2>Monday</h2>
<p>I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest up from the
weariness of Sunday. It seems a good idea…. She has been climbing that tree
again. Clodded her out of it. She said nobody was looking. Seems to consider
that a sufficient justification for chancing any dangerous thing. Told her
that. The word justification moved her admiration—and envy too, I
thought. It is a good word.</p>
<h2>Thursday</h2>
<p>She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. This is at least
doubtful, if not more than that. I have not missed any rib…. She is in much
trouble about the buzzard; says grass does not agree with it; is afraid she
can’t raise it; thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh. The
buzzard must get along the best it can with what is provided. We cannot
overturn the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard.</p>
<h2>Saturday</h2>
<p>She fell in the pond yesterday, when she was looking at herself in it, which
she is always doing. She nearly strangled, and said it was most uncomfortable.
This made her sorry for the creatures which live in there, which she calls
fish, for she continues to fasten names on to things that don’t need them
and don’t come when they are called by them, which is a matter of no
consequence to her, as she is such a numskull anyway; so she got a lot of them
out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm, but I
have noticed them now and then all day, and I don’t see that they are any
happier there than they were before, only quieter. When night comes I shall
throw them out-doors. I will not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy
and unpleasant to lie among when a person hasn’t anything on.</p>
<h2>Sunday</h2>
<p>Pulled through.</p>
<h2>Tuesday</h2>
<p>She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad, for she was
always experimenting with them and bothering them; and I am glad, because the
snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest.</p>
<h2>Friday</h2>
<p>She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of that tree, and says the
result will be a great and fine and noble education. I told her there would be
another result, too—it would introduce death into the world. That was a
mistake—it had been better to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her
an idea—she could save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the
despondent lions and tigers. I advised her to keep away from the tree. She said
she wouldn’t. I foresee trouble. Will emigrate.</p>
<h2>Wednesday</h2>
<p>I have had a variegated time. I escaped that night, and rode a horse all night
as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear out of the Park and hide in some
other country before the trouble should begin; but it was not to be. About an
hour after sunup, as I was riding through a flowery plain where thousands of
animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to
their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises, and
in one moment the plain was in a frantic commotion and every beast was
destroying its neighbor. I knew what it meant—Eve had eaten that fruit,
and death was come into the world…. The tigers ate my horse, paying no
attention when I ordered them to desist, and they would even have eaten me if I
had stayed—which I didn’t, but went away in much haste…. I found
this place, outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but
she has found me out. Found me out, and has named the place
Tonawanda—says it looks like that. In fact, I was not sorry she came, for
there are but meagre pickings here, and she brought some of those apples. I was
obliged to eat them, I was so hungry. It was against my principles, but I find
that principles have no real force except when one is well fed…. She came
curtained in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she meant
by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she tittered and
blushed. I had never seen a person titter and blush before, and to me it seemed
unbecoming and idiotic. She said I would soon know how it was myself. This was
correct. Hungry as I was, I laid down the apple half eaten—certainly the
best one I ever saw, considering the lateness of the season—and arrayed
myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her with some
severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not make such a spectacle
of herself. She did it, and after this we crept down to where the wild-beast
battle had been, and collected some skins, and I made her patch together a
couple of suits proper for public occasions. They are uncomfortable, it is
true, but stylish, and that is the main point about clothes. … I find she is a
good deal of a companion. I see I should be lonesome and depressed without her,
now that I have lost my property. Another thing, she says it is ordered that we
work for our living hereafter. She will be useful. I will superintend.</p>
<h2>Ten Days Later</h2>
<p>She accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with apparent
sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that the forbidden fruit was
not apples, it was chestnuts. I said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten
any chestnuts. She said the Serpent informed her that “chestnut”
was a figurative term meaning an aged and mouldy joke. I turned pale at that,
for I have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could have
been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they were new when I
made them. She asked me if I had made one just at the time of the catastrophe.
I was obliged to admit that I had made one to myself, though not aloud. It was
this. I was thinking about the Falls, and I said to myself, “How
wonderful it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!” Then
in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and I let it fly, saying,
“It would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble up
there!”—and I was just about to kill myself with laughing at it
when all nature broke loose in war and death, and I had to flee for my life.
“There,” she said, with triumph, “that is just it; the
Serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, and said it
was coeval with the creation.” Alas, I am indeed to blame. Would that I
were not witty; oh, would that I had never had that radiant thought!</p>
<h2>Next Year</h2>
<p>We have named it Cain. She caught it while I was up country trapping on the
North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber a couple of miles from our
dug-out—or it might have been four, she isn’t certain which. It
resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation. That is what she thinks, but
this is an error, in my judgment. The difference in size warrants the
conclusion that it is a different and new kind of animal—a fish, perhaps,
though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged in and
snatched it out before there was opportunity for the experiment to determine
the matter. I still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it
is, and will not let me have it to try. I do not understand this. The coming of
the creature seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable
about experiments. She thinks more of it than she does of any of the other
animals, but is not able to explain why. Her mind is
disordered—everything shows it. Sometimes she carries the fish in her
arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to the water. At such
times the water comes out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and
she pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe
it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. I have never seen her
do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. She used to carry
the young tigers around so, and play with them, before we lost our property;
but it was only play; she never took on about them like this when their dinner
disagreed with them.</p>
<h2>Sunday</h2>
<p>She doesn’t work Sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes to
have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to amuse it, and
pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh. I have not seen a fish
before that could laugh. This makes me doubt…. I have come to like Sunday
myself. Superintending all the week tires a body so. There ought to be more
Sundays. In the old days they were tough, but now they come handy.</p>
<h2>Wednesday</h2>
<p>It isn’t a fish. I cannot quite make out what it is. It makes curious,
devilish noises when not satisfied, and says “goo-goo” when it is.
It is not one of us, for it doesn’t walk; it is not a bird, for it
doesn’t fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn’t hop; it is not a
snake, for it doesn’t crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish, though I
cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. It merely lies
around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. I have not seen any other
animal do that before. I said I believed it was an enigma, but she only admired
the word without understanding it. In my judgment it is either an enigma or
some kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its
arrangements are. I never had a thing perplex me so.</p>
<h2>Three Months Later</h2>
<p>The perplexity augments instead of diminishing. I sleep but little. It has
ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs now. Yet it differs
from the other four-legged animals in that its front legs are unusually short,
consequently this causes the main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably
high in the air, and this is not attractive. It is built much as we are, but
its method of travelling shows that it is not of our breed. The short front
legs and long hind ones indicate that it is of the kangaroo family, but it is a
marked variation of the species, since the true kangaroo hops, whereas this one
never does. Still, it is a curious and interesting variety, and has not been
catalogued before. As I discovered it, I have felt justified in securing the
credit of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and hence have called it
Kangaroorum Adamiensis…. It must have been a young one when it came, for it has
grown exceedingly since. It must be five times as big, now, as it was then, and
when discontented is able to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the
noise it made at first. Coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary
effect. For this reason I discontinued the system. She reconciles it by
persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously told it she
wouldn’t give it. As already observed, I was not at home when it first
came, and she told me she found it in the woods. It seems odd that it should be
the only one, yet it must be so, for I have worn myself out these many weeks
trying to find another one to add to my collection, and for this one to play
with; for surely then it would be quieter, and we could tame it more easily.
But I find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no tracks. It
has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself; therefore, how does it get
about without leaving a track? I have set a dozen traps, but they do no good. I
catch all small animals except that one; animals that merely go into the trap
out of curiosity, I think, to see what the milk is there for. They never drink
it.</p>
<h2>Three Months Later</h2>
<p>The kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and perplexing. I
never knew one to be so long getting its growth. It has fur on its head now;
not like kangaroo fur, but exactly like our hair, except that it is much finer
and softer, and instead of being black is red. I am like to lose my mind over
the capricious and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological
freak. If I could catch another one—but that is hopeless; it is a new
variety, and the only sample; this is plain. But I caught a true kangaroo and
brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome, would rather have that
for company than have no kin at all, or any animal it could feel a nearness to
or get sympathy from in its forlorn condition here among strangers who do not
know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it is among
friends; but it was a mistake—it went into such fits at the sight of the
kangaroo that I was convinced it had never seen one before. I pity the poor
noisy little animal, but there is nothing I can do to make it happy. If I could
tame it—but that is out of the question; the more I try, the worse I seem
to make it. It grieves me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow
and passion. I wanted to let it go, but she wouldn’t hear of it. That
seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right. It might be lonelier
than ever; for since I cannot find another one, how could it?</p>
<h2>Five Months Later</h2>
<p>It is not a kangaroo. No, for it supports itself by holding to her finger, and
thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then falls down. It is probably
some kind of a bear; and yet it has no tail—as yet—and no fur,
except on its head. It still keeps on growing—that is a curious
circumstance, for bears get their growth earlier than this. Bears are
dangerous—since our catastrophe—and I shall not be satisfied to
have this one prowling about the place much longer without a muzzle on. I have
offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no
good—she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks, I
think. She was not like this before she lost her mind.</p>
<h2>A Fortnight Later</h2>
<p>I examined its mouth. There is no danger yet; it has only one tooth. It has no
tail yet. It makes more noise now than it ever did before—and mainly at
night. I have moved out. But I shall go over, mornings, to breakfast, and to
see if it has more teeth. If it gets a mouthful of teeth, it will be time for
it to go, tail or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to be
dangerous.</p>
<h2>Four Months Later</h2>
<p>I have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that she calls
Buffalo; I don’t know why, unless it is because there are not any
buffaloes there. Meantime the bear has learned to paddle around all by itself
on its hind legs, and says “poppa” and “momma.” It is
certainly a new species. This resemblance to words may be purely accidental, of
course, and may have no purpose or meaning; but even in that case it is still
extraordinary, and is a thing which no other bear can do. This imitation of
speech, taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of tail,
sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. The further study of it
will be exceedingly interesting. Meantime I will go off on a far expedition
among the forests of the North and make an exhaustive search. There must
certainly be another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it
has company of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will muzzle this
one first.</p>
<h2>Three Months Later</h2>
<p>It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no success. In the mean time,
without stirring from the home estate, she has caught another one! I never saw
such luck. I might have hunted these woods a hundred years, I never should have
run across that thing.</p>
<h2>Next Day</h2>
<p>I have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is perfectly plain
that they are the same breed. I was going to stuff one of them for my
collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some reason or other; so I
have relinquished the idea, though I think it is a mistake. It would be an
irreparable loss to science if they should get away. The old one is tamer than
it was, and can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt,
from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty in a
highly developed degree. I shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind
of parrot, and yet I ought not to be astonished, for it has already been
everything else it could think of, since those first days when it was a fish.
The new one is as ugly now as the old one was at first; has the same
sulphur-and-raw-meat complexion and the same singular head without any fur on
it. She calls it Abel.</p>
<h2>Ten Years Later</h2>
<p>They are boys; we found it out long ago. It was their coming in that small,
immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. There are some girls
now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had stayed a bear it would have improved
him. After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the
beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it
without her. At first I thought she talked too much; but now I should be sorry
to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. Blessed be the chestnut
that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart
and the sweetness of her spirit!</p>
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