"WHILE ADAM WAS IDLY, LAZILY SUNNING HIMSELF IN THE GARDEN."
In the distance stood Adam. With a thrill of rapture she beheld him, her aroused soul flashed from her eyes and love was born, and she ran toward him through the flowers, pausing on the river's brink to rest, for weariness had touched her limbs.
She watched the waters running south out of the garden, and like one coming out of a dim, sweet twilight into a blaze of glory she looked and wondered "why" it ran that way, and lo! Thought blossomed like a rose, and generosity laughed in the sunshine when she put the apple in Adam's hand; and Adam, with the only woman in the world beside him, and the first free lunch before him, forgot all about God and His commands and "did eat," and the results prove that free lunches always did demoralize men—and always will. And modesty blushed rosy red when Adam put the apple to his lips, and invention and ingenuity, new-born, rushed to the rescue, and they gathered the fig leaves.
Then memory like a demon whispered in her ear: "The day that ye eat thereof ye shall surely die." She glanced at Adam and deadly fear chilled the joyous blood in her veins. Then she argued: "He will be less angry with me, a woman, and His vengeance will fall less heavily on me than on the man to whom His command was given;" and lo! Reason rose like a star on the waves of life, and shoulder to shoulder womanly devotion and heroism that fears neither God nor death in defense of its loved ones entered her soul, and she instructed Adam to say: "The woman tempted me," and deception trembled on her lips when she cried: "The serpent did tempt me," and the tears of regret and remorse watered the seeds of deception and they grew so luxuriously that women have always had that same way of getting out of scrapes ever since.
Yet to Eve belongs the honor of never having obeyed any one—when it interfered with progress, advancement and intelligence—neither God, angels nor men.
The women of the nineteenth century make a profound salaam of admiration and respect to Eve, in whom they recognize the first courageous, undaunted pioneer woman of the world.
