Christmas tree. In the matter of
clothes woman is the court of last resort, and it is better for men
that she should concentrate all her attention on herself!"

Incidentally let me add that when someone once asked Eve if she hadn't
often wished she had been a man, she replied:

"Lord no! In that case there would have been two of us, and goodness
knows one was enough!"

CHAPTER V

SOME NOTES ON CAIN AND ABEL

My acquaintance with my great-uncles, Cain and Abel, was not
particularly intimate and in later years they are seldom spoken of by
members of the family for reasons sufficiently obvious to need no
mention here. Every family must sooner or later develop an undesirable
or two, and on the whole I think that we have done tolerably well in
having up to this time only one portrait in our Rogues' Gallery. Just
what has become of Cain no one at this writing is aware, but wherever
he is I hope when these memoirs of mine are published he will read
them far enough to note that one member of the family at least holds
him in pleasant recollection for the fun he has afforded him in the
past. The two first boys of creation were not bad fellows at all,
although as was natural, their bringing up resulted in a general
condition of pure cussedness that at times became appalling to their
parents. The fact that there had never been any other boys in the
world before placed Adam and Eve at a considerable disadvantage in
rearing these two youngsters. There were no precedents to go by, and
as a consequence the lads were permitted to do a good many things that
our modern boys would not dream of doing. There were no schools to
send them to, and no Sunday Newspapers with Woman's Pages to instruct
Eve in the Complete Science of Motherhood, so that when Cain and Abel
came along to bless the world with their presence, neither their
father nor their mother knew what on earth to do with them. Then,
too, Eve's household duties were such that they very nearly absorbed
all her time, and for years the youthful scions of this first family
in the land were left to the tender mercies of a kindly old Gorilla
who, however amiable and willing she may have been, was hardly the
kind of person a modern mother would choose as an influence in the
formative years of her children's development. I am quite aware that
in some sections of the country to-day this oldtime custom of leaving
the young to the care of servants still prevails, and in some cas