es it
has its distinct advantages considering the moral characteristics of
the parents who so leave them, but as a social custom to be commended
it is an entire failure, and was adopted by Eve not from choice, but
from necessity. It was not through any desire to shine in society as a
constant attendant at the Five O'Clock teas of her time, or, because
she deemed that her duty lay in trying to secure the alleged
Emancipation of her Sex from imaginary shackles at the expense of her
home life and its responsibilities; or, because she believed that the
primary duty of a mother was to provide her offspring with a maternal
relative who could expound the most abstruse philosophies of the age
with her eyes shut, that led Mother Eve into an apparent neglect of
her children. It was simply the inevitable result of the life of her
time. One can hardly be all that she had to be whether she wanted to
be it or not and at the same time fulfill all the functions of
motherhood. The daily labors of a large ranch such as the world
practically was at that time were of enormous proportions, and with
all due respect to Adam it has always been my profound belief that a
good ninety per cent. of them were performed by Eve. It was she who
had to look after the domestic details of the hour, day in and day
out, while he after the fashion of mankind, led the freer life of the
open. Indeed I have never found that in the matter of manual labor
Adam was in any wise noted. The naming of the animals was a purely
intellectual achievement, and while, of course, he was the provider
when it came to getting in the food supply, I have never observed that
any man yet created ever regarded a day on a trout stream with a fly
and a rod, or a chase through the forest after a venison steak, or a
partridge, as in any way even remotely resembling work. On the
contrary Adam lived the life of a Naturalist and a Nimrod, while Eve
faithfully did the chores. It was inevitable then that the children
when they first came along, should be allowed to grow wild, to
associate with their inferiors, and to become confirmed in habits that
were deplorable and reprehensible. I am entering upon no defense of
my Uncle Cain. I do not excuse his misbehavior in the least, but when
a censorious world holds up its hands in holy horror whenever he is
mentioned, and uses his name as a synonym for evil, I would merely beg
it to remember the lad's bringing up, and to ask itself whether under
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