milar conditions it would do much better itself. Particularly do I
ask that branch of human society, now growing rather larger than I
like to see it, who are themselves allowing their children to grow up,
not only removed but far away from all parental influences whatsoever,
if they realize that they will have only themselves to blame if they
add to the stock of unfortunates who bear the mark of Cain? Of course,
a woman who would rather play Bridge than rock her baby to sleep would
be a bad influence upon a budding soul at any time, and her child is
to be congratulated when its mother's engagement card is full from
Sunday to Sunday, but even a mother of that sort owes it to society to
see that her place is filled not by any old gorilla from the handiest
intelligence office that comes along as poor Eve was forced into
doing, but by some capable person in whom the love of motherhood rules
as strong as does the passion for the grand-slam in her own breast.

[Illustration: Cain's Inspiration]

But enough of this moralizing! I had not meant to preach a sermon, and
it is only because I see so many wistful little faces of motherless
youngsters around me day after day--Social Orphans, whose mothers have
not gone to Heaven, but to Mrs. Grundy's; children who with the
qualities of service in their souls are treading dangerously near to
the footsteps of the original scapegrace for lack of attention; that I
have been led into this garrulous homily. It must not be supposed,
either from what I have said that there was never any discipline in
the Home of Adam and Eve. Later on there came to be a lot of it, and I
am not sure that its excesses in later periods were not as evil in
their influence as its utter lack at a time when ten minutes with the
hair-brush would have done Cain more good than ten years in the county
jail.

To the world at large these two boys are interesting because of the
fact that they introduced humor into the world. Adam never had any,
and Eve, as we have seen, was rather too busy to joke, but not so with
the youngsters, who, doubtless from their constant association with
the monkeys bubbled over with a kind of fun that though necessarily
primitive, was quite appealing. It was Cain who invented that immortal
riddle, "When is a door not a door?" the true answer being, "when it
is a bird." This is as far as I have been able to discover the first
thing in the nature of a joke ever known on this planet, though
whet