rops of ruby and of pearl. I think it was
a wilderness of flowers, redolent of eternal spring and pulsing with
bird-song, where dappled fawns played on banks of violets, where
leopards, peaceful and tame, lounged in copses of magnolias, where
harmless tigers lay on snowy beds of lilies, and lions, lazy and
gentle, panted in jungles of roses. I think its billowy landscapes
were festooned with tangling creepers, bright with perennial bloom,
and curtained with sweet-scented groves, where the orange and the
pomegranate hung like golden globes and ruddy moons. I think its air was
softened with the dreamy haze of perpetual summer; and through its midst
there flowed a translucent river, alternately gleaming in its sunshine
and darkening in its shadows. And there, in some sweet, dusky bower,
fresh from the hand of his Creator, slept Adam, the first of the human
race; God-like in form and feature; God-like in all the attributes of
mind and soul. No monarch ever slept on softer, sweeter couch, with
richer curtains drawn about him. And as he slept, a face and form, half
hidden, half revealed, red-lipped, rose-cheeked, white bosomed and with
tresses of gold, smiled like an angel from the mirror of his dream; for
a moment smiled, and so sweetly, that his heart almost forgot to beat.
And while yet this bright vision still haunted his slumber, with
tenderest touch an unseen hand lay open the unconscious flesh in his
side, and forth from the painless wound a faultless being sprang; a
being pure and blithesome as the air; a sinless woman, God's first
thought for the happiness of man. I think he wooed her at the waking of
the morning. I think he wooed her at noon-tide, down by the riverside,
or by the spring in the dell. I think he wooed her at twilight, when
the moon silvered the palm tree's feathery plumes, and the stars looked
down, and the nightingale sang. And wherever he wooed her, I think the
grazing herds left sloping hill and peaceful vale, to listen to the
wooing, and thence themselves, departed in pairs. The covies heard it
and mated in the fields; the quail wooed his love in the wheat; the
robin whistled to his love in the glen;

"The lark was so brim-full of gladness and love,
The green fields below him--the blue sky above,
That he sang, and he sang, and forever sang he:
I love my Love, and my Love loves me."

Love songs bubbled from the mellow throats of mocking-birds and
bobolinks; dove cooed love to dove; a