rse I would not have told
on him, I would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity of sex,
too, and I do not take credit for it, for I did not make my sex.
Then why is it that I love him? MERELY BECAUSE HE IS MASCULINE, I
think.
At bottom he is good, and I love him for that, but I could love him
without it. If he should beat me and abuse me, I should go on loving
him. I know it. It is a matter of sex, I think.
He is strong and handsome, and I love him for that, and I admire him and
am proud of him, but I could love him without those qualities. If he
were plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should love him;
and I would work for him, and slave over him, and pray for him, and
watch by his bedside until I died.
Yes, I think I love him merely because he is MINE and is MASCULINE.
There is no other reason, I suppose. And so I think it is as I first
said: that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings and
statistics. It just COMES--none knows whence--and cannot explain
itself. And doesn't need to.
It is what I think. But I am only a girl, the first that has examined
this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience I
have not got it right.
Forty Years Later
It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life
together--a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall
have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time;
and it shall be called by my name.
But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for
he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to me
--life without him would not be life; how could I endure it? This prayer
is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race
continues. I am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be
repeated.
At Eve's Grave
ADAM: Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden.
End of Project Gutenberg's Eve's Diary, Part 3, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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