their presence; and I am sure the experiment was
sufficiently encouraging to warrant repetition, for it was beautiful to
see the descendants of the Pilgrims sitting with eyes upturned in true
Puritanic sanctity; it was encouraging to see the sons of those pious
sires devoting themselves, at least for one night, to setting their
affections upon "things above." [Applause and laughter.]
Woman's first home was in the Garden of Eden. There man first married
woman. Strange that the incident should have suggested to Milton the
"Paradise Lost." [Laughter.] Man was placed in a profound sleep, a rib
was taken from his side, a woman was created from it, and she became his
wife. Evil-minded persons constantly tell us that thus man's first sleep
became his last repose. But if woman be given at times to that
contrariety of thought and perversity of mind which sometimes passeth
our understanding, it must be recollected in her favor that she was
created out of the crookedest part of man. [Laughter.]
The Rabbins have a different theory regarding creation. They go back to
the time when we were all monkeys. They insist that man was originally
created with a kind of Darwinian tail, and that in the process of
evolution this caudal appendage was removed and created into woman. This
might better account for those Caudle lectures which woman is in the
habit of delivering, and some color is given to this theory, from the
fact that husbands even down to the present day seem to inherit a
general disposition to leave their wives behind. [Laughter.]
The first woman, finding no other man in that garden except her own
husband, took to flirting even with the Devil. [Laughter.] The race
might have been saved much tribulation if Eden had been located in some
calm and tranquil land--like Ireland. There would at least have been no
snakes there to get into the garden. Now woman in her thirst after
knowledge, showed her true female inquisitiveness in her
cross-examination of the serpent, and, in commemoration of that
circumstance, the serpent seems to have been curled up and used in
nearly all languages as a sign of interrogation. Soon the domestic
troubles of our first parents began. The first woman's favorite son was
killed with a club, and married women even to this day seem to have an
instinctive horror of clubs. The first woman learned that it was Cain
that raised a club. The modern woman has learned it is a club that
raises cain. Yet, I think, I
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