I have had a variegated time.  I escaped that night, and rode a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear out of the Park and hide in some other country before the trouble should begin; but it was not to be.  About an hour after sunup, as I was riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was in a frantic commotion and every beast was destroying its neighbor.  I knew what it meant—­Eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world....  The tigers ate my horse, paying no attention when I ordered them to desist, and they would even have eaten me if I had stayed—­which I didn’t, but went away in much haste....  I found this place, outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but she has found me out.  Found me out, and has named the place Tonawanda—­says it looks like that.  In fact, I was not sorry she came, for there are but meagre pickings here, and she brought some of those apples.  I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry.  It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed....  She came curtained in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she meant by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she tittered and blushed.  I had never seen a person titter and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic.  She said I would soon know how it was myself.  This was correct.  Hungry as I was, I laid down the apple half eaten—­certainly the best one I ever saw, considering the lateness of the season—­and arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not make such a spectacle of herself.  She did it, and after this we crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper for public occasions.  They are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is the main point about clothes. ...  I find she is a good deal of a companion.  I see I should be lonesome and depressed without her, now that I have lost my property.  Another thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter.  She will be useful.  I will superintend.

Ten Days Later

She accuses me of being the cause of our disaster!  She says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts.  I said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts.  She said the Serpent informed her that “chestnut” was a figurative term meaning an aged and mouldy joke.  I turned pale at that, for I have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that