The Autobiography of Methuselah

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 whether it was the one that made the original Hyena laugh I have not been able to ascertain. It is a joke that has appeared in modified form many times since. Even that illustrious pundit, Senator Chauncey M. DeMagog uses it as his most effective peroration at this season's public banquets. I heard him myself get it off at The Egyptian Society Dinner last month, as well as at the Annual Banquet of The Sons and Daughters of the Pre-Adamite Evolution, the month before, changing the answer, however, to "when it's a jar"—which I personally do not consider an improvement, for when a door becomes a jar I must confess I cannot see. A jar, as I understand it, is a vessel, a receptacle, a jug, a sort of demijohn, or decanter that people use to store up water, or to keep the juice of the grape in, like a pitcher, or an amphora; and how by any stretch of the imagination a door could become such a thing is beyond my ken, although I must say that the jest when told by the Senator in his own inimitable way, was received with shouts of laughter every time he got it off. For my own part I think that Cain's version is infinitely more humorous and instructive as well, because a "door is not a door" when it is a "daw," which is, indeed, as Cain's answer to the riddle claims it to be, a bird. It is, of course, a great compliment to Cain that the Senator and a hundred others I might name like him should go back to him for their humor, but I think they would do better if they took his jests exactly as they found them instead of trying to improve them to their destruction.

I find also in our family records that it was Abel who first asked the question, "Why is an elephant like an oyster? Because it cannot climb a tree," a jest that similarly to Cain's riddle, possesses not only true humor but is at the same time educational, as the best humor must always be, in that it teaches the young certain indubitable facts in the Science of Natural History, viz., that neither the pachyderm nor the bivalve, in common with several other carnivorous botanical specimens, is gifted similarly to the squirrel, the ant, or the grizzly bear.

Mother Eve, who always took a naïve delight in the droll sayings of her offspring, used to tell with great glee of Cain's persistent habit of asking questions of his father, some of which used to tax all the old gentleman's powers of invention to answer intelligently. One of these that I recall most vividly was as follows:

"Say, Pa," said Cain, one Saturday afternoon, when the whole family were off on a picnic together, "did you have any sisters?"

"No, my son," replied Adam, plucking a bottle of olives from a neighboring tree, and placing them on the outspread table-cloth on the grass.

"Well, did Ma have any sisters?" persisted Cain.

"No," said Adam. "Your mother had no sisters, either. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, nothin'," replied the lad with a puzzled expression coming over his face as he scratched his back. "I was just wonderin' where the Ants came from."

It was Abel on the other hand who asked his father why he had not named the male ants uncles, a question that to this day has not been satisfactorily answered. Indeed I have frequently found myself regretting that there was nobody at hand to ask Adam these very pertinent questions earlier in his life, and before it was too late to instil in his mind the idea that a little more consistency would be desirable in his selection of names for the creatures he was called upon to christen. Zoölogy might have been a far simpler science in the matter of nomenclature than it is now ever likely to become, had Adam been surrounded at the beginning with inquiring minds like those of Cain and Abel, not necessarily to dispute his conclusions or his judgments, but to seek explanations. Why, for instance, should a creature that is found chiefly on the Nile, and never under any circumstances on the Rhine, be called a Rhinoceros? And why should a Caribou be called a Caribou entirely irrespective of its sex? There are Caribou of both sexes, when we might have had Caribou for one and Billibou for the other, and yet Adam has feminized the whole Bou family with no apparent thought about the matter at all. Then there is the animal which he called the Bear. He is not bare at all—on the contrary he wears the shaggiest coat of all the animals, except possibly the Buffalo, who, by the way, is not buff, but a rather dirty dull brownish black in color. The Panther does not wear pants, and the Monkey far from suggesting the habits of a Monk is a roystering, philanderous old rounder that would disgrace a heathen temple, much less adorn a Monastery. And finally if there is anything lower than a Hyena, or less coy than a Coyote, I don't know what it is.

There is considerable evidence in Mother Eve's Garden Book, in which she jotted down now and then little notes of her daily life that most of these points, or at least similar ones, were brought to Adam's attention at one time or another by his sons, and not always in a way that was pleasing to him. Indeed, as we read these notes we observe a growing tendency on Adam's part to be irritated by the enquiries which seem to have formed an inevitable part of the family conversation. At random I select the following:

August 3rd, 5569. Cain spanked and put to bed without his supper for asking his father why he had not called the male Kangaroo a Kangarooster.

September 5th, 5567. Cain sentenced to the wood-pile for four hours for enquiring of Adam why he called the Yak a Yak when everybody knew he looked more like a Yap. Adam is getting very nervous under this persistent questioning.

January 4th, 5565. Adam has just retired to the wood-shed with poor Abel on what he termed a "whaling-expedition," to explain why he had named the elephant of the sea a whale instead of a sealephant. I judge from Abel's blubbering that his father is giving him an object lesson in the place where it is most likely to impress itself forcibly on his understanding, though I must say I think the child's idea a rather good one, and I often wish my dear husband would not be so sensitive on the subject of his possible mistakes.

May 25th, 5563. Adam has forbidden the children to ask any more questions about the names of the animals, Cain having exasperated him by asking how much a guinea was worth.

"About five dollars," said Adam.

"Gee!" cried Cain. "You must have got stung on the guinea-pigs, then. They're dear at a dollar a dozen."

It may interest modern readers who seem to have created a demand for what is known as the Mother-in-Law joke that this style of humor found its origin in an early remark of Abel's, if his mother's Diary is to be believed. A visitor once interrupted him in the midst of a ball game that he was playing with Cain and a number of his Simian friends, to ask him how his grandmother was.

"Never had one," replied Abel, with a grin.

"Poor boy," sympathized the visitor. "And don't you wish you had?"

"Yes," said Abel. "I think a Mother-in-Law around the house would have done Pa good!"

I will close my remarks concerning these famous boys with a little poem which their mother had clipped from an Egyptian paper and pasted in her book. It seems to me to be a pretty accurate picture of two very interesting figures in our family history.

I don't suppose that Cain and AbelWere very mannerly at table.From what I've read by those that knew 'emThey'd speak when none had spoken to 'em,And in a manner unbefittin'Upon their shoulders they'd be sittin',And sundry dinosaurs be treatingWith scraps the while themselves were eating.I fear they smacked their lips while pickin'The bones of tarpon and spring chicken,And each the other would be hazin'To see who got the final raisin.The notion in my brain-pan lingersThey ate their flapjacks with their fingers—Not that their mother fair assented,But knives and forks were not invented.When there was pie, I fear they grabbed it,Unless their Pa'd already nabbed it;And that in fashion most unmoralO'er cakes and puddings they would quarrel.I don't believe that either chapkinE'er thought at lunch to fold his napkin,And if one biscuit graced the platter'Twas ever less than fighting matter,Or if they'd beans—no doubt they had 'em—They failed to snap a few at Adam.I fear me as they ate their saladeThey hummed some raw primeval ballad,And when the Serpent came to dinner,They made remarks about the sinner.No doubt they criticised the cookingAnd hooked the fruit when none was looking,And when they'd soup—O my! O Deary!The very notion makes me weary.About these youngsters let's stop writingAnd turn to subjects more inviting!

I have never been able to ascertain the authorship of this poem, but if the poet ever sees this I hope he will be glad to know that I heartily agree with Mother Eve's memorandum written underneath the clipping in her book,

"I guess this scribe has had boys of his own!"

CHAPTER VI

HE CONFESSES TO BEING A POET

I do not know whether it is a part of the programme mapped out for me that I am to live forever or not, and I realize the danger that a man runs in writing his memoirs if he put aught down in them which shall savor of confession. They say that confession is good for the soul, but I have not yet discovered anybody who was profited by it to any material extent. On the contrary, even the virtuous have suffered from it, as witness the case of my dear old Uncle Zekel. In his extreme youth Zekel went out one summer's day, the call of the wild proving too much for his boyish spirit, and ere night fell had done a certain amount of mischief, although intrinsically he came nearer to being a perfect child than anyone yet known to the history of the human race. Thoughtlessly the lad had chopped down one of his father's favorite date trees, the which when his father observed it, caused considerable consternation.

"Who did this thing?" he cried angrily, summoning the whole family to the orchard.

"Father," said Zekel, stepping forward, pale, but courageous, "I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little tomahawk."

"Very well, my son," said the old gentleman, pulling a switch from the fallen tree, and seizing Zekel by the collar, "in order to impress this date more vividly upon your mind, we will retire to the barn and indulge in a little palmistry."

Whereupon he withdrew with Zekel from the public gaze and administered such a rebuke to the boy that forever afterwards the mere association of ideas made it impossible for Zekel to sit under a palm tree with any degree of comfort.2

I realize, however, that in writing one's memoirs one should not withhold the truth if there is to be any justification in the eyes of posterity for their existence, so I am not going to conceal anything from my readers that has any important bearing upon my character. Let me therefore admit here and now, apropos of the charming lines with which my last chapter was brought to a close, that I have myself at times written poetry. It is the lamentable fact that in this day and generation poets are not held in that high esteem which is their due. We have unfortunately had a number of them in this vicinity of late years who have not been any too particular about paying their board bills, and whether their troth has been plighted to our confiding maidens, or to our trustful tailors, the result has been the same—they have not been conspicuously present at the date of maturity of their promises. One very distinguished looking old gentleman in particular, who registered from Greece, came here several centuries ago and secured five hundred subscriptions to his book of verses, collected the first instalment, and then faded from the scene and neither he nor his verses have been heard from since. The consequence has been that when any of the young of this community show the slightest signs of poetic genius their parents behave as though the measles had broken out in the family, and do all they can spiritually and physically to stamp out the symptoms. My cousin Aminidab indeed went so far while he was in the Legislature here, to introduce a bill making the writing of poetry a misdemeanor, and ordering the police immediately to arrest all persons caught giving way in public or private to an inspiration. The bill only failed to become a law by the expiration of the session before it had reached its final reading. It may be readily imagined, therefore, why until this I have never acknowledged my own proneness to expressing myself in verse. Only two or three of my most intimate friends have been aware of the tendency, and they have been so ashamed of it that as my friends they have sought rather to suppress than to spread the report.

I quite remember the consternation with which my first effort was received in the family. Father Adam had been reminiscing about the Garden Days, and he had made the remark that when some of the animals came up to be christened they were such extraordinary looking creatures he was afraid they were imaginary.

"Take the Ornithorhyncus, for instance," he said, "and the Discosaurus Carnegii—why, when they came ambling up for their tickets I could hardly believe my eyes, and I turned to Eve and asked her with real anxiety, whether or not she saw anything, and, of course, her answer reassured me, but for a minute I was afraid that the grape-juice we had had for lunch was up to its old tricks."

This anecdote amused me tremendously, for I had myself thought the Discosaurus about the funniest looking beast except the shad, I had ever seen, and I promptly constructed a limerick which I handed over to my father. It ran this way:

There was an old fellow named Adam,Who lived in the Garden with Madam.When the critters they cameAll demanding a nameHe thought for a minute he "had 'em!"

I don't think I shall ever forget the result of my father's horrified reading of the lines. All my grandfathers back to Adam himself were there, and wrath, fear, and consternation were depicted on every countenance when the last line was delivered, and then every eye was turned on me. If there had been any way of disappearing I should have faded away instantly, but alas, every avenue of escape was closed, and before I left the room each separate and distinct ancestor had turned me over his knee and lambasted me to his heart's content. In spite of all this discipline, which one would have thought effective enough to take me out of the lists of Parnassus forever, it on the contrary served only to whet my thirst for writing, and from that time until now I have never gotten over my desire to chisel out sonnets, triolets, rondeaux and lyrics of one kind or another.

One little piece that I recall had to do with the frequency with which I was punished for small delinquencies. It was called

WHEN FATHER SPANKED ME

My Father larruped me, and yetI could but note his eyes were wet,When lying there across his kneeI got what he had had for me—It seemed to fill him with regret."It hurt me worse than you," he said,When later on I went to bed,And I—the truth would not be hid—Replied, "I'm gug-gug-glad it did!"

There were other verses written as I grew older that, while I do not regard them as masterpieces, I nevertheless think compare favorably with a great deal of the alleged poetry that has crept into print of late years. A trifle dashed off on a brick with a piece of charcoal one morning shortly after my hundredth birthday, comes back to me. The original I regret to say was lost through the careless act of one of my cousins, who flung it at a pterodactyl as it winged its flight across our meadows some years after. I reproduce it from memory.

THE JUNE-BUG

The merry, merry June-bugNow butts at all in sight.He butts the wall o' mornings,He rams the ceil at night.He caroms from the book-caseOff to the window-pane,Then bounces from my tableBack to the case again.He whacks against the door-jambAnd tumbles on the mat;Then on the grand-pianoHe strikes a strident flat;Then to the oaken stair-caseHe blindly flops and jumps,And on the steps for hoursHe blithely bumps the bumps.They say that he is foolish,And has no brains. No doubt'Tis well for if he had 'emHe'd surely butt them out.

As I say, this is mere a trifle, but it is none the less beautifully descriptive of a creature that has always seemed to me to be worthy of more attention than he has ever received from the poets of our age. I have been unable to find in the literature of Greece, Egypt or the Orient, any reference to this wonderful insect who embodies in his frail physique so much of the truest philosophy of life, and who, despite the obstacles that seem so persistently to obstruct his path, buzzes blithely ever onward, singing his lovely song and uttering no complaints.

In the line of what I may call calendar poetry, which has always been popular since the art of rhyming began, none of the months escaped my attention, but of all of my efforts in that direction I never wrote anything that excelled in descriptive beauty my

ODE TO FEBRUARY

Hail to thee, O Februeer!It is sweet to have you here,Lemon-time of all the year!Making all our noses gayWith the influenziay;Flinging sneezes here and yon,Rich and poor alike upon;Clogging up the bronchial tubesOf the Urbans and the Roobs;Opening for all your gripWith its lavish stores of pip;Scattering along your routeLittle gifts of Epizoot;Time of slush and time of thaw,Time of hours mild and raw;Blowing cold and blowing hot;Stable as a Hottentot;Coaxing flowers from the closeJust to nip them on the nose;Calling birdies from their nestsFor to freeze their little chests;Springtime in the morning bright,With a blizzard on at night;Chills and fever through the dayLike a sort of pousse café;Time of drift and time of slosh!Season of the ripe golosh;Running rivers in the street,Frozen toes, and soaking feet;Take this wreath of PoesieDedicated unto thee,Undiluted stream of mushTo the Merry Month of Slush!

I preferred always, of course, to be original, not only in the matter of my thought, but in the manner of my expression as well, but like all the rest of the poetizing tribe, I sooner or later came under the Greek influence. This is shown most notably in a little bit written one very warm day in midsummer, back in my 278th year. It was entitled

TO PAN IN AUGUST

I don't wish to flout you, Pan.Tried to write about you, Pan.Tried to tell the story, Pan,Of your wondrous glory, Pan;But I can't begin it, Pan,For this very minute, Pan,All my thoughts are tumid, Pan,'Tis so hot and humid, Pan,And for all my trying, Pan,There is no denying, Pan,I can't think, poor sighing Pan,Of you save as frying, Pan.

It was after reading the above, when it dropped out of my coat pocket during one of our visits to the wood-shed, that Adam expressed the profound conviction that I was born to be hanged, but as I have already intimated, neither his sense of justice, nor his sense of humor was notable.

Once in awhile I tried a bit of satire, and when my son Noah first began to show signs of mental aberration on the subject of a probable flood that would sweep everything before it, and put the whole world out of business save those who would take shares in his International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company, I endeavored to dissuade him in every possible way from so suspicious an enterprise. Failing to impress my feelings upon him in one way, I fell back upon an anonymously published poem, which I hoped would bring him to his senses. The lines were printed in red chalk on the board fence surrounding his Ship-Yard, and ran as follows:

MARINE ADVICES

O Noah he built himself a boat,And filled it full of animiles.He took along a billie-goat,A pug and two old crocodiles.A pair of very handsome yaksA leopard and hyenas two;A brace of tender canvas-backs,A camel and a kangaroo.A pair of guinea-pigs were placedIn state-rooms off the main saloon,Along with several rabbits chaste,A 'possum and a gray raccoon.Now all went well upon that cruise,And they were happy as could be,Until one morning came the newsThat filled old Noah with misery.Those guinea-pigs—O what a tide!—Were versed in plain Arithmetic;The way they upped and multipliedMade Captain Noah mighty sick.And four days out he turned about,And made back to the pier once moreTo rid himself of all that rout,And put the guinea-pigs ashore.And where there were but two of theseWhen starting on that famous trip,When they got back from off the seas,Three hundred thousand left the ship!

Poor Noah! He took this publication so much to heart that he offered a reward of a thousand dollars, and a first-class passage on his cruise to the top of Mount Ararat to any one who could give him the name of the miscreant who had written the lines, but he has never yet found out who did them, and until he reads these memoirs after I have passed away, he will never know from how near home they came.

Finally let me say that in a more serious vein as a Poet I was not wanting in success—that is in my own judgment. As a mystic poet nothing better than the following came from my pen:

O arching trees that mark the zenith hour,How great thy reach, how marvellous thy power,So lavishly outpouring all thy rotund giftsOn mortal ways, in superhuman shiftsThat overtax the mind, and vex the soul of man,As would the details of some awful plan,Jocund, mysterious, complex, and yet withalEnmeshed with Joy and Sorrow, as a pallEnvelops all the seas at eventide, and bringsNew meaning to the song the Robin singsWhen from her nest matutinal she squirmsAnd hies her forth for adolescent wormsWith which her young to feed, yet all the timeWith heart and soul laments my dulcet rhyme!

Of this I was naturally quite proud, and when under the title of "Maternity" I read it once in secret to my Aunt Jerusha, she burst into tears as I went on, and three days later read it as a New Thought gem before the Enochsville Society of Ethical Culture. It was there pronounced a great piece of symbolic imagery, and prediction was made that some day in some more advanced age than our own, a Magazine would be found somewhere that would print it. This may be so, but I fear I shall not live to see it.

CHAPTER VII

THE INTERNATIONAL MARINE AND ZOO FLOTATION COMPANY

I have never yet been quite able to make up my mind with any degree of definiteness in regard to the sanity of my son Noah. In many respects he is a fine fellow. His moral character is beyond reproach, and I have never caught him in any kind of a wilful deception such as many parents bewail in their offspring, and I know that he has no bad habits. He has no liking for cigarette smoking, and he keeps good company and good hours. His sons Shem, Ham and Japhet, are great favorites with all of us, and as far as mere respectability goes there is no family in the land that stands higher than his, but the complete obsession of his mind by this International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company of his is entirely beyond my comprehension, and his attempts to explain it to me are futile, because its utter impracticability, and the reasons advanced for its use seem so absurd that I lose my temper before he gets half way through the first page of his prospectus. From his boyhood up he has been fond of the water, and when the bath-tub was first invented we did not have to drive him to it, as most parents have to do with most boys, but on the contrary we had all we could do to keep him away from it. I don't think any one in my household for five hundred years was able to take a bath on any night of the week without first having to clear away from the tub the evidence of Noah's interest in marine matters. Nothing in the world seemed to delight his spirit more as a child than to fill the tub full of water, turn on the shower at its fullest speed, and play what he called flood in it, with a shingle or a chip, or if he could not find either of these, with a floating leaf. Many a time I have found him long after he was supposed to have gone to bed sitting on the bath-room floor singing a roysterous nautical song like "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," or "A Life On the Ocean Wave," while he pushed a floating soap dish filled with ants, spiders and lady-bugs up and down that overflowing tub; and later in his life, when more manly sports would seem to be more to any one's tastes, while his playmates were out in the open chasing the Discosaurus over the hills, or trapping Pterodactyls in the bull-rushes, he would go off by himself into the woods where he had erected what he called his ship-yard, and whittle out gondolas, canoes, battle-ships, arks and other marine craft day in and day out until one could hardly walk in the dark without stubbing his toe on some kind of a boat. I recall once coming upon him on the farther slopes of Mount Ararat, putting the finishing touches to as graceful a cat-boat as any one ever saw—a thing that would have excited the envy of mariners in all parts of the world, but in spite of my admiration for his handicraft, it worried me more than I can say when I thought of all the labor he had expended on such a work miles away from any kind of a water course. It did not seem to square with my ideas as to what constituted sense.