ity of sex,
I think, and he did not make his sex. Of course 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. He
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; now 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 the Project Gutenberg EBook of The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories, by
Mark Twain
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