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 they
were new when I made them. She asked me if I had made one just
at the time of the catastrophe. I was obliged to admit that I had
made one to myself, though not aloud. It was this. I was thinking
about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful it is to see
that vast body of water tumble down there!" Then in an instant a
bright thought flashed into my head,