low; with kind words than
with harshness and a curse. Another thing: let the children eat what
they want to. Let them commence at whichever end of the dinner they
please. They know what they want much better than you do. Nature knows
perfectly well what she is about, and if you go a-fooling with her you
may get into trouble. The crime charged to me is this: I insist that
the bible is not the word of God; that we should not whip our children;
that we should treat our wives as loving equals; that God never upheld
polygamy and slavery; deny that God ever commanded his generals to
slaughter innocent babes and tear and rip open women with the sword of
war; that God ever turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt (although
she might have deserved that fate); that God ever made a woman out of a
man's, or any other animal's rib! And I emphatically deny that God
ever signed or sealed a commission appointing his satanic majesty
governor-general over an extensive territory popularly styled hell,
with absolute power to torture, burn, maim, boil, or roast at his
pleasure the victims of his master's displeasure! I deny these things,
and for that I am assailed by the clergy throughout the United States.
Now, you have read the bible romance of the fall of Adam? Yes, well,
you know that nearly or quite all the religions of this world account
for the existence of evil by such a story as that! Adam, the miserable
coward, informed God that his wife was at the bottom of the whole
business! "She did tempt me and I did eat!" And then commenced a row,
and we have been engaged in it ever since! You know what happened to
Adam and his wife for her transgressions?

In another account of what is said to have been the same
transaction--which is the most sensible account of the two--the Supreme
Brahma concluded, as he had a little leisure, that he would make a
world, and a man and woman. He made the world, the man, and then the
woman, and then placed the pair on the Island of Ceylon. (Bear in
mind, there were no ribs used in this affair.) This island is said to
be the most beautiful that the mind of man can conceive of. Such birds
you never saw, such songs you never heard! and then such flowers, such
verdure! The branches of the trees were so arranged that when the
winds swept through, there floated out from every tree melodious
strains of music from a thousand! Aeolian harps! After Brahma put
them there, he said: "Let them have a perio