Extracts From Adams Diary | Page 6

one first.
Three Months Later
It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no success. In the mean
time, without stirring from the home estate, she has caught another one!
I never saw such luck. I might have hunted these woods a hundred
years, I never should have run across that thing.
Next Day
I have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is perfectly
plain that they are the same breed. I was going to stuff one of them for
my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some reason or other;
so I have relinquished the idea, though I think it is a mistake. It would
be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away. The old one is
tamer than it was, and can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned
this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, and having the

imitative faculty in a highly developed degree. I shall be astonished if it
turns out to be a new kind of parrot, and yet I ought not to be
astonished, for it has already been everything else it could think of,
since those first days when it was a fish. The new one is as ugly now as
the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat
complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. She calls
it Abel.
Ten Years Later
They are boys; we found it out long ago. It was their coming in that
small, immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. There
are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had stayed a bear it
would have improved him. After all these years, I see that I was
mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the
Garden with her than inside it without her. At first I thought she talked
too much; but now I should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and
pass out of my life. Blessed be the chestnut that brought us near
together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the
sweetness of her spirit!


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