302 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside 



and then made to suffer the penalty of others' sins. 

 This is no unusual incident in the tragedy of life. 



This pretty story of Eve has been made the sub- 

 ject of scrutiny by spectacled owls who had not the 

 least capacity for appreciating either its simple 

 naivete or its significance. Upon it these commen- 

 tators and exegetes have built a system of woman 

 slavery which is as hoary with iniquity as with 

 antiquity. Now, if Eve had been driven out of the 

 garden for killing and eating the tanagers, the 

 thrushes, the song-sparrows, vireos, bobolinks, and 

 other birds of paradise, or for pouncing upon the 

 wood-ducks, which gave color and charm to the 

 shimmering Gihon, there might have been some 

 show of justice in putting her out. But for eating 

 of a fruit that was temptingly held to her hand by 

 the bending bough, the color of which gladdened 

 her eye, the fragrance of which breathed upon her 

 face, and the flavor of which was a delight — to heap 

 her with accusations and contumely, to lay upon 

 her, for this, the blame for all the meanness and 

 cruelty which afterward appeared in the world, 

 shows what an unfilial, unjust, unreasonable, and 

 generally mean parcel of her descendants they were 

 who afterward took up the business of philosophy 

 and theology; men who would even make a type of 

 super-orthodoxy out of the disparagement and 

 degradation of women. Those who have observed 

 pretty closely notice that men who do it are trying 

 to get credit with the Lord and the church out of 



