Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of yours) was the Garden of Eden.It was there that the first link was forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the literary guild.Adam's TEMPERAMENTwas the first command the Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet.And it was the only command Adam would NEVER be able to disobey.It said, "Be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable." The latter command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed.Not by Adam himself, but by his TEMPERAMENT--which he did not create and had no authority over.For the TEMPERAMENT is the man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more.The law of the tiger's temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep's temperament is Thou shalt not kill.To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands CAN'T be obeyed.They would invite to violations of the law of TEMPERAMENT, which is supreme, and take precedence of all other authorities.I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve.That is, in their temperaments.Not in THEM, poor helpless young creatures--afflicted with temperaments made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into contact with fire and BE MELTED.What Icannot help wishing is, that Adam had been postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place--that splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos.
By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have beguiled THEM to eat the apple.There would have been results!
Indeed, yes.The apple would be intact today; there would be no human race; there would be no YOU; there would be no ME.And the old, old creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild would have been defeated.
------------------------------------------------------------------HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK
These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the words large enough to command respect.In the hope that you are listening, and that you have confidence in me, I will proceed.
Dates are difficult things to acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep them in the head.But they are very valuable.They are like the cattle-pens of a ranch--they shut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within its own fence, and keep them from getting mixed together.Dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help.Pictures are the thing.Pictures can make dates stick.
They can make nearly anything stick--particularly IF YOU MAKE THEPICTURES YOURSELF.Indeed, that is the great point--make the pictures YOURSELF.I know about this from experience.Thirty years ago I was delivering a memorized lecture every night, and every night I had to help myself with a page of notes to keep from getting myself mixed.The notes consisted of beginnings of sentences, and were eleven in number, and they ran something like this:
"IN THAT REGION THE WEATHER--"
"AT THAT TIME IT WAS A CUSTOM--"
"BUT IN CALIFORNIA ONE NEVER HEARD--"
Eleven of them.They initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and protected me against skipping.But they all looked about alike on the page; they formed no picture; I had them by heart, but I could never with certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore I always had to keep those notes by me and look at them every little while.Once I mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors of that evening.I now saw that I must invent some other protection.So I got ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper order--I, A, B, and so on--and I went on the platform the next night with these marked in ink on my ten finger-nails.But it didn't answer.Ikept track of the figures for a while; then I lost it, and after that I was never quite sure which finger I had used last.Icouldn't lick off a letter after using it, for while that would have made success certain it also would have provoked too much curiosity.There was curiosity enough without that.To the audience I seemed more interested in my fingernails than I was in my subject; one or two persons asked me afterward what was the matter with my hands.
It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles passed away.In two minutes I made six pictures with a pen, and they did the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and did it perfectly.I threw the pictures away as soon as they were made, for I was sure I could shut my eyes and see them any time.
That was a quarter of a century ago; the lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years ago, but I would rewrite it from the pictures--for they remain.Here are three of them: (Fig.1).
The first one is a haystack--below it a rattlesnake--and it told me where to begin to talk ranch-life in Carson Valley.The second one told me where to begin the talk about a strange and violent wind that used to burst upon Carson City from the Sierra Nevadas every afternoon at two o'clock and try to blow the town away.The third picture, as you easily perceive, is lightning;its duty was to remind me when it was time to begin to talk about San Francisco weather, where there IS no lightning--nor thunder, either--and it never failed me.
