XIADAM CONDEMNS FEMININE FASHIONS
I had been assigned to interview Eve on the feminine fashions of 1922, but the maid said she was out, and so I had to fall back on old Adam instead. I approached the father of the race not without diffidence, feeling so painfully young and fearing he would not care to talk for publication, but his opening remarks set me entirely at ease.
“Not care to be quoted!” he exclaimed. “I’m mighty glad of the opportunity. I don’t have one so often, now that Eve stays home so much. You see, she calls only on people of the first families, and they’re not very numerous around here. The neighbors say she gives herself airs, and so they don’t call on her. It’s been a lasting source of grief that she’s ineligible to join the Daughters of anything. She arrived too early on the scene. It used to be awfully galling to her to hear the women all talking about their family trees and boasting of their ancestors, and swapping lies about what their great-great-grandfathers said to George Washington at thebattle of San Juan Hill, or whatever it was, and giving an expurgated edition of what George Washington said to Lord Cornwallis, as handed down to posterity in the family records. Eve used to sit in a corner and weep while the Daughters of the Mexican Revolutions or the Granddaughters of Russian Independence (to be eligible for the latter you must have an ancestor who shot at least one grand duke, five assassinations making you an ace; and if your relative happened to pot a Czar your social position is assured forever) were spinning their yarns and trying to make each other jealous. But now she’s organized a new society, the Mothers of Humanity, and she’s president, secretary, treasurer and chairman of the committee on membership. She’s away this afternoon calling on Mrs. Methuselah and they’re trying to get up some scheme that will induce all the women they want to blackball to apply for membership.
“Yes, poor Eve has had a pretty hard time right from the start, and I don’t believe her descendants have appreciated what she did for them. I’ll say this for her: she’s been as true as steel, even if she hasn’t always kept her temper so well. It’s a fact that after that first little unpleasantness she always kept a broomstick handy for any peddler who might comealong trying to sell ‘nice eating apples,’ but consider the provocation! There we were, nicely settled in the garden, no work, nothing to do but step out in the yard and help ourselves to all the fruit and vegetables in sight. All the trees and vines were of the self-cultivating variety. We’d never even heard of the high cost of living. No family to support. No neighbors to scrap with. No money, and no pockets to put it in if we had had, but, glorious thought! No bills to pay. We had our little disagreements, of course. The first day she arrived, Eve said I’d been doing the dishes the wrong way, letting ’em all go until the end of the month and then turning the hose on ’em out in the front yard; she insisted on washing ’em after every meal. But, as I said, who was there to know the difference? She had to learn the names of all the animals, and she was especially glad to hear about the bear, so that she could tell me what I was as-cross-as when I got the grip that first winter.
“Yes, life is real and wife is earnest, but, as I said, ours was very happy. The first quarrel? I don’t know that I remember just what it was about. I recall a dispute over Eve’s new bathing suit, which was intensified by my innocent remark that it was an exceedingly small thing to quarrel about, but I think our initial seriousdisagreement occurred when I respectfully declined to go into hysterics over Cain’s first tooth.
“And this reminds me: our first social event in Eden was little Cain’s inaugural bawl. I’m sure you’ll pardon me for getting that off my mind at this stage of the interview. If I tried that joke on Eve once I tried it fifty times, and every time I was met by the same blank stare. I’ve been waiting seven thousand years to tell it to somebody who would appreciate it. Thank you for smiling. I was the originator of the saying that women have no sense of humor. Man was made to mourn, and he never realizes it so keenly as when he hears a woman try to tell a funny story. I could talk to you all day about Eve, the only girl I ever loved—because there wasn’t any other. It didn’t take us long to get out of the Garden that time—principally because Eve didn’t have to wait to dress. Today it would be a different story. If clothes had been in vogue in the year one I suppose I might have waited two hours down in the front hall while Eve was getting ready and packing the trunks—and then probably I’d have had to go back two or three times for something she thought she’d forgotten after we got outside. Well, what I started to say was that little Eve bore up bravely under her misfortunes. She putup a splendid bluff. I’ll say that for her. Why, do you know, instead of sitting down and bewailing her hard fate after being put out of the Garden, she actually gave a coming out party! I certainly admired her nerve, one day, when I overheard her telling the new neighbors that Eden was all very well for young couples just starting housekeeping, but the neighborhood was getting so crowded and it was so near the zoo that we just really had to move. And then she remarked that she had never been able to get me to take enough exercise anyway and she thought gardening would now be just fine for me. It takes a woman to carry a thing off like that. Women are the world’s champion bluffers and yet we men think we know how to play poker. Why—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Adam, but I was asked to get an interview on feminine fashions of 1922, and whether you think they have changed for the better.”
“Oh, beg pardon, I’m sure. But when I get talking about Eve my tongue runs away with me. I suppose all married men are that way. It’s so delightful sometimes to have the chance of talking without feeling that you’re interrupting anybody. Feminine fashions, eh? Well, I’ve seen some changes in the last seven thousand years. I thought nothing could shockme any more, but I’ve had a few stiff jolts the last few months. I guess I’m not as strong as I used to be. Back in the old days, in the garden, fashions weren’t so much. That was before the trouble, but after we moved, plain, simple fig-leaves became passée, hopelessly old-fashioned and out-of-date. I read a book the other day entitled ‘How to Dress on Nothing a Year.’ That described our case exactly, in the early, happy, carefree days. There wasn’t a dressmaker in the world. If anybody had mentioned the word ‘modiste’ I’d have thought it was some new kind of animal I’d overlooked in taking the census. I wouldn’t have known what he meant. Ever have a sewing woman come to your house and stay a week at a time and always sit down with the family at table and be a damper on the conversation? Well, that’s one trouble we never experienced. Eve never came home from a walk in the woods and remarked carelessly that she’d just seen a hat downtown that could be bought for a song, and then it turned out that the song was ‘Old Hundred.’ Not for a minute. Nobody gave a hang in those days what others might be wearing as the latest style. We knew they might wear more, but they couldn’t well wear any less. When anybody wanted a Spring or Fall outfit, all he had to do was to go out inthe woods and pick a new suit off a tree. If you were getting a bit shabby and resolved to dress better in the future, you just turned over a new leaf.
“Then came moving day, and what a change! First crack out of the box the girls all began clamoring for clothes, real clothes. I remember one hot day—the thermometer would have been registering about ninety-five, if there had been one—the girls all set up a howl for furs—furs, mind you, with the sun hot enough to boil a cold storage egg. I tried to reason with ’em. ‘You don’t mean furs,’ I said, ‘you mean bathing suits or peek-aboo waists or mosquito netting. This is summer, the hottest weather since the year one. The heat has affected your brains. Go take a swim in the Euphrates and cool off.’ But they insisted that they knew what they were talking about, and so there was nothing for it but I must shoulder my old club and go off and kill a bear and a couple of foxes and a mink and fit ’em all out with a set of furs to wear while most folks were busy trying to dodge sunstrokes. That was the start, I believe, of this modern movement of the girls, wrapping themselves up in ‘summer furs’ just as soon as the weather gets hot enough. That next winter Eve and the girls started going around in the snow and ice in low shoes and short,open-work stockings and wish-bone waists and pneumonia sleeves, and defying the doctors. And that’s the worst of it, that’s what makes me mad. The girls do defy every last rule of health when it comes to dress and get away with it. The strongest man that ever lived couldn’t do it without a call from the undertaker, but the girls seem to thrive on their foolishness.
“The fashions of 1922! Well, looking at them pro and con, without blinders or smoked glasses or anything at all, I may say that they have nothing on the fashions of the year one. And the fashions of the year one (I am merely stating the naked truth) had nothing on anybody. One word more, and I trust you are strong enough to stand it: It’s all right for the women to be eager rivals, but they ought to draw the line at trying to outstrip each other.”
The next thing I knew I was in the ambulance headed for the Olympus Homeopathic Hospital. Old Adam had done his worst.