Life — November 11, 1915 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

898 Simple Justice to Noah and Adam E have received with an almost unnatural calmness the recent news of the discovery of a tablet, by , Archeologist Stephen Langdon, in which it appears that it was Noah, not Adam, who ate the forbidden fruit, and that this event happened two thousand years before the date of Adam and Eve. Personally, we do not believe this is true. Noah was undoubtedly a contributor to the Hearst newspapers of his age. He had read about Adam and Eve, and probably thought, by writing an article for the Ararat Journal and claiming to be the only original victim of woman's wile, that somebody (after the affair had all blown over) would pick up a copy of the paper, just as Professor Langdon has done, and that the world would believe it. We there- fore feel, in simple justice to Adam, that this whole affair ought to be shown up in its proper light. We may say, also, that this is not the only time a Hearst contributor has tried to impose upon posterity. In those days, when all the latest news of the world was published on stone tablets, the cunning writers would bury a copy of the paper every once in a while, knowing that some simple-minded archxologist would pick it up a few thousand years later and swallow it whole. -Archa- ologists, under the most favorable circumstances, are too prone to believe anything they read. If the truth were known it might also be found that some enemy of Noah who may have been running for political office was ha ing a little fun with him and making him out to be a back number. Noah may have been a good man in his place, but he HUGGING A DELUSION a calc y WHO GOES THERE?” 1 CHUST VANT TO MAKE A DRAWING OF “watt! “CHERMAN SPY. DER FORTIFICATIONS. “PASS IN, GERMAN SPY, HAVE YOU PENCIL AND PAPER?” knew little or nothing about the eternal principles of human nature. He thought he could reform the world by putting a Fifth Avenue bus on top of Mt. Ararat and making a clean sweep of everybody except his own imme- diate family. That is where he made his mistake. He started with too many people. We have been suffering for his error ever since. Adam, we fancy, under similar circumstances might have done better than Noah. He probably would have been guided by his wife’s judgment. We have always thought well of Adam in spite of many criticisms made of him by incompetent people. It must be remembered that when suddenly confronted by a crisis he had no pre- vious experience and was totally unprepared. He hadn't a torpedo or a submarine anywhere. He was short of guns. His stock of ammunition was so low that it made Eve laugh whenever she thought of it. Adam couldn't have been any worse off if he had had Josephus Daniels there to defend him. He sprang into the full bloom of matrimonial life with no training. No wonder he fell! But if he had been married as long as some of us have since then, he wouldn't have fallen. He would have slid. I never saw a man who wanted to trade places with his wife, but I've heard hundreds of girls wish out loud that they were men.—Emily James Putnam OLLEGE girls, no doubt, who had been taught every- thing except the art of heing a girl. Girls who are good at being girls do not wish to be men. comicbooks.com