Eve's Diary is Mark Twain's humorous fictional diary retelling the Garden of Eden from Eve's point of view. In brief entries, she records her first impressions of the world and her evolving relationship with Adam. It is a warm, witty meditation on curiosity, companionship, and the beginnings of human experience.
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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
EVE'S DIARY By Mark Twain Illustrated by Lester Ralph front.jpg (83K) title.jpg (43K)
Eve's Diary
Translated from the Original
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SATURDAY.—I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday. That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if there was a day-before-yesterday I was not there when it happened, or I should remember it. It could be, of course, that it did happen, and that I was not noticing.
Very well; I will be very watchful now, and if any daybefore-yesterdays happen I will make a note of it. It will be best to start right and not let the record get confused, for some instinct tells me that these details are going to be important to the historian some day. For I feel like an experiment,
I
feel
exactly
like
an
experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel convinced that that is what I AM—an experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more.
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Then if I am an experiment, am I the whole of it? No, I think not; I think the rest of it is part of it. I am the main part of it, but I think the rest of it has its share in the matter. Is my position assured, or do I have to watch it and take care of it? The latter, perhaps. Some instinct tells me that eternal vigilance is the price of supremacy. [That is a good phrase, I think, for one so
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