"My dear Adam," cries she, "you look pensive and dismal. Do fling
down that stupid thing; for even if it should speak it would not be
worth attending to. Let us talk with one another, and with the sky,
and the green earth, and its trees and flowers. They will teach us
better knowledge than we can find here."

"Well, Eve, perhaps you are right," replies Adam, with a sort of
sigh. "Still I cannot help thinking that the interpretation of the
riddles amid which we have been wandering all day long might here be
discovered."

"It may be better not to seek the interpretation," persists Eve.
"For my part, the air of this place does not suit me. If you love
me, come away!"

She prevails, and rescues him from the mysterious perils of the
library. Happy influence of woman! Had he lingered there long
enough to obtain a clew to its treasures,--as was not impossible,
his intellect being of human structure, indeed, but with an
untransmitted vigor and acuteness,--had he then and there become a
student, the annalist of our poor world would soon have recorded the
downfall of a second Adam. The fatal apple of another Tree of
knowledge would have been eaten. All the perversions, and
sophistries, and false wisdom so aptly mimicking the true,--all the
narrow truth, so partial that it becomes more deceptive than
falsehood,--all the wrong principles and worse practice, the
pernicious examples and mistaken rules of life,--all the specious
theories which turn earth into cloudland and men into shadows,--all
the sad experience which it took mankind so many ages to accumulate,
and from which they never drew a moral for their future guidance,