Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc.Ingersoll, Robert Green
Religion
Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc.
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Then they had their courtship, with the nightingale singing and the
stars shining and the flowers blooming, and they fell in love. Imagine
that courtship! No prospective fathers or mothers-in-law; no prying
and gossiping neighbors; nobody to say, "Young man, how do you expect
to support her?" Nothing of that kind, nothing but the nightingale
singing its song of joy and pain, as though the thorn already touched
its heart. They were married by the Supreme Brahma, and he said to
them, "Remain here; you must never leave this island." Well, after a
little while the man--and his name was Adami, and the woman's name was
Heva--said to Heva: "I believe I'll look about a little." He wanted to
go West. He went to the western extremity of the island where there
was a little narrow neck of land connecting it with the mainland, and
the devil, who is always playing pranks with us, produced a mirage, and
when he looked over to the mainland, such hills and vales, such dells
and dales, such mountains crowned with snow, such cataracts clad in
bows of glory did he see there, that he went back and told Heva: "The
country over there is a thousand times better than this, let us
migrate." She, like every other woman that ever lived, said: "Let well
enough alone we have all we want; let us stay here." But he said: "No,
let us go;" so she followed him, and when they came to this narrow neck
of land, he took her on his back like a gentleman, and carried her
over. But the moment they got over, they heard a crash, and, looking
back, discovered that this narrow neck of land had fallen into the sea.
The mirage had disappeared, and there was naught but rocks and sand,
and the Supreme Brahma cursed them both to the lowest Hell.
Then it was that the man spoke--and I have liked him ever since for
it--"Curse me, but curse not her; it was not her fault, it was mine."
That's the kind of a man to start a world with. The Supreme Brahma
said: "I will save her but not thee." And she spoke out of her
fullness of love, out of a heart in which there was love enough to make
all her daughters rich in holy affection, and said: "If thou wilt not
spare him, spare neither me. I do not wish to live without him, I
love him." Then the Supreme Brahma said--and I have liked him ever
since I read it--"I will spare you both, and watch over you and your
children forever." Honor bright, is that not the better and grander
story?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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