MACADAMIZING ADAM

Eden was officially shut down some 250,000 years ago following a "walkout" by the delegates of the human race, attributed to their breaking the Management's game laws. As far as can be determined, there was no opposition offered and no disturbance or damage to private property inflicted in protest. Today, under somewhat different circumstantiates, the newspaper Adam and Eve have been brought out of the newspaper Eden in the Maine woods,--hurriedly wrapped up in horse-blankets, and transported in the depute of flavor to answer to the charge of violating modern game laws.

The efforts of all latter-day Adams have similarly met with failure. Ganquin departed for the woods and became infamous. "Joe" Knowles, of recent fame,--he who wrote a vivid description of tackling a passing deer that would have turned Munchausen a sickly green,--returned, mosquito bitten, to get his salary from the newspaper which financed him. Thoreau, who was Adanilo only in living close to nature, not venturing reproduction of the original, found himself in bitter and extended conflict with the town authorities of Concord for not paying his taxes. All in all, from start to finish, it appears that a vindictive society is out to "get" any attempts to break away from its ranks. The deserter is labelled A. W. O. L. and his efforts, instead of meeting with appreciation, find only derision or direct and vigorous disapproval.

On the surface, this appears unfair, just as it is hard not to feel a sneaking sentiment of sympathy for the Lucifer of "Paradise Lost". Rebels against the established order of things have from time immemorial found themselves butting a stone wall. And in the case of would-be Adams, usually sensationalists, the stone wall is too well-founded to give much but a crushing rebuttal.

Everyone at some time or other has felt the "call of the wild". But it is one thing to sit in a "movie" (particularly in this hot weather) and admire some "he-man" thrashing through the snow at six and a half miles an hour; and quite another to go out and do it as a steady diet. The state of nature is one state permanently barred from the union by common consent. There are too many porcellain bath-tubs and safety-razors in the world today to make primitive life attractive for any length of time to the overwhelming majority of people. Old Adam, senior, alive today, would be the last man to think of living as he was created, battling black flies for an existence, because he would know how to appreciate civilization. The few individuals who do find civilized life unbearable and run away, lay themselves open to the charge Stevenson perhaps unjustly made against Thoreau, of being "skullers", evaders of the duties and responsibilities of society.