The matter started as a joke,
but it came somewhat near to materializing.
It is long ago--thirty years. Mr. Darwin's DESCENT OF MAN has been
in print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised
by it was still raging in pulpits and periodicals. In tracing
the genesis of the human race back to its sources, Mr. Darwin had
left Adam out altogether. We had monkeys, and "missing links,"
and plenty of other kinds of ancestors, but no Adam. Jesting with
Mr. Beecher and other friends in Elmira, I said there seemed to be
a likelihood that the world would discard Adam and accept the monkey,
and that in the course of time Adam's very name would be forgotten
in the earth; therefore this calamity ought to be averted;
a monument would accomplish this, and Elmira ought not to waste
this honorable opportunity to do Adam a favor and herself a credit.
Then the unexpected happened. Two bankers came forward and took
hold of the matter--not for fun, not for sentiment, but because they
saw in the monument certain commercial advantages for the town.
The project had seemed gently humorous before--it was more than
that now, with this stern business gravity injected into it.
The bankers discussed the monument with me. We met several times.
They proposed an indestructible memorial, to cost twenty-five
thousand dollars. The insane oddity of a monument set up in a village
to preserve a name that would outlast the hills and the rocks without
any such help, would advertise Elmira to the ends of the earth
--and draw custom.
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