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The first story, ''Extracts From Adam's Diary,'' was written in the 1890's; the second, ''Eve's Diary,'' more than a decade later. The earlier work is essentially one long joke. Twain had written it sometime before 1893. In that year, he was asked to write a piece for a publication about Niagara Falls and he realized that his unpublished ''Adam's Diary'' would be suitable if he placed the Garden of Eden at Niagara Falls.

''Where else could it have been?'' Mr. Twain says. ''Wasn't Niagara just made for the Garden of Eden? Of course it was the Garden of Eden.''

The work appeared in ''The Niagara Book,'' which contained 10 essays, including ''The Earliest Authentic Mention of Niagara Falls. Extracts From Adam's Diary. Translated From the Original Ms. by Mark Twain.'' In the Garden at Niagara Falls, Adam is confused by a new creature that has suddenly appeared and that has long hair. It tells him its name is Eve, and it devotes most of its time to naming everything it finds in the Garden. ''I get no chance to name anything myself,'' Adam complains.

Later, he reports that she has taken up with a snake, and he foresees trouble. After the Fall, when Cain appears, Adam is not sure what this being is - perhaps it is a fish, perhaps a kangaroo. Eve ''caught it while I was up country trapping on the north shore of the Erie,'' he says. ''Caught it in the timber a couple of miles from our dugout.

''It makes curious devilish noises when not satisfied,'' Adam writes, ''and says 'goo-goo' when it is.''

Twelve years after ''The Niagara Book'' appeared, Twain received requests to contribute to Harper's Magazine. ''Eve's Diary'' was the result. It was first published in Harper's in December 1905.

''My technique was to use 'Extracts From Adam's Diary' as her unwitting and unconscious text,'' he says, ''since to use any other text would have been an imbecility.'' The two works were later published in one volume as ''The Diary of Adam and Eve.''

In her diary, Eve writes that she is not sure what Adam is - perhaps it is a man, perhaps a reptile, perhaps both. ''It has no hips; it tapers like a carrot,'' she says of the strange being. ''When it stands, it spreads itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture.'' ''Eve's Diary'' is very different in tone from Adam's: it is gentle, amusing, even sentimental. Twain's wife had died the year before, and the piece was essentially a tribute to her as Eve, the first woman, all women. It focuses on what Twain thinks of as the essential female characteristics: love of beauty and nature, affection, intuition, curiosity. ''The core and center of my nature is love of the beautiful, a passion for the beautiful,'' Eve writes.

The final entry in the combined diaries reads: ''At Eve's grave: Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.''

The stories do not have the bitterness, melancholy, misanthropy and pessimism that characterized a good deal of Twain's later work. In those later years, he lost much money in unsuccessful printing and publishing ventures, he suffered through the long illness and death of his wife, Olivia, as well as the deaths of two of his daughters.

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Fiorello! (1959)

Tenderloin (1960)

Man in the Moon (1963)

She Loves Me (1963)

Fiddler on the Roof (1964)

The Apple Tree (1966)

The Rothschilds (1970)

from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/stars/jerry-block-and-sheldon-harnick/