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+Project Gutenberg's The Book of Gud, by Dan Spain and Harold Hersey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Book of Gud
+
+Author: Dan Spain
+        Harold Hersey
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2010 [EBook #33501]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF GUD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Louise Davies, Roger Taft, Mary Meehan and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            The Book of Gud
+
+                     By Dan Spain and Harold Hersey
+
+This etext was produced from Main Street, July 1929. Extensive research
+did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication
+was renewed.
+
+
+     _DIP INTO THIS NOVEL ANYWHERE.... It deals with a god in whom
+     nobody believed, and of his adventures the day after eternity.
+     For instance, try Chapter XVI._
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+One Sunday afternoon I was driving through a sparsely settled region on
+the southwest slope of the Catskills. It was growing late and I was
+anxious to get back to New York, but I had lost my way. In an attempt to
+cut across to the Hudson River road I turned up a poorly traveled lane,
+which, after ten miles of going, petered out into a mere abandoned
+trail.
+
+I kept on this for perhaps three miles further without passing a house,
+and then came to a low rambling structure half hidden among a grove of
+ancient overhanging trees. It was near lamp-lighting time and I was
+puzzled to know whether the place was deserted or not. I turned my car
+in toward the house, bumped over loose rocks--and my engine died.
+
+A man appeared on the porch. He was lanky in build, a little stooped,
+apparently about forty years of age, and was dressed in a blue flannel
+shirt and a pair of corduroy trousers.
+
+"Can you tell me how far it is to New York?" I asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How far is it?"
+
+"About a hundred miles as the crow flies."
+
+"But how far is it by automobile?"
+
+"I don't know," replied the man, who seemed to be better posted on crow
+flights than auto travel.
+
+He offered no further remarks, but stood there indifferently eyeing the
+car.
+
+Curbing my annoyance I inquired: "How do I get out to a good automobile
+road?"
+
+"The way you came in."
+
+Realizing that I could get no information from this uncivil being, I
+pushed the starter--not a sound. I got out and cranked the engine--not a
+kick. I looked into my gas tank--not a drop!
+
+"Where is the nearest gas station?" I demanded.
+
+"I don't know--I burn kerosene," was the terse reply; and the man turned
+and entered the house.
+
+I tried to recall the last gas station I had passed, and realized it
+must have been all of fifteen miles behind. It was now growing dark. I
+climbed into the car to think of a way out of my awkward situation, but
+all I could think of was that there were sound reasons for abandoned
+farms. Then I got to wondering who this queer character was and why he
+was living here.
+
+As I had slept but little the night before, I must have dozed off, for
+the next thing I knew, a voice was saying: "Supper is ready."
+
+I got out of the car and followed the man through a dark hall into a
+large, low room, at one end of which a fire was burning briskly in a
+huge stone fireplace. In the center of the room was a table where we sat
+down to a dinner of delicious hot biscuits and a great pot of honey.
+
+"These biscuits are fine," I said.
+
+"They are."
+
+I ate another in silence. "And the honey is exquisite."
+
+"It is."
+
+"Do you keep bees?"
+
+"Yes, millions of them."
+
+"Do you keep any other stock?" I asked, thinking a glass of milk would
+taste fine.
+
+"Yes, a blind cat."
+
+"Do you find the bees profitable?"
+
+"No, I keep them for company."
+
+"Why do you live in this lonesome place?"
+
+"To avoid automobilists."
+
+I ate three more biscuits, drowned in honey, then the silence became
+unbearable. "Do you do anything else besides keep bees?"
+
+"I read."
+
+"That is interesting. What do you read?"
+
+"Books."
+
+"Ah!" I said, "perhaps you write also."
+
+"I do."
+
+"What do you write?"
+
+"Books."
+
+We finished the meal in silence, then my host arose and cleared the
+table. Meanwhile I wandered about the big room and glanced at the titles
+on the bookshelves. I was amazed at the catholicity of his taste. Side
+by side, with Godesius was "In His Steps"; leaning against
+Schopenhauer's "_Die Welt Als Wille Und Vorstellung_," was a popular
+novel of the day.
+
+Thus made to realize that my host was a person of some caliber, and
+aspiring to pursue his acquaintance upon an intellectual plane, I
+stepped forward, as he came through the door, and extended my hand,
+saying: "My name is Harold Hersey."
+
+"What of it?" he said, and turned to adjust a kerosene lamp. Then he
+came forward and extended his hand. "I will not say I am glad to meet
+you until I find out that I am."
+
+"Your name?" I inquired.
+
+"Dan Spain."
+
+"That sounds like a nom de plume," I ventured.
+
+"It is."
+
+Feeling that there was nothing further that I could say, I pulled out my
+pipe and seated myself before the fire.
+
+Dan Spain settled into a chair nearby. "The fact that your name is
+Harold Hersey means nothing to me," he remarked, "but as I presume that
+you will spend the night here, I might be able to make it less
+disagreeable for you if I knew your trade or occupation."
+
+I have always been a little sensitive about revealing my profession to
+strangers, because, unfortunately, some men do not regard it highly; so
+I replied: "What would you judge me to be from my appearance?"
+
+"A cigar salesman."
+
+I hastened to controvert him. "Looks are deceiving," I said, "I am a
+writer."
+
+So I read him the following. There was a curious silence afterwards:
+
+    _When the limpid highbrows chatter
+    And their candlelights are low;
+    When their purple souls are bitter
+    From discussing thus and so,
+    And the Lucy Stoners twitter
+    In some frowsy studio;_
+
+    _When the fat-legged mantees mutter
+    And you see their eyeballs twitch;
+    When the parlor wobblies hover
+    Around the newly rich,
+    And the men of bread-and-butter
+    Get the "art-for-art's-sake" itch...._
+
+    _Then I don't regret the making
+    Of this idle verse of mine,
+    And my pickling by the Poohbahs
+    In their literary brine,
+    Nor the gesture of a Burdash
+    For not hewing to the line._
+
+    _My humor is the laughter
+    From life's tickled ribs. It's rough,
+    For it's written from the raw
+    Where I like to get my stuff,
+    And it ought to rise in letters:
+    Goodness knows it's light enough._
+
+"It is nothing to be ashamed of," said Dan Spain, "I once worked in a
+slaughter house."
+
+"What books have you had published?" I asked after a time.
+
+"None."
+
+Having had a number of books published myself, I felt that I might be
+of some service to this hermit scholar who had evidently not adjusted
+himself to the practical exigencies of the publishing business. "It is
+just possible," I suggested, "that my experiences and acquaintances
+might enable me to help you get some of your work in print--that is, if
+you would care to tell me what you are writing."
+
+Dan Spain leaned over and attended the fire. After poking it to his
+satisfaction, he picked up a live coal and dropped it in the bowl of his
+pipe. Finally he spoke, and his words were startling enough. "Just at
+present," he said, "I am writing an autobiography of God."
+
+There was a sudden rattle at the shutter.
+
+"What was that?" I asked nervously.
+
+Dan Spain laughed. "Wind," he replied, "wind through the trees.
+Lightning may strike us dead at any moment because of my blasphemous
+ambitions. That is why I live as a hermit--should God's lightning strike
+at me, there will be no complications through it hitting an innocent
+bystander. You are the first person who has spent a night under this
+roof with me. I am sorry to subject you to the danger, but you came
+without an invitation."
+
+"But why," I asked, "do you want to write a blasphemous book? You are
+aware, I suppose, that it might be suppressed."
+
+"In a country, the constitution of which guarantees freedom of speech
+and religious liberty, I grant the possibility."
+
+"Then why," I persisted, "do you want to write it?"
+
+"Because," said Spain, "I am tired of tempering the wind of truth to the
+lamb of stupidity. Must we so fear the anger of the childish mob, that
+we dare not deprive them of their fairy tales of ghosts and gobblins,
+lest they kick out the props of civilizations? Must we, who no longer
+bend the knees of the mind in spook idolatry nor shake with the ague of
+hell fear, pretend that science and religion have been reconciled and
+mumble incantations to a metaphysical essence instead of saying to a
+maternal God to open the windows of the sky and spill rain out of
+heaven? I want to write a blasphemous book because the gods who throttle
+human intelligence and block human progress have revealed their
+vulnerable spot--for they are the gods who fear laughter."
+
+"But surely?" I said, "all that is old stuff--Ingersoll has been dead
+twenty years. Present day thinkers only smile indulgently when some
+handsome faced bucolic clergyman invades a metropolitan pulpit and gets
+the forgotten monkey argument into the headlines of the daily press.
+Modern philosophy has reconciled religion and science and shown that
+they hail from the same psychic origins."
+
+"The dictionary has never been made a sacred book," returned Spain, "and
+I cannot try men for heresy who blaspheme it. If a man wishes to
+designate the emotions he experiences when gazing at the stars by the
+term 'religion' I cannot prevent him. My dictionary defines religion as
+'a belief in binding the spirit of man to a supernatural being' and
+further includes the idea of duties and rites founded upon such belief.
+If that be religion the war between religion and science can never end.
+The particular battle ground may change from age to age; it may be
+concerned with the mobility of the sun, the origin of species or the
+immaculate conception...."
+
+"Well what of it," I remarked, "those things are all relatively
+unimportant."
+
+"True" said Spain, "they are, but science has a job in the future that
+is vastly important and religion stands in its way."
+
+"And what is that?" I asked.
+
+"It is the job of saving civilization from degenerating into a chaos
+besides which the dark ages, medievalism would seem Bericlean by
+comparison. As we are headed now we are on the road for a grand smash.
+The growing complexities of civilization can only be managed by a human
+breed of superior capacity, and instead of breeding a race of better men
+we are letting the inborn capacity of the human species regress and
+degenerate.
+
+"Natural selection or the survival of the fittest raised us up from
+brutes, and civilization stops the operation of that law which made it
+possible. Blind charity preserves the rabbitries of stupidity--the
+differential birth rate snuffs out the flame of innate intelligence. The
+only visible salvation is systematic breeding of superior men; and
+against human breeding religion stands garbed in all her mummeries,
+shielding behind her wish fancies of immortality, the leering face of
+the ape man returned to prowl in the ruins of all we have builded.
+
+"The little priests of religion play in sweet innocence with their hopes
+of heaven having not the least conception of the human drift. But the
+high priests of religion know very well on which side their bread is
+buttered. They know that spook worship thrives only in the soil of
+stupidity. They will fight to the last ditch against any serious effort
+to breed men for brains. Their creeds are smoothly schemed to block
+intelligence in its efforts at biological perpetuation. The fable of a
+ghostly paternity of the human species fits their purpose like a glove.
+By inoculating the new-born human animal with a fantasy called a soul
+they clothe the act of reproduction with a garb of sanctification and
+endow all sexual and parental functions with rites so skillfully
+ingrained into popular thought that men who renounce the more patent
+absurdities of theology are still soaked in the sacramental conception
+of reactionary morality whenever it touches the reproduction of the
+species. So they hope to maintain our present scheme of mongrel breeding
+which is fast blotting out the hard won grains of the tedious climb of
+human evolution and riding us for a smash of the fabric of civilization,
+because the children of the stupid cannot maintain the structure we have
+wrought."
+
+"But surely," I said, "you do not intend to propound such ponderous
+biological and sociological doctrines in an autobiography of your
+god--if you do so I am sure it will be very dull. I had hoped you had in
+mind some readable piece of literary composition."
+
+"So I had; I was not telling you what I intended to write. You asked me
+why I wanted to write it. The god who mustn't be laughed at could make
+himself very ridiculous by setting down the story of his life. He should
+not be a metaphysical concept. I should prefer a nice old man with robe
+and halo and whiskers--I am sure he should have whiskers."
+
+"And just when," I asked, "would you have him born?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Spain, "I have stalled on eternity. I find it
+quite an awkward span of life to cover in a manuscript."
+
+"Why not dodge the difficulty," I suggested, "by having your story begin
+the day after eternity."
+
+Spain turned his gaze upon me with a twinkling light in his eyes. "Young
+man," he said, "No wonder you tried to drive an automobile without
+gasoline--you are suffering from a touch of genius.
+
+"I shall doubtless need aid," confessed Spain, more cordial, I felt,
+than he had previously seemed.
+
+As I caught the flame of enthusiasm in this man's conviction, my heart
+warmed to him. I found myself interested in his proposed "Autobiography
+of God"--interested and critical. "It might amuse you," I said, "to know
+that somewhere among my own writing notes I have this item jotted down.
+'A tale that should begin the day after eternity.'"
+
+Dan Spain looked at me, his eyes twinkling, "Not half bad," he said.
+
+And so began an exchange of suggestions, a mutual laying on the table of
+the most guarded treasures of one's over-reaching ambitions to write the
+impossible.
+
+As the night wore on our wits sharpened each on the other, and before
+dawn broke, Dan Spain and I both realized that we had cast in outline
+form the skeleton of a most ambitious piece of writing. Then we awoke to
+the fact, that we, who were acquaintances of a single session had joined
+our wits to create something that could not be disentangled without its
+destruction.
+
+"And now," I said, "who is going to write this tale of the adventures of
+the great god Gud?"
+
+"We must write it together," replied Spain, "nothing else would be
+honest."
+
+There followed a period of intermittant work that strung out through
+several seasons. We worked sometimes alone; at other times I spent
+week-ends at Spain's hermitage, and on a few occasions I dragged the
+hermit down to my quarters in Greenwich Village. As the manuscript
+gathered bulk, I arranged for its typing, having always a copy made for
+each of us.
+
+During the summer of 1924, I spent most of the month of July at Spain's
+hermitage and we got the book completed, though there were still many
+parts of it on which we had serious differences of opinion. Taking my
+draft with me, I went back to New York, where I had to attend to some
+neglected editorial duties.
+
+Spain had agreed to come down to my place on the week-end of August
+thirtieth for a final effort to see if we could reconcile our
+differences of opinion.
+
+The intervening weather in the city was oppressive and I did no further
+work on the manuscript. When August thirtieth arrived Spain did not show
+up. I waited for him another week and then drove my car up to his
+hermitage in the Catskills.
+
+I bumped over the stones of the miserable trail and brought my car to a
+halt in front of where Spain's house had stood. Before me I saw a
+yawning circle of trees with the inner sides scorched and withered, and
+the great gaunt stone chimney alone now rearing from a heap of ashes.
+
+The combustion had been complete. Not a charred stick remained. All was
+white ash, and well packed down, for it had rained heavily a few nights
+before.
+
+The evidence of that rain sent my mind hurtling back in review of the
+weather since Spain had left New York. I remembered that one night a few
+days before Spain was due to return I had found my apartment so
+oppressive that I had gone to Brighton Beach. As I lay on the sands, it
+must have been toward midnight, a squall had driven across the sky and
+there had been a bit of a blow and a magnificent electrical display, but
+only a few heavy drops of rain had fallen.
+
+Brighton Beach was over a hundred miles from this spot in the Catskills,
+and the weather in the two locations might have been wholly dissimilar.
+Still it was suggestive of the worst possible fears.
+
+I looked about for something with which I could prod into the debris.
+The only thing available was a great twisted steel lightning rod that
+reared up through the ashes. The result of my effort was a discovery
+from which I recoiled.
+
+For a moment I found it expedient to step away from the place. In doing
+so, I unconsciously dragged the piece of lightning rod along with me.
+Behind a screen of foliage I sat down weakly. Presently, my eyes
+followed along that lightning rod, and I noted that one end was freshly
+broken where I had bent it until it snapped in two. But the other end
+had been the tip that pointed skyward above the house. This I now saw
+was fused and melted in a way that no heat of a burning wood could have
+possibly accomplished.
+
+I need write but little of the duties that followed. Suffice to say,
+that every paper that might have revealed more than my slight knowledge
+of Spain's origin or connections had been destroyed. The county records
+yielded nothing except the deed to his property purchased the year
+before I met him. There was nothing for me to do but turn matters over
+to the local authorities and let the law take its course.
+
+I returned to New York and slept off the weariness the ordeal had
+engendered.
+
+Then I went to my desk and produced my draft of "The Book of Gud" and
+turned slowly through it. It was all there, a complete manuscript, but
+including many things on which our differences of opinion had not been
+reconciled--and Dan Spain was dead!
+
+Gradually the responsibilities of my position dawned upon me. I was
+joint author of "The Book of Gud." However, my "partner in crime" was
+dead. We had written much of the prose together although much of it was
+by Spain alone. The verse was mine.
+
+How helpless I felt with this gigantic task staring me in the face!
+
+Sensing keenly the sacred trust of fidelity to the intent of a dead
+author, I did not feel at liberty to make the changes in Spain's draft
+that I felt should be made. Yet, if my name were to be on the jacket of
+this book, I did not feel that I could possibly let some of the things
+in Spain's draft pass without registering my protest. Conversely I must,
+in all fairness, concede that he had felt the same about some of my
+lines.
+
+My decision on going over the work the first time was that all I could
+do was to let the manuscript pass on to the world exactly as it was when
+God's lightning stilled forever the pen of Dan Spain.
+
+However, upon going over the manuscript a second time, I found my
+instincts as an editor overwhelming this excellent resolution. For
+several months I was torn between my conscience as a writer with its
+full sense of duty to a dead author and my editorial conscience with its
+fuller sense of duty to the reading public--and I did nothing with the
+manuscript.
+
+But at last a great compromising thought occurred to me. I could leave
+the manuscript stand intact, but I could write a preface in which I
+could explain the dreadful dilemma in which the death of my collaborator
+left me, and why I do not feel, under the distressing circumstances,
+that I should be held responsible for those parts of Spain's draft which
+do not meet my approval. My decision has made possible the publication
+of "The Book of Gud"; for otherwise I should have burned my copy also.
+
+It is my hope that this explanation will mitigate the wrath of many
+readers, for it is a beautiful fact about human nature that it rarely
+holds the dead as responsible as it does the living.
+
+I frankly confess that it has been a task to hold to this resolution,
+for I have been sorely tempted to delete as well as comment on some of
+Spain's text. As proof of my integrity in this matter, I have even left
+in the text of the book a note addressed to me by Spain in which he has
+expressed his contempt for my work in a most ungentlemanly manner.
+
+I hold that the canons of literary ethics do not permit one to alter a
+dead man's manuscript. If they did, how quickly we could enrich the
+literary heritage of American children by expurgating the classics of
+Europe and rewriting them in a style acceptable to the American sense of
+decency.
+
+To some very literally minded persons it may seem that the view just
+expressed is not consistent with my capacity as a joint author of "The
+Book of Gud." Let me therefore discount any such criticisms by
+explaining that the evil effects of literature all come from its
+realism. "The Book of Gud" is romantic and symbolic. There is true
+beauty in symbolism because of the variety of possible interpretations.
+Each reader can gain the meaning particularly adapted to himself.
+
+The greatest art is that which can be interpreted in the most devious
+ways: Witness the character of Hamlet, the enigma of Mona Lisa, the
+riddle of the Book of Revelations. To me Hamlet is the personification
+of a weak will in a strong mind, due to the European habit of inbreeding
+royalty. Mona Lisa, I believe, reveals the patience of a great woman who
+knows that she will ultimately get what she wants. The Book of
+Revelation I deem to be a symbolic anticipation of the Darwinian theory
+of man's descent from prehistoric animals.
+
+In "The Book of Gud" there is great symbolism, and in symbolism there
+can be nothing degrading, as each mind interprets it according to its
+own intellectual and moral plane. Hence there can never be degradation
+in symbolic literature, except for degraded minds.
+
+Here then is "The Book of Gud"; and, with the exception of this preface,
+I bow to the principle that death should end an author's work and so it
+should remain, even as Sodom and Gomorrah, Pompeii and Herculaneum
+remained as they were when fire rained down on them from Heaven.
+
+    (Signed),
+
+    HAROLD HERSEY.
+
+    London, England,
+    April First, 1925.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+    From out the distant and neglected past,
+    The "is" or "isn'tness" of things remain
+    As ever still unsolved. Admitting this,
+    Outscepting every sceptic, we've indulged
+    Our wildest fancies ... where unknowables
+    Go chasing unattainables. We've spared
+    No god, religion, science, sex or art,
+    But laid about us with a heavy fist.
+    There are so many twists of humor
+    In Euclid's cubes and angles. Laughter hides
+    With playfulness behind philosophy
+    Like little monsters in an ancient's beard.
+    So many gods are out of work--they beg
+    For bread and sympathy to empty stalls
+    Where once delighted thousands paid them praise.
+    Religion simmers in the pot, or boils
+    Completely over as the housewives nod.
+    Strange trolls peek out from books of mathematics,
+    Grimace around cold scientific theories.
+    Dwarfs and goblins play at hide and seek
+    In empty attics of the homes of creeds;
+    While sex is swept with laughter like a gale
+    When we disturb the surface with an axe.
+    Have mercy on our hero, Gud the Great.
+    The clouds of history had cloaked his tomb
+    Like old Zumbissus, Mord and Red Torswaine,
+    Until we carefully unearthed the tale
+    Gud's wild adventures furnish to romance.
+    We took his crumbling bones and gave them life--
+    His human frailties and deeds of valor.
+    No doubt heroically he suffers thus
+    At our faint hands--but let the subject be.
+    The future cannot hide its heroes yet
+    To come beneath a cloud of silence ... hands
+    Other than ours--aliens and scornful, too,
+    Would some day come upon this untold tale
+    And lay it bare with scalpels cold and sharp.
+    At least we had regard for laws of prophesy,
+    The customs of a future time. Here stands
+    The Book of Gud upon the rocks of truth.
+    Yet when one goes to Rome, Dame Rumor says,
+    Burn Roman candles--this have we done.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+There was once a god whose name was Gud.
+
+Gud was not a real god such as men believe in. He was only Gud, whom no
+one believes in, and so does not exist, and will not unless some man who
+reads this Book of Gud should believe in him and so make him (for that
+is how gods are made). If there be sufficient faith in a god, all is
+well with that god, since he is made by faith alone, without works, and
+is dead. But a little faith is a dangerous thing.
+
+Now Gud had had a universe, and had ordered it destroyed, and had
+ordained that eternity be over and done.
+
+The morning after, Gud sat alone in space. All things else had been
+destroyed save Gud and space; and Gud was lonely, for creation had been
+done and undone and was no more, and eternity was over; and time was no
+more, for there were no more stars to mark the course of time.
+
+Since this book is being written now, printed now, and read now and
+burned now; and since printing presses and reading eyes and consuming
+fires exist in an age of whirling worlds and beating hearts and ticking
+watches, which mark time and thus seem to make it, it is that this book
+is not. Those things that seem to happen herein, one after another,
+really happened instantaneously,--for this is a tale of a timeless time,
+and there will be, when these things are, no time at all, and no hope of
+any time, since this story begins, and is finished the day after
+eternity, which is after the ending of all that was and before the
+beginning of that which will never be.
+
+Therefore, this story is really not a story, because it never could
+happen until after all things had happened. So what you now are reading
+has no meaning at all and no existence, real or unreal.
+
+So Gud sat alone in space. The fact that Gud was sitting is very
+important. Gud sat down in haste at the very last moment of eternity, as
+all things were being destroyed; for he saw that the very next moment
+there would be nothing left on which to stand.
+
+As Gud sat alone in space, he thought of everything that had been and
+remembered everything that was, and Gud saw that it was not good--for he
+had nothing at all to do. So Gud thought he would listen to his heart
+beat; but alas, he could not hear his heart beat for there was no time
+for his heart to beat to.
+
+So Gud decided that he would do nothing, but alas he could do nothing
+for there was nothing to do; and Gud feared nothing, for it did not
+exist, and like all of us, Gud most feared that which does not exist.
+
+So Gud repented him that he had ordained that eternity be over and done;
+and that he had destroyed the universe and all that was therein
+contained, save himself and space.
+
+Then Gud said to himself, there being no one else to talk to: "I must
+find something to do, or I shall go mad."
+
+Since Gud knew all things, and remembered all things, he recalled that
+men in whose image he was made, also frequently retired prematurely from
+business and were hard put for something to do. Gud remembered also that
+great men, even though they were not as great as he, when finding
+themselves in similar circumstances, sometimes wrote their
+autobiographies.
+
+So Gud decided to write his autobiography. And Gud wrote it. He wrote it
+instantaneously, there being no time in which to write it. Gud did not
+write it upon tables of stone, as there was no stone out of which to
+make the tables; and besides there was no gravity and hence the stones
+would have floated away.
+
+So Gud wrote his autobiography on nothing. But as Gud knew all things
+he saw no need of writing them down, since there was no one else to read
+them, and so he really never wrote his autobiography on anything.
+However when he had finished the manuscript, he sent it to a publisher.
+
+And waited....
+
+Gud received but little satisfaction from writing his autobiography
+because it was never published. Had Gud been a true literary artist this
+would have made no difference, since to the true artist the plaudits and
+ducats of the multitude have no meaning whatever. But the ducats of the
+multitude are the only reason publishers ever publish books, as any
+honest publisher will tell you. The reason that you do not know this is
+because you have not been told, and the reason that you have not been
+told is because publishers hate publicity.
+
+But, while Gud was not a true artist, as any critic who has looked at
+his work could tell you, yet he was a good artisan and had considerable
+experience in his craft, which was that of creating things. So now,
+receiving no satisfaction from having written his autobiography, Gud
+decided that there was nothing else to do but to go back to work at his
+old trade. So he arose and went to get his kit of well-beloved tools,
+which were the tools of creation.
+
+As there was no light Gud was in the dark. So he walked in a circle, as
+one always does when he walks in the dark and does not know where he is
+going. The reason that Gud did not know where he was going is because he
+started out to get his tools of creation.
+
+Then Gud recalled that he had destroyed everything, including the tools.
+And at the thought that he had made a perfect job of destruction, Gud
+decided that it was the end of a perfect day, and he fell asleep.
+
+When Gud awoke it was as it was. He did not even feel rested, for he had
+not slept very well, having had a bad dream. This dream was so bad that
+one might have called it a nightmare, had it not been dreamed the day
+after eternity and perforce must have been a day dream.
+
+Gud realized that he ought to have the dream interpreted, for a dream is
+meaningless until it is interpreted.
+
+So he decided that he needed a psychoanalyst. All of these having been
+destroyed, Gud decided to create one. This decision brought him back to
+the painful realization that he possessed no tools of creation. So Gud
+decided to make a new set of tools of creation. But alas there was
+nothing out of which to make the tools of creation--nothing except Gud
+himself and space. So not wishing to dismember himself, Gud decided that
+space was the only raw material available out of which to fashion new
+tools of creation. There was plenty of space--probably no more than
+there had always been, but it seemed more because there was nothing in
+it.
+
+As there was no light, Gud could not see the space, but he knew it was
+there because it had not been destroyed; moreover, he could feel it. In
+fact it was all about him and plenty more just like it everywhere else.
+So Gud reached out and felt of the space, and thereby discovered that
+the space was full of points.
+
+Then Gud picked up two of the points and placed them, one on his right
+and the other on his left.
+
+And Gud felt the two points, and lo, there was a straight line between
+them. As Gud felt of the straight line, he discovered that it was the
+shortest distance between two points. Now Gud remembered that all
+through eternity, which was finished and done, a straight line had
+always been the shortest distance between two points, and Gud remembered
+also that this was the truth.
+
+And the truth that was in the straight line mocked Gud. So he took hold
+of the straight line and bent it until it was no longer straight. But as
+he bent the straight line another took its place, and truth was still in
+the straight line; for it was still the shortest distance between two
+points. So Gud struck off one of the points that was at one end of the
+straight line. But straightway another point came at the end of that
+which remained of the line, and truth was still in the line, for it was
+still the shortest distance between two points.
+
+And Gud became heated with wrath. So he picked up a palm leaf fan and
+fanned himself. Then Gud said: "That which I cannot destroy I will
+change." And he set about to make a curved line between two points that
+should be shorter than a straight line.
+
+Gud toiled diligently at the task for for what would have been a long
+time if there had been any time. After he had made an infinite number of
+curves between the two points, all of which were longer than the
+straight line, he chanced to make a curve which he fitted between the
+two points. When he felt it Gud was filled with pride--for the last
+curve which he had made was a shorter distance between two points than a
+straight line, and thus was truth destroyed.
+
+But this curve which Gud had made was a changing curve, and it continued
+to change. And Gud became frightened so that his knees smote one against
+the other. The curve ceased not in its changing and presently it had
+changed so much that it became impossible, and Gud said: "This thing
+which I have made is impossible." So he took the impossible curve and
+swung it about his head with a mighty swing and hurled it out of space.
+
+When Gud had hurled the impossible curve out of space he felt again
+between the two points and found that the straight line had returned,
+and was again the shortest distance between the two points. And Gud
+said: "Let it be so. Old truth is better than new fiction."
+
+And the eyes of Gud were opened, and he knew that there was much truth
+all about him, and that all space was full of truths and that the truths
+of space were mathematics. And Gud said: "It is good, for lo, here is
+something out of which I can fashion me the tools of creation!"
+
+So Gud took a circle and a square, and, with the square, Gud squared the
+circle. Then he took a plane and planed off the sides of the circle he
+had squared and so produced a diamond, which is an element. Then Gud
+transmuted the first element into many elements and so produced matter.
+
+Now Gud was about to mix the matter with the mathematics to form the
+chemical life, but he was weary and sat down to rest by the heap of
+matter and mathematics and pondered himself whether life was worth the
+making. And Gud decided that if he made life he would have to make also
+many laws of nature to control life and that all of this would be much
+trouble, especially, if they were to be all hand-made.
+
+As he sat debating what he should do, Gud picked up a circle, and,
+toying with it, he happened to turn it about so that it described a
+sphere. It was a thing of beauty and he tossed it up to see how it felt
+from a distance. When Gud tossed the sphere it began whirling; and as it
+whirled, it gave off a sweet sound. The sound pleased Gud and he turned
+other circles about and made more spheres and set them whirling; and
+they made a concord of sweet sounds which was the music of the spheres
+and like unto the sound made by dewdrops falling on the petals of pale
+poppies by the amber light of a low hung moon shining upon a
+moss-covered tomb.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+    Shepherd and Son and little Bo-peep
+    Herd all the souls like frightened sheep.
+    Staff in hand, hair like snow
+    Does even He know where they go?
+
+    A swish as of a sudden wind....
+    An open window ... a candle thinned,
+    From broken bodies' spirits leap
+    To join the flock of frightened sheep.
+
+    So ever They drive them on and on
+    Down the night and over the dawn,
+    And when dusk comes through golden bars
+    They urge them onward up the stars.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+When the music had done Gud picked up a curved line which was shaped
+like a scimetar and whacked at the whirling spheres. Each time Gud
+whacked, he whacked off a disk from a whirling sphere; and the disks
+continued to whirl and ceased not. Soon a corner of space was full of
+whirling wheels. And Gud wondered what made the wheels go round.
+
+As he felt the wheels go round Gud remembered a far and distant world he
+had once visited before he had destroyed the universe. He remembered
+that this little world had been full of machines and that the machines
+had wheels going round, and could make things. And Gud remembered as far
+back as a god can remember, and yet he could not recall ever having made
+machines that made things. He saw that he had been unprogressive to
+have created with hand tools and never to have made machines nor the
+things that machines made.
+
+So Gud resolved straightway to make a creating machine. He gathered the
+wheels together and filled them with substance from the heap of matter
+that he had made. And then he took squares and triangles and curves and
+cones and rhomboids and tetrahedrons and a great many other things that
+were in space; and he worked very fast and furiously, and presently he
+had made a machine which ground with a deafening roar, for it was a
+high-speed, self-acting, creating machine, the like of which had never
+been.
+
+And the machine began to create and to grind out things. But there was
+nothing alive in the things which the creating machine ground out, for
+it had not in it the breath of life, but only the spirit of the machine.
+Those things which the machine made were other machines; and they came
+out of the creating machine endowed with the spirit of the machine, and
+straightway they began also to turn and grind with a great and
+discordant roar.
+
+The machines of transportation began to distribute the other machines
+through space. They roared and shrieked and whistled as they hurtled
+thither and yon, and Gud fled before them.
+
+Then came also great lighting machines and filled all the center of
+space with light, and drove the darkness into the outer edges of space,
+toward which Gud had fled.
+
+There were many myriads of machines that Gud did not know, and he had no
+time in which to name them. But there were some machines that were very
+dreadful, and of these Gud knew the names and the uses, for he had seen
+the like of them in the little world of machines he had once visited,
+for these were killing machines.
+
+But the killing machines could find nothing to kill for there was not
+any life, but only the machines that were fast filling all space. The
+spirit of the killing machines was not to create but to destroy and they
+boomed and shrieked mightily for their prey. Gud was sore afraid, and
+because of the great noise of the machines, he could not remember that
+he was immortal and need not fear even the killing machines.
+
+So Gud reached the outer edges of space and stood there in the dark
+panting and trembling. And Gud regretted that he had made the creating
+machine which had made all of the other machines, and he wondered what
+he might do to undo what he had done. Then Gud bolstered his courage,
+and walked back into the midst of the roaring machines and bade the
+machines be still. But only hearing the machines, the talking machines
+and the printing machines obeyed, for they only understood the word of
+Gud. Then he commanded the talking machines and the printing machines to
+make words and news and gossip, and to proclaim to the other machines
+that they should cease to roar.
+
+And the word machines obeyed Gud and made words, but the other machines
+harkened not unto the words of Gud.
+
+Gud feared that if the machines did not cease to be made they might fill
+all space, so that nothing else could ever be. Then Gud, remembering
+that he was immortal, walked up to a great killing machine which gaped
+its terrible maw to swallow him. But Gud feared not and walked into the
+terrible maw and into the throat of the killing machine. And when Gud
+came out of the bowels of the killing machine he held in his hand a
+great sword that was as long as hope deferred and as broad as a liberal
+mind. Carrying the sword, Gud fled again from the midst of the machines
+and to the outer reaches of space.
+
+And Gud swung the mighty sword and cut off the edges of space. He made
+haste, for the machines did fast approach and he feared that they might
+fill all space. So Gud ran about swinging his mighty sword, and shearing
+the edges of space.
+
+The edges of space Gud trimmed off from the center of space where the
+machines were, so that the space occupied by the machines was bounded
+about by clean edges of space, beyond which no more space was and not
+anything at all.
+
+And it came to pass that there was very little space for Gud to be in,
+and the machines came on. Gud stood against the clean edges of space and
+brandished his mighty sword and cried: "Come on, ye soulless machines,
+for I am Gud and I fear ye not."
+
+As the machines came on, Gud swung his sword with might and valor, and
+the machines that fell before the sword of Gud were as many as there are
+ways to displease a woman. So great was the destruction of the machines
+that the calculating machines did call a halt and asked for a truce. But
+Gud would give no quarter. Then the calculating machines, leaving the
+others to receive the blows of Gud, hied themselves back to the center
+of space where the creating machine was.
+
+As the result of their calculations, reinforcements came to the cause of
+the machines. These new recruits came on with whistlings and hummings
+and greater roaring than Gud had yet heard; and his courage was shaken
+so that his sword trembled in his hands, for the new recruits to the
+cause of the machines blew a great blast before them; for they were the
+fans and the blowers.
+
+And Gud felt the blast in his face, and his sword swayed and shivered
+like a feather in the blast. And the blast became a mighty wind and the
+wind blew the sword of Gud from his hand and blew it over the edge of
+space, so that Gud was unarmed and cried aloud for quarter. But the
+howling of the blast drowned his cry, and the fans and blowers came on,
+blowing all before them. Gud turned and fled and ran around the narrow
+rim of the edge of space, but the fans and blowers followed after him
+and made a great cyclone that blew around the edges of space. Gud fled
+in the wind and was bruised and torn by the wind and the garments of Gud
+were shattered and torn ... and Gud was lifted out of space and hurled
+into an abysmal void where not even space was.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+    But in that wind beyond all space
+    The blast howled fiercely in his face....
+    Suddenly, from out the sky
+    A mote of dust blew in his eye.
+
+    With pain he slowly rubbed it out,
+    Examined it with passing doubt,
+
+    Then burst into a tide of mirth:
+    It was the cinder of an earth!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+Gud was walking and as he walked he wondered wherein and whereon he was
+walking. But as he knew all things he realized that he was in the Nth
+dimension and that he was walking along the Impossible Curve which he
+had thrown out of space.
+
+So Gud walked along the Impossible Curve in the Nth dimension until he
+came to a heap of discarded theories. It was a tangled heap and looked
+as if it might be a hiding place of ideas. So Gud caught up one of the
+sturdier theories and shook it, and the dried facts that the theory had
+borne rattled off like rotten fruit from a dead branch. Gud plucked the
+twigs of hypotheses from the heavier theory--and so made for himself a
+staff. This he rammed lustily into the tangled heap of theories,
+whereupon something ran out and leaped along the Impossible Curve.
+
+When it stopped, Gud, with his staff in hand, walked after it and came
+up to it, and thought that it was the echo of a voice.
+
+"What were you doing?" demanded Gud, "hiding in that heap of discarded
+theories?"
+
+"Alas," said that which Gud thought was the echo of a voice, "I was not
+hiding. There was nothing left of me to hide, because I was an obedient
+man and gave myself away even as I was told to do."
+
+"What did they tell you to do?" asked Gud.
+
+"They told me to do what I did."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+The nothing sighed, and then said faintly: "I gave my wealth to the
+poor, my mind to my work, my heart to my wife, my life to my country and
+my soul to my god."
+
+Gud reached over and picked up the nothing which he had thought was the
+echo of a voice. He picked it up by the ears, which were very thin, and
+looked into its eyes, which were pale pink, and stroked its fur, which
+was soft and white. Then Gud tied the nothing's ears together and hung
+it over his staff, and proceeded on his way.
+
+As Gud walked on along the Impossible Curve he saw himself approaching
+to meet him. This made Gud very angry at himself because himself
+insisted on walking in the opposite direction, which seemed to show Gud
+that he had a dual nature and could go two ways at once. So Gud charged
+ahead to meet himself, and as he approached himself he swung the staff,
+which was over his shoulder, with a vicious blow at himself.
+
+In his anger, Gud had forgotten the nothing which was hanging by its
+ears on his staff. As he swung the staff, the Impossible Curve took a
+sudden turn in an unknown direction so that Gud missed himself at which
+he struck. But that which was hanging by the ears flew off the staff and
+went hurtling through the deceitful mirror.
+
+In this new excitement Gud forgot himself and peered through the
+deceitful mirror to see what had become of nothing. Gud saw that nothing
+was being chased by something, which Gud recognized as the reflection of
+an Underdog.
+
+The chase was exciting; the nothing ducked and the reflection of an
+Underdog leaped over it. Then the nothing turned and started back toward
+the deceitful mirror, through which Gud was peering. The reflection of
+the Underdog turned also, and when the quarry reached the mirror it came
+back through and its pursuer came after it.
+
+Quickly Gud swung his staff again and broke the mirror into ten thousand
+pieces. Then he turned about and saw, by the contented look on the face
+of the Underdog, that nothing was no more. Gud was glad he had been
+engaged in breaking the mirror and so had not seen the finale of the
+chase, for thus he missed the suffering of the victim and yet could see
+the satisfaction of the victor.
+
+Gud now looked at the staff in his hand and saw that it had borne a
+luscious fruit. He plucked the fruit and tasted it. At first it tasted
+very sweet but later the taste turned bitter in his mouth. Gud looked
+again at the staff which he had picked from the heap of discarded
+theories, and Gud saw that he held in his hand the theory of conquest.
+In horror he hurled it from him, and it struck the Underdog, who gave
+forth a great howl of pain.
+
+Gud felt compassion for the Underdog and picked him up and nursed his
+wound, and the Underdog licked Gud's hands. Then he sat the Underdog
+down and started on his way, and the Underdog followed at Gud's heels
+along the Impossible Curve.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+    The Gogs are good, the Gogs are great,
+    They rule a realm of real estate.
+    Their greedy little eyes are slits
+    That vision beauty torn to bits,
+    And when the night's aglow with stars
+    They stagger through the lupinars.
+    The Gogs are good, the Gogs are great
+    We slave to rent their real estate;
+    We toil in their behalf like fools,
+    Obey their customs, creeds and rules,
+    Because each intellectual hog
+    Would like to be, and is a Gog!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+So they trudged along very happily until they met some one.
+
+Gud was dumbfounded. "What can you be doing on this Impossible Curve?"
+he cried, "for I destroyed everything and my dog has eaten nothing.
+Speak up, sir, and tell me what you are before I annihilate you again."
+
+"I am Cruickshank, the bookkeeper," replied the some one.
+
+"Ah ha," exclaimed Gud, "and so you are another of those living things
+that evolved out of the ooze and slime of that little sphere that got
+the valences of its carbon atoms so dreadfully entangled!"
+
+"I am a man," said Cruickshank, the bookkeeper.
+
+"But," said Gud, quite exasperated, "I told you I destroyed everything."
+
+"And so you did," agreed Cruickshank, the bookkeeper, "but do you not
+recall those that escaped and floated down on the star dust to wait for
+the day of judgment?"
+
+"I certainly remember them very well," said Gud, "but I would have you
+to know that this is not the day of judgment but the day after eternity,
+and what is more, you did not escape on the star dust as you claim, for
+I chased after that bunch and destroyed them quite utterly."
+
+"In a way," said Cruickshank, the bookkeeper, "you did, but we saved our
+souls by losing them."
+
+"But," cried Gud, "you are not a soul, for see--" and Gud poked
+Cruickshank, the bookkeeper, gingerly in the ribs--"you are a material
+man with ribs and life and a liver and much orthodox and conventional
+stupidity. In fact, you seem very much like Cruickshank that you always
+were. How do you explain that?"
+
+"The explanation is very simple," said Cruickshank, the bookkeeper, "and
+also very important; and you would do well not to forget it or tamper
+with it. I am Cruickshank the bookkeeper, just as I always have been,
+because you can not change human nature. And what is more, I tell you
+that if you divided all the wealth up equally it would be unequal again
+before sunset."
+
+"Mere popular fallacies," said Gud. "And now I am going to show you who
+I really am. When my Underdog here barks at the moon you are going to
+change into a boiled lobster with one great claw--a very red lobster, on
+which your insufferable white collar will look quite ridiculous."
+
+"But," cried Cruickshank, "you can not change human nature!"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," said Gud. "That is why I am doing it. Now bark,"
+commanded Gud, addressing the Underdog, whose name was Fidu.
+
+"But," said Fidu, "I do not see any moon to bark at."
+
+"Imagine one, stupid," said Gud.
+
+So Fidu imagined a moon to bark at, and barked at the moon he imagined;
+and then he and Gud went on their way, leaving a great, red, boiled
+lobster, wearing a white collar and crawling backward with one claw,
+along the Impossible Curve.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+    Now Cruickshank was a loyal worker
+    Who frowned upon the average shirker,
+    And in the place where Cruickshank toiled
+    The wheels of work were shrewdly oiled,
+    And profits had a way of rising
+    Which showed the firm as enterprising.
+    Through years that numbered thirty-one
+    Cruickshank hated the owner's son--
+    "Stool pigeon" was the name the boy
+    Had given him with whoops of joy.
+    In Cruickshank's breast ambition burned
+    And so he lived and worked and earned,
+    Robbed Paul and Peter, had no gout
+    And made his family go without.
+    Sly Cruickshank in his stealthy way
+    Bought shares in the firm for a rainy day,
+    Existing on a miser's dole
+    For the hour when he would have control,
+    Wander in and announce the doom
+    Of the President's son in the President's room....
+    So Cruickshank labored and did not shirk
+    Though his poor wife died from overwork.
+    But finally came the day of days....
+    Sly Cruickshank asked for a lordly raise.
+    When father and son had answered "No"
+    Expecting old Cruickshank to go
+    He shrieked the triumph of his soul:
+    "You are both discharged--I'm in control----"
+    The President looked at the President's son;
+    And the son looked at his father's son
+    In a mirror that hung on the wall nearby
+    And carefully straightened his yellow tie.
+    Old Cruickshank waited ill at ease
+    And felt a trembling in his knees--
+    The President spoke: "Why, we've just mailed
+    The notice that this firm has failed."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+After a long journey Gud came to a place where it looked as if it needed
+rain. So he sat down upon a cactus and took out his horoscope and
+consulted the stars. Then he made an elliptical ring around a new moon
+and hung the moon low in the sky. And Gud took a scarlet runner bean and
+put it in a pot and lit a fire of cactus thorns and set the pot to boil.
+When the thorns began to crackle, an arrogant savor arose from the pot,
+and the vapors of it filled the sky, and through the vapors the new-made
+moon shown red as the blood of saints torn by lions because of their
+faith.
+
+Gud blew his breath on the fire and it waxed hot as anger and the pot
+boiled over and quenched the fire. Gud reached his hand into the pot and
+drew out the bean and cut it into three halves. And the left half of the
+bean he ate, and the right half of the bean he cast into Hell, but the
+other half of the bean Gud planted beneath a flat stone that bore the
+footprint of a hero who had passed that way when the stone was but a
+drifting sand on a lonely shore.
+
+Presently the bean half sprouted, and the sprout split the stone athwart
+and rent the footprint of the hero. Gud watered the bean with tears,
+because there was no rain in that place. So the bean grew and on its
+stem were the leaves of the maiden-hair tree, and the tendrils by which
+the bean clambered were the tendrils of the snake-feeder vine, and the
+flowers that sprang from the nodules of the bean stalk were the flowers
+of the wormwood tree, but they gave forth the odor of liverworts and
+were of the color of faded hopes or of stale music.
+
+Gud cut marks on the bean pole to observe the rate of growth of the bean
+vine, and he found that it grew much faster than grief dies but not so
+fast as jealousy is born.
+
+And when the bean reached the top of the pole and could grow no more, it
+conceived and bore a fruit that was like a ripe gourd. Four eyes grew in
+the face of the fruit and a dim light shone out of the eyes. And Gud
+heard the patter of tiny feet within, and presently the ghosts of three
+blind mice came out of the four eyes of the fruit, one out of each of
+the four eyes, for the third one came out twice.
+
+    Oh, under the stars are things to see that fold
+      Their shining webs around the hidden sun....
+    When the flesh is faint and the heart grows limp and old,
+      Surely the work of living is not done.
+
+    There was a breathless stillness and the crowd
+      Leaned forward, looking on and barely stirred.
+    The surgeon, knife in hand, with spotted shroud,
+      Cut close around the heart and said no word.
+
+    They saw his patient die, and whispered one
+      Unto another in the clinic there.
+    But yet the surgeon saw strange actions done
+      That streaked his head with strands of snow-white hair.
+
+    From out the dead man's open chest there crept
+      A shaggy spider shining in the light,
+    That shook itself like one who having slept
+      Puts vainly back the shadows of the night.
+
+    The surgeon clutched his throat. Within his breast
+      He felt a living thing twist here and there;
+    A thing that stirred from out a deep unrest
+      Like something moving through a drowned man's hair.
+
+    The students only saw his hair turn white....
+      But he heard tiny pulses throb and beat,
+    He felt slim fingers clawing out of sight
+      And hearkened to the patter of tiny feet.
+
+    Then shrieking fell across the clinic floor
+      The students pouring from their seats. Stark dead
+    He must have been for he said nothing more;
+      His fingers twitched and once he moved his head.
+
+    They did not see that from his mouth there crept
+      A shaggy spider shining in the light,
+    That shook itself like one who having slept
+      Puts vainly back the shadows of the night.
+
+    Then sideways moved it, trembling as though cold,
+      Following where the other spider ran....
+    Oh, hidden away there are things that are strange and old,
+      And weave strange webs in the very breast of man.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+And the ghosts of the three blind mice sang to Gud as if their hearts
+would break. They sang of brave deeds, for they had been field mice and
+they had died upon the field of honor.
+
+And when the song was done, Gud wept again; for now he understood why it
+had never rained in that place.
+
+So he arose and stamped out the smouldering embers of the fire he had
+builded, and whistled for the Underdog. And when the Underdog came he
+devoured the ghosts of the three blind mice, the one after the other and
+the third which came out twice, after the one. Then the Underdog licked
+his chops and Gud sighed, and together they departed from that place,
+very sorrowful that they had come.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+"What are you eating?" asked Fidu, the Underdog, returning from a
+fruitless chase.
+
+"I am eating leopard's spots," replied Gud; "will you have some?"
+
+"No thanks," returned Fidu, "for they look to me like apples of Sodom or
+Dead Sea fruit."
+
+"That is what they are."
+
+"But," retorted Fidu, "you just now said they were leopard's spots."
+
+"So they were," said Gud, "but I changed them."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+Then Fidu pricked up his ears and listened. And Gud listened also and he
+heard a far-off wailing sound, as of a soul in torment. So he bade Fidu
+to remain where he was, and he cast down his staff for the Underdog to
+watch, for he was a watchdog also.
+
+Then Gud went on alone to find the cause of the wailing. When he found
+it, behold, it was a soul in pain, and Gud said: "What can I do to stop
+your wailing?"
+
+The tormented soul replied: "Oh, comrade, I wail because of the memory
+of injustice and inequality."
+
+"Then your case is simple. I do not know what these things were, the
+memory of which distresses you, but I have a tube of oblivion here that
+I can assure you will destroy any memory."
+
+At this the soul shrank from Gud and wailed the louder. "But, I do not
+want to forget, for that would be unfaithful to the cause."
+
+"Then, what do you want?" asked Gud impatiently.
+
+"I want to see the revolution come."
+
+"What is that?" asked Gud, his curiosity now thoroughly aroused.
+
+"The revolution," said the soul, "would make a world where all are
+equal, and perfect justice reigns."
+
+"I never heard of a world like that, but I think I can make one. If I do
+so, will that stop your wailing?"
+
+"Alas, it cannot be, for the world of equality must be made by the
+workers themselves."
+
+"But I do not see any workers."
+
+"True, they were all destroyed in the rebellion against their masters."
+
+"Then, where are the masters?"
+
+"They were all destroyed in suppressing the rebellion of the workers."
+
+"That must have been quite a fight," remarked Gud. "On which side were
+you?"
+
+"My heart was with the workers," said the soul, "but my training and
+inhibitions were with the masters. Therefore, I was torn between
+opposing forces and was transfixed with horror and remained neutral,
+which is why I alone escaped destruction."
+
+"Just what were you?" asked Gud, a little puzzled.
+
+"I was a parlor sociologist," said the soul, straightening up proudly.
+
+"I am sorry that you weren't either a master or a worker," said Gud,
+"for your wailing annoys me and it annoyed my dog. I think I had better
+destroy you now."
+
+At this the soul cringed cowardly, and Gud was annoyed and turned to go,
+whereupon the soul started wailing more dismally than ever.
+
+Gud turned back again and said: "Whatever it was you wanted, I see I
+will have to make it for you, because I cannot stand that wailing--it
+sounds like a hell that a friend of mine was experimenting with, and I
+do not like it."
+
+"I wail," said the soul, "because I remember the injustice and
+inequality, and because the workers are all destroyed and revolution can
+never be."
+
+"Nonsense! Nothing can never be. Let us make this thing and be done with
+it. What was it you said you wanted?"
+
+"The world of equality."
+
+"But just a moment ago you said it was a revolution."
+
+"True. But that was but a means to the end."
+
+"Shall I make the means or the end?"
+
+"Alas, neither can ever be, for the workers are destroyed."
+
+"You said that before. You talk in circles like a philosopher, and I
+don't like philosophers; they are all talk; I believe in action. I don't
+know what you want, but I heard you say something about a world. I
+understand that and can make it--I have made myriads of them just to
+pass the time away. Wait a second."
+
+When he had spoken thus, Gud took out his pocket handkerchief and held
+it up by two corners. "Now, you see," said Gud, as he exhibited first
+one side and then the other; "the handkerchief is perfectly empty."
+
+The soul looked at the handkerchief and saw that Gud spoke the truth.
+
+"Now watch!" said Gud, determined to do this thing as impressionably as
+possible. Then, as the soul watched, Gud caught up the other corners of
+the handkerchief; then he rolled it into a ball and tossed it up and
+caught it and made magic passes and said: "Doramialfalfalasido" and did
+several other perfectly useless and unnecessary things, as all magicians
+and miracle workers do. Then he caught the handkerchief by the center
+and shook it out vociferously, and there was a nice virgin world
+spinning round and round, with its axis wabbling a bit so as to give it
+a change of climate.
+
+The soul was duly impressed when it saw a real sky-covered dirt-bottomed
+world spinning from east to west; and the soul said: "I beg your pardon,
+comrade, I did not recognize you as a worker, but I see that you are,
+for you have created something--pardon me, but have you a card?"
+
+Gud was puzzled for a moment. Then he remembered the cards he had
+printed when he entered celestial society, and he drew one out and
+handed it to the soul. The soul could not read the language in which it
+was printed, and not wanting to admit his ignorance, assumed that it was
+O.K.
+
+"Now are you satisfied?" asked Gud.
+
+"The world pleases me, but there is no one in it."
+
+So Gud took the soul by the hand and they leaped across the void and
+found themselves in the world Gud had made, and standing in a beautiful
+garden full of luscious fruit and nice tame animals.
+
+The soul sighed a little sigh of delight, and sat down on an ant hill
+and began eating alligator pears. Gud strolled around for a few
+centuries and counted the animals to see if they were all there, and
+being satisfied on that point, he went back to the soul, who was still
+sitting on the ant hill eating avacadoes. So Gud went out again and
+counted the sands of the seashore. He had to count five times to make
+the count come out twice alike, but in the middle of the fifth count he
+succeeded and so he went back and found the soul had eaten all the fruit
+in the garden and was beginning to whimper.
+
+"Oh, bother," said Gud, "are you going to start that wailing again?
+What's the matter now?"
+
+"I have not the patience," the soul cried, "to wait for the tedious and
+materialistic process of evolution to make rational beings; and besides
+if I had, in the struggle for existence they would all become unequal
+and the revolution would still have to be--it might be sanguinary, and
+the sight of blood makes me sick at my stomach."
+
+"I never said anything about evolution," replied Gud. "As a matter of
+fact, I do not take much stock in it, and many of my friends do not
+believe in it at all; besides, it is liable to get out of hand and
+produce something entirely different from one's designs. So if you will
+tell me what more you want I will make it outright, like I did this
+world."
+
+"I only want," said the soul, "to see this beautiful place inhabited by
+happy, rational beings among whom there will be no inequality."
+
+"That means that they must all be exactly alike as atoms of hydrogen."
+
+"Well--yes," admitted the soul rather grudgingly. "I suppose it does, if
+you put it that way, but it sounds much nicer merely to speak of
+equality."
+
+"Put it any way you like, I want to get the job done and get back to my
+dog. He is faithful enough, but I don't like to put too much strain on
+fidelity. Now, as I get it, you want this world peopled with rational
+beings that are all alike. I am ready to make them, only what kind do
+you want--something like yourself?"
+
+"No! no! not like me, for I am a weak and selfish fence-straddler.
+Moreover, I am too modest to be used as a prototype for the members of a
+perfect world."
+
+"Worse than that, you are a ghost and immaterial and invisible to animal
+eyes. If I filled the world with creatures like you, the animals might
+walk right through them--No, we want material beings."
+
+"Then materialize me," cried the soul in sudden eagerness.
+
+"Hold on, if I materialize you in your present immaterial likeness, then
+all the beings I am to make for this world would have to be like you or
+you would be the exception and spoil the equality."
+
+"That is so," admitted the soul.
+
+"We are standing here talking like metaphysicians. If there is anything
+I hate worse than philosophers, it is metaphysicians which are
+philosophers bereft of what commonsense they did have. I have made this
+world scientifically," continued Gud, "but the work you want done now is
+a work of art, and I shall need a model. Since you refuse to be used as
+a model, I will have to resort to an old trick of my profession."
+
+Gud paused significantly and walked over to a nearby pool of water that,
+having sought its level in a quiet nook, was very placid. He bent over
+the pool for a moment and smiled in a pleased fashion at what he saw.
+But the position was unpleasant and the ground at the edge of the pool
+was damp and stained his robe where it stretched over his knees. So Gud
+picked up the pool and propped it up against a rock in a nearly vertical
+position.
+
+His reflection in the propped-up pool was still more pleasing and Gud
+called the soul over to him:
+
+"I am going to use my reflection for a model," said Gud, "to fashion the
+creatures you want to people this world. To try the idea out first, I am
+going to re-do you in my own image."
+
+The soul was mute with embarrassment and suffered Gud to place it upon a
+hastily constructed easel. Then, glancing at his own reflection in the
+propped-up pool, Gud, with a few deft strokes, redid the soul into an
+image of himself.
+
+Gud lifted the re-done soul down from the easel and set it over beside
+the propped-up pool, and then stood back and looked at his own
+reflection and then at the soul which he had re-made in his own image:
+and the only way he could tell them apart was by the background.
+
+"That's one of the best pieces of copying I ever did," cried Gud. "I am
+delighted with my craftsmanship. But before I make the rest of the
+crowd, I think we had better materialize ourselves, otherwise there
+would not be equality in the world, because we would be immaterial and
+hence be different from the others."
+
+"Quite right, you are, comrade," said the soul, who was now the image of
+Gud and so had to agree with him.
+
+Gud looked around for some clever trick by which he could make this
+materialization impressive--and the soul also looked around, being Gud's
+double and having identical thoughts. When Gud saw that his thoughts
+were the soul's thoughts, he was annoyed, because he saw he could not do
+anything now to astonish or impress the soul. So Gud decided to
+materialize without any hocus pocus, and the soul thought what Gud
+thought; so they materialized themselves without more ado.
+
+"Well," said Gud, "let's make the rest of us."
+
+"That's what I was thinking," agreed the soul.
+
+"And shall we be savage or civilized?"
+
+"Civilized," said the soul; "of course, it will be a lot of bother to
+make all the appurtenances of civilization, but one can't have equality
+as long as there is savagery and poverty in the world."
+
+"That's just what I was thinking," agreed Gud, annoyed to find himself
+thinking the soul's thoughts.
+
+So Gud, and his image that had been the soul, made a world full of
+civilized beings and all the appurtenances of civilization, and they did
+it very quickly, for they were both impatient to find themselves
+thinking the other's thoughts, and were desirous to get the job done and
+get away from that world and get back to the Underdog.
+
+And when they had done this thing they found themselves in a great
+convention hall that had arisen where the garden had been. The hall was
+full of creatures made in the exact image of Gud and in the image of the
+soul that Gud had re-made in his own image.
+
+As Gud glanced around, marveling at the myriads of creatures that were
+exactly alike, he suddenly realized that he could no longer identify the
+soul for which he had done all this--and for a brief moment he was very
+much relieved for that particular creature had annoyed him grieviously.
+
+But Gud's relief was of short duration, for it was dawning upon his
+consciousness that he had done a terrible thing, because all these
+myriads of creatures about him looked just like himself. And Gud saw
+that he had no longer the one Gud but one of a myriad of Guds; and that
+he had lost his distinction and position and superiority, and all the
+other satisfying attributes that attach to the office and function of
+being Gud.
+
+How it would all have ended, not even Gud knew, but just then they all
+saw a stream of smoke in one of the galleries and they all shouted:
+"Fire." There was a wild scramble. And when the Guds nearest the fire
+had stamped out the flames, the real Gud had been lost in the turmoil
+and confusion, and did not know which one of the myriads of Guds was
+himself and which were the other Guds made in the image of himself.
+
+It was very distressing.
+
+For three days and seven nights Gud went around that world of equality,
+wondering who he was and whether he was Gud or one of the imitation
+Guds; and all the imitation Guds went around wondering whether they were
+Gud or one of the imitation Guds.
+
+And then a joyful event happened! The Underdog had become worried over
+his master's long absence and had trailed him with his unerring canine
+scent. Coming into the confusion of this world of equality, the Underdog
+walked right up to the honest-to-God Gud, leaped up and sat himself upon
+his own true master's shoulder and barked with delight, and licked the
+cheek of his master.
+
+When he saw the action of his dog, Gud knew again for a surety that he
+was himself. With a mighty cry of deliverance from this torture and
+terror of pure democracy and achieved equality, Gud called down
+lightning from on high and earthquakes from below and winds from abroad
+and floods from the seas, and destroyed the world of equality once and
+for all and forever, and all that was therein contained, and all the
+myriads of fraudulent Guds he had so foolishly made in his own image to
+please the longing for equality in the soul of the parlor sociologist,
+and thereby stop its wailing.
+
+And when the fire and flood and the winds and the earthquakes had done
+their work with neatness and dispatch, Gud and the Underdog went on
+their way rejoicing, and Gud made three cats for the Underdog to chase.
+They were all alike because they were copycats, and the Underdog would
+chase one and then the other and then all three at once.
+
+Gud sat down and laughed at the troubles of the Underdog, because the
+poor beast, despite his canine instinct, could not tell one cat from the
+other two, and could not catch any of them because they were always
+crossing each other's paths, so that the Underdog would chase the others
+and give the one a chance to rest.
+
+But being cats, they were not friendly, even though they were copycats;
+and finally they ran into each other and began to fight among themselves
+and to chase each other around in a circle.
+
+Now the Underdog was wise, and he stopped running and sat down on the
+edge of the circle and got the one and then the other, which left only
+the third. Then Gud called off his dog, and also called up the last
+copycat for a bowl of cream; and the Underdog and the copycat drank
+cream together out of the same bowl. Which proves, dear children, the
+importance of a good example and demonstrates the power of kindness.
+
+So Gud, and the Underdog, and the copycat all started walking along the
+Impossible Curve, all of them wondering what the next adventure would
+be. But I think we had better go to bed, for too much of this kind of
+stuff is likely to make us talk indiscreetly in our sleep.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+A great storm of the far-flung astronomical elements arose without
+cause. The like of it had never been before nor since and it disobeyed
+all laws, both known and unknown, natural and unnatural. Gud was sore
+puzzled because the storm was without cause but not without effect. He
+ran hither and here and darted thither and yon, and in the turmoil he
+was separated from Fidu, his faithful Underdog.
+
+The impalpable ether that fills all space became palpable and vibrated
+and palpated with incommensurate waves; and the non-popitent nether
+which is beyond all space became popitent and gyrated and popitated with
+calculatious ostenulations.
+
+Throughout the abysmal reaches of indefinite dimension the far-flung,
+flaming suns were exploding with blinding flashes and deafening roars,
+and their molten fragments were spewing and spilling this way and that,
+knocking constellations asunder and painting cold, dead worlds with
+liquid fire and blazing splendor.
+
+Comets fell, dragging their tails behind them, twisting and writhing as
+if in pain. And the stars were falling, too. Meteors pattered as rain
+upon the roof of heaven. Broken nebulae whipped along as snow-flakes
+driven of the northwest wind. Pleiades smashed like hail through the
+windows of space. Vile smelling gasses blew about all the interstellar
+void and vastness. Tornadoes and mighty cyclones and vortices torned and
+cycled vorted.
+
+All this frightened Gud, so that he sought for shelter from the storm.
+Just then a little world came rolling by, and it wabbled as it rolled.
+It did not look very safe, but it was solid underfoot. Gud boarded it
+and found himself before a tiny cabin on the wabbling world. The cabin
+was built of old cracker boxes and looked frail as a ten-cent toy; but
+there was no other cover at hand, so Gud knocked on the cabin door to
+ask for shelter.
+
+When no one answered, Gud entered and closed the door behind him. There
+before him sat a dear little widow knitting a bellyband for someone
+else's baby. She was so deaf she could not hear quinine, and so blind
+she could not see a house afire, and had catarrah so badly that she
+could not smell a herring; but for all that she was a very good cook.
+
+Gud addressed her in telepathy, saying: "I wonder if you would make me a
+cake?"
+
+And the woman replied by thought transference and answered: "Alas, I
+cannot make you a cake today, for I have but one hen and she has already
+laid her one egg this morning, and I have eaten it for my breakfast."
+
+Then Gud said: "If you will show me the hen, perhaps I can persuade her
+to lay another egg."
+
+So the woman called to the hen in the language of beasts and birds, and
+the hen came out from under the bed where she had been looking for
+insects. Gud saw that the hen had false teeth and was getting old, for
+her comb was pale as roses in the night. So he flattered the vanity of
+the hen by commenting on the beauty of her scarlet comb. Whereupon she
+laid another egg, whilst without the cottage the astronomical storm
+raged on.
+
+The widow picked up the egg and found that it was as fresh as home grown
+lettuce. She made a curtsy to Gud and said: "I perceive that you are a
+wise magician, for who ever heard of a stupid one that could make a hen
+lay two fresh eggs in one day? And now I will make a little cake, which
+will be big enough for one to eat."
+
+"Make it for two," said Gud, "for I would not like to eat alone."
+
+"But," said the widow, "how can I unless I have another egg, and the hen
+has already laid two eggs in one day. How can she lay another?"
+
+"I do not know," said Gud, "but I will find out."
+
+So he called to the little hen again and gave her a homily on the evils
+of race suicide. The hen became as moral as a tombstone and grievously
+wrought up over the way her sisters were neglecting their duty, so that
+she laid yet another egg.
+
+The widow picked up this egg and shook it also, and saw that it was even
+fresher than the other one, and she made another curtsy to Gud and said:
+"I perceive that you are a great fakir, but you are very clever, and so
+I will make a cake for two and we shall eat it together, and perhaps
+have a cup of tea, if there is any sugar in the house."
+
+At last the cake was put into the oven. The fire of the oven waxed hot
+and the cake began to rise nicely. And when it had risen above the top
+of the pan and almost to the top of the oven, the dear little widow
+opened the oven door ever so softly. As she peeked in, a nearby
+constellation broke asunder; the crash of the breaking shook the
+wobbling world like a great earthquake, the cottage jarred as with a
+blow from the hand of wrath, and the cake fell and was ruined utterly.
+
+Then the dear little widow began to weep because her cake had fallen,
+and she was very angry through her tears and said: "What is the matter
+and what happened and what ruined my cake?"
+
+"I fear me, it is the storm outside," replied Gud.
+
+"Then I think you ought to go out and stop it."
+
+"I will," agreed Gud.
+
+And he went out and stopped the storm, and while he was out he destroyed
+the major portion of the local law of gravitation.
+
+When he came back into the cottage, the moral little hen was all
+a-cackling and the dear little widow was all a-smiling, for behold, the
+hen was looking at the widow, who in her hand held the lightest cake she
+had ever lifted.
+
+After he had had his cake and eaten it, too, Gud returned to the
+Impossible Curve, and as he reached it, Fidu came romping forth to meet
+him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+As Gud passed on along the way he saw a white-haired man sitting in a
+window of the sky and writing with a tattered goose quill pen, which he
+dipped into a pool of blood.
+
+    He was a sad old man with gloomy eye,
+      Who wrote with slow and studied inference,
+    Heaving the while some long and doleful sigh,
+      Or staring about with bored indifference.
+
+    Around his body there were ragged clothes
+      As hung upon a scarecrow in the corn,
+    And on his coat was pinned a withered rose,
+      From which he slowly plucked each barbed thorn.
+
+    Gud stopped upon his way and questioned him.
+      "I am a lonely soul," the old man said,
+    "Within this rose I find that life is grim,
+      Without its thorns, why even beauty's dead!"
+
+    Gud wondered, yet it would not be polite
+      To break the old man's tale of woe.
+    "I'd like to know," the ancient said, "the candle-light--
+      When we have blown it out where does it go?"
+
+    "I do not know," said Gud, "do you?"
+    "Ah yes," replied the old man, "I know very well,
+    For I remember as if it were but yesterday how
+    Half dead and famished, the desert in my eyes
+      And hunger written on my lips
+    I stood there like a captain on a hill
+      Dreaming of his broken ships.
+
+    "I kicked aside a stone that crushed a skull;
+      When from that mouth that mouldered there,
+    There came as if it were the voice of doom,
+      A haunting cry that chilled the air.
+
+    "Then suddenly I laughed and turned my heel
+      In that dead face; and laughing still
+    I danced along the sands, played hide and seek
+      And chased my shadow up a hill."
+
+And when the old man had done with these foolish words he suddenly
+seized the rose upon his coat and tore it off and cast it from him. Then
+he picked up his tattered goose quill pen and dipped it in a pool and
+began to write furiously.
+
+When the old man paused and stared up vacantly, Gud spoke to him and
+asked: "What are you writing?"
+
+Thereupon the old man made answer and said to Gud: "I am writing a cook
+book for cannibals."
+
+Being a vegetarian in theory if not in practice, Gud was not interested,
+and he passed on, walking rapidly, so that he presently overtook a man
+who was following stealthily after yet another man.
+
+He who followed stooped frequently and, with a two-pronged instrument,
+picked up objects from the pavement. These he cast into a brazier that
+he carried, wherein that which he picked up sizzled and burned and made
+a stench in its burning.
+
+Gud wot not what the man did and would know, so he plucked at the sleeve
+of yet another citizen of that place and asked of him: "Who be these
+two, the one that walks alone with his face aloft, and the other that
+follows after, stooping and searching for filth?"
+
+Said the citizen: "These be our Genius and our Critic."
+
+"And what do they?" asked Gud.
+
+To this the citizen replied: "The Genius talks words, and the Critic
+follows after, and, as the words fall from the lips of Genius, the
+Critic picks them up with the tongs of contempt and burns them in the
+brazier of public opinion."
+
+"But why," asked Gud, "do the words of the Genius make a stench in their
+burning?"
+
+"Because," said the citizen, "they are vile."
+
+Gud doubted that which the citizen told him, and he quickened his steps
+and made bold to pass close to the Critic. Whereupon Gud, who could see
+all things, saw that the words of the Genius which the Critic picked up
+were not vile but beautiful; and that, when the Critic made a pass
+toward the brazier, he put the word not therein but dropped it instead
+into a wallet which he carried beneath his mantle.
+
+Gud was angered and he grasped the fellow by his egotism and shook him
+until his conceit rattled and made inferential allegations of hypocrisy.
+
+"What is it to you," demanded the Critic, "if I spit into the brazier to
+make a stench to please the people?"
+
+"But what do you with the words of Genius?"
+
+"By the holy name of Public Opinion! Why should a man do the work of a
+street cleaner on the salary of a critic?"
+
+"I have been a public official myself," replied Gud sympathetically,
+"and I know how ill such service is paid."
+
+This pleased the Critic and he turned and looked into Gud's face and saw
+there the satisfied look of self-sufficient authority which he
+recognized as akin to his own. Plucking confidentially at Gud's sleeve
+he said: "As you appreciate that I must live by subtle ways, then
+perhaps I can interest you in a few choice verbal gems."
+
+Gud realized that purchasing these words was probably illegal in this
+world. But it wasn't his world, so he said: "I should like to look at
+them."
+
+The Critic led Gud into the rear room of a perfectly respectable place
+and opened up his wallet. Here, in a secluded corner, he emptied the
+contents upon a table.
+
+Gud began fingering over the verbal gems.
+
+"Look at this," the Critic cried, picking up a brilliant one.
+
+"Too scintillating for the quiet setting I have in mind," replied Gud.
+Then after examining a few more, he asked: "What will you take for the
+lot?"
+
+"My price for the lot," said the Critic, "is the gift of power to speak
+myself such words of genius as I have been defaming to please the
+people, for I am weary of being a mere word picker and moral scavenger."
+
+Gud answered: "I can give a Critic the power to walk down the street and
+spill words but I can not make a Genius pick them up."
+
+"Sold!" said the Critic, pushing the verbal gems across the table--and
+immediately he began to babble words. But Gud noted that they were only
+words of great talent.
+
+As he looked over the verbal gems he had purchased, Gud decided that he
+had no use for them, and so he called to the departing Critic: "Where
+can I sell these words?"
+
+"Go to Hell," shouted the Critic over his shoulder.
+
+So Gud went to Hell, and reaching the gate thereof he knocked and cried:
+"Is this the place where one brings the words of Genius?"
+
+As Gud knew all things he knew the answer to his question before he
+asked it, but he thought it best to ask anyway in order to verify his
+omniscience. In this case it was wrong.
+
+"No," said the gate keeper, and he gave Gud the correct address.
+
+The way took Gud past seven more hells, for the people of this sphere,
+being a righteous people, were amply helled.
+
+Reaching at last the bottom-most vault beneath the deepest hell, Gud
+came upon a junk shop.
+
+As he entered, the proprietor, who looked both old and young, asked;
+"Comest thou to buy or to sell?"
+
+"I have a few words which I might sell," said Gud.
+
+"I am not much interested in words," replied the proprietor, who looked
+both old and young, "for I am a dealer in sin, and the sinfulness of
+words is much over-rated."
+
+"But the words I have are the words of Genius."
+
+"Is the genius dead?" asked the dealer.
+
+"Not yet, but he is being hounded by a critic."
+
+"I'll take them in trade," suggested the dealer.
+
+"What do you offer?" asked Gud.
+
+"Anything you wish. I have a very complete catalog on crimes."
+
+"I am interested in sin in a sort of professional way," admitted Gud,
+"let me see your goods."
+
+Very graciously the dealer escorted Gud through the chambers where his
+stock of sins was stored.
+
+It was a magnificent collection. There were huge piles of thefts of
+property and of honor and virtue and of good name, and great bales of
+untold lies. There were infinite infidelities and even a greater number
+of credulities. There were a few ragged ends not justified by the means,
+and many tyrannical prohibitions and faded blue laws, and a carefully
+locked cabinet, labeled "Old Maids' Wishes."
+
+There were easy sins for beginners and more difficult sins for hardened
+criminals. There were sins with which children might please their
+fathers and sins for fathers to visit upon their children and their
+children's children. There were sins against men which are often
+forgiven and sins against women which are never forgiven. There were
+sins for the rich and sins for the poor, and a few rare sins suitable
+for both.
+
+The old dealer sighed as they passed the murder counter. "Some of this
+stock moves very slowly," he confessed. "Indeed it keeps me busy
+now-a-days finding enough fresh stock to supply the demand."
+
+Gud was a little puzzled over the nature of this business. "Your trade,"
+he remarked, "is, I suppose, with the inhabitants of these neighboring
+hells, supplying them with new kinds of sins?"
+
+"No indeed," replied the dealer, who seemed a little insulted. "The
+dwellers in hells are fed up on sin. I never deal with branded sinners.
+I cater only to the best of righteous trade."
+
+"Oh, I see, you bootleg sin in the heavens."
+
+"No, no, I trade with mortals, and I sell only to the conscientious and
+the righteous."
+
+"And yet, you are stocked with every sin in the calendar; where is the
+value to the righteous in such stock?"
+
+"Merely a matter of time and place," explained the dealer, "and the
+prevailing ethical ideas of my clients. You see my business is to buy up
+the moral offal of one place or time and sell it at another time or
+place when or where it has high value as virtue."
+
+"Do you sell for cash or credit?"
+
+"As I do not deal with hardened sinners who would admit the value of my
+wares, but only with the righteous, I dare not give credit. But as for
+cash, that is not practical either, as there can be no universal medium
+of exchange between people whose fundamental ideas of morality
+differ--so I am obliged to trade by barter."
+
+"That must be troublesome."
+
+"Yes," agreed the dealer, "relative values differ so--in some spheres a
+murder is considered more than equal to a life time of dishonesty--in
+other realms murder is considered an equitable payment for the mere
+accusation of untruthfulness. But the exchange values of different kinds
+of thefts bother me most, they are so illogical. I have one group of
+clients who place a value on thievery in an inverse ratio to the size of
+the theft. Only last week one of them who had robbed a nation swept by
+winter winds of all its fuel resources wished to exchange his deed for
+the idea of pilfering a lock of hair from the head of his neighbor's
+wife. Indeed the difficulty of finding a logical ratio between the
+immoral value of a theft and the value of the property stolen is one of
+the most baffling problems in the mathematics of sin."
+
+"A very interesting business you have," commented Gud, "and pray, how
+came you to be in it?"
+
+"It was my father's idea, for he was a great student of morals, and
+noting how they changed from age to age, he saw that if the discarded
+crimes and abominations of one time or place could be transplanted to
+other times and places, they would have great value as virtues. It was
+only necessary to achieve immortality to make the venture practical. My
+father did not achieve that for himself, as his arteries had started to
+calcify before he discovered the immortality vitamin. But I fell heir to
+his efforts and ideas, and I have little fault to find with the outcome.
+
+"But of late business has not been so good. There is too much
+intercommunication: the moral values of murders, for instance, were once
+the main profit of the house, and we could not get enough to satisfy the
+various moral ends for which murder was justified. But now times have
+changed and privately initiated murder hardly classes as moral
+anywhere."
+
+"Then why do you not quit retailing, and trade in wholesale murders?"
+
+The dealer shook his head sadly. "Impractical," he sighed. "I can not
+deal with states, since being without conscience they have no awareness
+of sin, no sense of repentance and hence have nothing to offer in
+exchange."
+
+In payment for the words of genius, which he left with the dealer, Gud
+selected a little sin that he had been wishing to commit all his life,
+and so he departed greatly pleased with his possession.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+As Gud was passing up through hell he saw two souls which were not being
+properly punished, but were strolling about as trusties of the place.
+Gud approached them and asked: "Why are you two not being properly
+punished?"
+
+The first soul made answer and said to Gud: "We need none of these
+grosser punishments such as increased temperature and breathing SO_{2},
+which the ancients, who imagined hell, were able, in the limits of their
+scientific knowledge, to imagine. The reason that we need no such crude
+material punishments is because our spiritual suffering is quite
+enough."
+
+And Gud saw that the soul spake the truth, for the face of both of these
+trusty souls were lined with seamy sorrow. As Gud looked upon their
+sufferings he wondered why it was they suffered so, and he asked: "In
+what did you two sin one by one that you should be punished two by two?"
+
+And the second suffering soul replied, "I sinned because I believed too
+vehemently that there was no god, and my companion here, because he
+believed over confidently that there was a god."
+
+"But is it not strange," asked Gud, "that you two, who held such
+opposite doctrines, should now suffer similar punishment? How do you
+explain that?"
+
+The first soul now took up the conversation with his mouth and made
+answer in this wise: "We suffer now with equal suffering, I because,
+believing that there was no god, found, when I died, that there was one,
+and he sent me to hell. But my companion here, who believed that there
+was a god, found when he died that there was none; and so he came to
+hell also, as there was no place else for him to go."
+
+For a moment Gud looked upon these suffering souls with puzzlement and
+wonder, and then suddenly he began to laugh.
+
+"Why do you laugh at our sufferings?" demanded the souls angrily.
+
+"I am laughing at you two," said Gud, "because when you died you both
+came to hell--whereas if neither of you had believed in immortality you
+would not have needed to have gone anywhere."
+
+As Gud was passing through a dismal swamp, he came to a certain cypress
+tree and sat down on a knee thereof. And presently she came also and sat
+down upon the other knee of the cypress tree, and they talked about the
+meeting of parallel lines.
+
+But they could not agree so Gud proposed that they cut their initials on
+the bark of the cypress tree.
+
+They did so, after which they parted. And Gud went on his way and so did
+she.
+
+But when Gud had vanished into the depths of the dismal swamp, she
+turned and went back to the cypress tree and looked at the initials that
+they had carved thereon. Taking the knife that Gud had left sticking in
+the tree, she carved a word below the initials. Having finished the
+carving, she looked up into the branches above her and behold the
+foliage of the tree had withered. Then she repented for what she had
+done, and in great haste, took the knife and carved yet another word.
+Whereupon the tree put out fresh buds and grew again--for such is the
+power of words for good or evil.
+
+And she smiled contentedly, for hers was the last word.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+Lo, the north wind trembled and the sea of sorrow froze into beauteous
+frost forms that shimmered all lacy and green like ferns waving in an
+ancient breeze. And frozen frogs came out of the frost ferns, croaking
+and bellowing like mad, green bulls.
+
+The Underdog whimpered because he was afraid. So Gud bade the frogs be
+quiet, and they were quiet with a great quietude, and peace reigned for
+a spell or two.
+
+After which Gud traveled on until he met a rich merchant who was riding
+across an ice floe on a camel that was gaily caparisoned and had
+trappings of gold and was shod with silver shoes. And the rich merchant
+hailed Gud and said: "Whither goest thou on this sleek, icy desert?"
+
+And Gud said: "I go my way rejoicing. But why is your eye so troubled?"
+
+The merchant replied: "I go in search of a strawstack."
+
+When his master said that, the camel stomped on the ice with his silver
+shod foot and cut a round hole in the ice and kneeled down and drank his
+fill of ice water.
+
+While the camel was kneeling, the rich merchant invited Gud to mount
+upon the camel. Gud did so and the camel arose and lumbered on his
+slippery way.
+
+The merchant and Gud sat in the howdah and smoked a hooka and told tales
+of barter and of gain. This is one of the tales they told, and it
+matters not which one told it, for it is a lie anyway.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+    It was a great occasion--every seat
+      Was filled and jewels sparkled rich and bright--
+    One almost heard each throbbing heart that beat
+      As the orchestra filed in that gala night.
+    The music flared in one triumphal blast,
+      The leader swung his baton: the curtain rose:
+    Then the soprano sang of bright skies overcast,
+      And silence fell upon the watching rows.
+
+    Just at that moment, some one in the crowd
+      Saw wisps of black smoke curl around a board.
+    He shouted "fire!" It was as though a shroud
+      Was flung around them by a righteous Lord.
+
+    The crowd surged forth like streams that over-flow--
+      And ran amuck, insane with fear and rage....
+    Just then an unknown player of the piccolo
+      Upclambered o'er the footlights to the stage:
+
+    "Hold! Hold!" he cried, and waved his piccolo;
+      "Be calm! There is no danger, if you're quiet!"
+    Then through the Opera House there echoed low
+      Such music as would calm the greatest riot.
+
+    They faltered, then they heeded his desire,
+      Then paused to hearken with suspended breath,
+    And spellbound listened through that awful fire
+      Till every one of them was burned to death.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+
+And now the rich merchant pointed out upon the horizon a small speck
+which was no larger than a woman's honesty. As the camel journeyed on
+toward the horizon the speck grew in size until it was as large as the
+hope of inheritance. And when they finally came up to it, behold it was
+a strawstack!
+
+The camel started to eat the straw, but the merchant jumped down and
+belabored the beast over the head with a marlin pin--whatever that
+is--and cried: "Cease, thou gluttonous, stupid beast; knowest thou not
+that thou wilt impale thy parched throat?"
+
+"Why belaborest thou the camel?" asked Gud, solicitously.
+
+"Because, there is a needle in this strawstack, and I came from the four
+corners of the earth to find it. Do you think I am going to let this
+fool beast devour it?"
+
+So Gud offered to hold the camel's halter while the rich merchant
+searched the strawstack for the needle.
+
+After the merchant had looked in all the straws but one he gave up in
+despair, for he had not found the needle.
+
+"Perseverance, dear, my lord, keeps honor bright," quoth Gud.
+
+Greatly encouraged, the rich merchant looked into the last straw and
+found the needle. In glee he shouted and held up the needle in one hand
+and the last straw in the other.
+
+"I perceive," said Gud, "that you are a prince of industry. But you are
+also in a dilemma. If you try the last straw first and break the camel's
+back, then how can the poor beast go through the eye of the needle?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+
+"Who was that fellow," asked Fidu, "who passed me just now with such a
+wild, wild look in his eye?"
+
+"That fellow," replied Gud, "was an author who just spent a week-end
+with me."
+
+"And what did you do to him?" asked Fidu. "He was as crazy as the
+nebular hypothesis."
+
+"Upon his request I criticized his book, which he insisted on reading to
+me."
+
+"But what did you say about it?" demanded Fidu, "he looked as locoed as
+a lop-eared logarithm."
+
+"I made several criticisms. I told him that his plot was choppy, and
+that most of it was stale; that the work lacked sadly in originality and
+there was considerable repetition. I said it was very melodramatic in
+spots and that it had entirely too many murders, and that many of the
+biggest murderers seemed to escape without punishment. I also told him
+that it was full of sordid realism and most unhappy endings, that it was
+overloaded with action, and worst of all, it utterly lacked any evidence
+of a distinct moral purpose."
+
+"Well no wonder," said Fidu, "that the poor fellow was raving; you made,
+if I may say so, quite a severe criticism."
+
+"I grant that, but his book deserved it--everything I said about it was
+absolutely true."
+
+"What did he call his book?" asked Fidu.
+
+"He called it," replied Gud, "'An Outline of History.'"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+
+Presently Gud ran dead against an ivory wall; but being versed in
+aviation, he flew over it. Having done so he went on walking. Gud
+perceived that he was walking in a kingdom, and he walked warily, for he
+was doubtful whether monarchy was an ideal form of government.
+
+His doubts increased as he noted the subjects of the kingdom, for they
+appeared to be full of guile. So when he became tired and sleepy, he
+durst not enter into an abode, but lay down beneath a friendly tree and
+fell asleep.
+
+When Gud awoke he found that his sandals had been stolen from off his
+feet. This made him very sorrowful, for his sandals had been well broken
+to fit his own feet but he was worried lest they might hurt the feet of
+the thief. So he made a hue and cry. When a subject of the kingdom
+appeared, Gud demanded to be taken at once to the king.
+
+The king, being self-made, was not very wise and did not perceive that
+Gud was his equal; therefore Gud was obliged to kneel on the little mat
+that the king kept before his throne so that visitors would not bruise
+their knees on the agate floor.
+
+When Gud had done kneeling and salaaming, the king offered him a
+cigarette and selected a cigar for himself. Then he asked how the crops
+were where Gud came from.
+
+"They are very good," said Gud, "but the morals in your kingdom are
+not."
+
+To Gud's astonishment, the king replied meekly: "I know it."
+
+Gud now related to the king how the very sandals had been stolen from
+off his feet as he slept beneath the tree.
+
+"Oh, wise stranger," cried the king, "it grieves me much to have you,
+who come from a distant realm, discover that I have thus failed in the
+first duty of government which is the protection of property. Therefore
+let me make restitution for the injury done you in my kingdom."
+
+The king now sent a lackey to his treasure vault, and he fetched Gud a
+pair of jeweled sandals which fitted his feet perfectly.
+
+Gud's grief being assuaged and his anger abated, he was genuinely sorry
+for this stupid king, and said to him: "I have knocked about a bit and
+picked up a few ideas in practical politics, so perhaps I can help you."
+
+"It is my shame and sorrow," confessed the king, "to admit to you that I
+rule over a realm of thieves. We were formerly proud of our talents in
+that direction, for at one time this kingdom was surrounded by rich
+neighbors and our prosperity was based on the capturing of bounteous
+booty from our enemies. Alas, our enemies combined and built a great
+ivory wall and walled us in. And now my people steal from each other. I
+have issued countless edicts against stealing, and even crucified a few
+thieves, but it avails me nothing. My people steal and are proud of it.
+Yet there is honor among my thieves. They are at heart law-abiding and
+truth-telling citizens."
+
+"How do you know they are?" asked Gud.
+
+"I know, because I had a census taken in which I asked each and every
+one if he were a thief, and all the thieves answered most truthfully
+that they were thieves."
+
+"How do you know they answered truthfully?" questioned Gud, as he
+flecked his ash. "And if they are thieves, how can they be law-abiding
+citizens?"
+
+"That explanation is easy. You see, my people do not consider my edicts
+against stealing as law because they maintain that it conflicts with
+their established habits."
+
+"Did you say all of your citizens were thieves?"
+
+"No, not all; sixty per cent., to be specific. If you do not understand
+percentage, that means that there are three thieves for every two honest
+men."
+
+When the king said this Gud's eyes brightened and a satisfied smile
+beamed on his courtly countenance. "The trouble," said he, "is that your
+system of government is wrong."
+
+"What?" exclaimed the king. "I am the government. Am I wrong?"
+
+"Yes, you should have another government."
+
+"You mean that I should hire an assassin to kill me, so that my son
+should be the government?"
+
+"No," replied Gud, "I mean that you should have a different form of
+government."
+
+"I never heard of a different form of government!" declared the king,
+throwing his cigar on the rug in his excitement.
+
+"Then I will explain it to you. What you need is a democracy. Your
+people want it for they have an innate sense of it already. They believe
+in the majority rule. Because the majority of them are thieves they want
+stealing legalized. In fact, to make law against stealing is, under the
+circumstances, very demoralizing, for it breeds contempt for law."
+
+"By my crown!" exclaimed the king, slapping his knee. "You are right. If
+you will just show me how, we will make this democracy."
+
+So Gud showed the king how to write a declaration of independence and
+frame a democratic constitution, and then they staged abdication and the
+king placed his crown in the historical museum.
+
+When the king had done that, Gud said: "Now have a bill passed making
+stealing legal so that the law will agree with the habits and customs of
+the majority."
+
+When the king had done that also Gud said: "You are more popular than
+ever, so start a secret society to be called 'The Ancient Order of
+Honest Thieves.' Write the constitution and by-laws yourself and make
+every citizen of your democracy eligible to membership, providing he can
+show proof that he has stolen something; but make it a first principle
+of honor that a thief shall not steal from a fellow thief."
+
+The king was delighted, and straightway did all which Gud demanded.
+
+The society was so popular that not only the thieves joined, but the
+honest men became thieves and joined also. Everything went well until
+all the citizens of the democracy but one had become members of the
+"Ancient Order of Honest Thieves." Everything that this man had
+possessed had been stolen, and he was naked and hungry, so finally he
+decided to join the society. There being no one else left to steal from,
+the last honest man stole the jeweled slippers that the king had given
+unto Gud.
+
+At this Gud became so angry that he declared himself emperor, and hanged
+the king on a rainy day.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+
+When Gud came upon the stupid girl she was sitting under an apple tree
+and weeping bitterly.
+
+"Why do you weep?" asked Gud.
+
+"I weep," replied the girl, "because I am in disgrace."
+
+"Oh, I see, you are a fallen woman. Why don't you commit suicide?"
+
+"But I am too young to die," moaned the girl, "and besides I haven't
+fallen yet. I am weeping because they tell me I am immodest."
+
+"But why do they say you are immodest?" asked Gud, as he picked up a
+green apple and tasted it to see if it were ripe.
+
+"Because," explained the girl, "I made me a bathing pettitcoat and went
+bathing in the pool. Someone had told me how to make it and how to sew
+lead sinkers in the hem of it. But I could only remember that it was
+something about fishing tackle, and I sewed corks in the hem instead of
+sinkers, and so when I went bathing, the skirt floated on the top of the
+water."
+
+Gud stroked his beard thoughtfully. "I can put out the eyes of the
+fishes," he suggested.
+
+"But they would still remember."
+
+"I can kill the fishes," offered Gud.
+
+"But the fishes might have souls, and besides, it wasn't so much what
+the fishes saw or even what the people thought the fishes saw."
+
+"What was it?" asked Gud.
+
+"The trouble was that my bathing suit was not in style."
+
+"Oh, if that is all I will change the style.... There, go to the drug
+store and watch the clerks marking up the price of corks."
+
+"Wonderful," cried the girl, "me to be the leader of styles--But I wore
+this week's styles last week--they will say I was too forward and
+therefore immodest."
+
+Gud reached in a pocket of his robe and took out a patent calendar. This
+he turned back two weeks. "You should worry," he said, "I have made it
+week before last. You did not appear in the new-style bathing suit until
+next week. Does that fix everything?"
+
+"Y-e-s," stuttered the girl doubtfully. "But what about the fishes?"
+
+"I turned them back too," explained Gud. "But in all fairness, I ought
+to warn you about the lobsters. You see they go backwards naturally, and
+when I reversed the order of things just now I noticed that the lobsters
+went ahead two weeks--it is all a matter of relativity, you see."
+
+"No, I don't see," blubbered the girl, "for I am very stupid," and she
+began to weep again.
+
+"Why are you weeping again?" demanded Gud.
+
+"Because I failed in my examination. I got everything wrong-wise and
+upse-turvy."
+
+"Don't worry," said Gud, "I have changed all things, so that what you
+answered in your examination is the truth and has always been the truth
+and all contrary belief are false and always have been false."
+
+"Thank you so kindly," smiled the girl, "but there is just one thing
+more. I can't understand the difference between an equilateral triangle
+and an isosceles triangle--and I just hate all triangles."
+
+"Forget them," consoled Gud, "for I have destroyed all triangles."
+
+Just then the girl noticed in alarm that the apples which had been on
+the ground were dropping up and alighting on the tree.
+
+"Be not alarmed," said Gud, "I only changed the law of gravitation as it
+applies to apples."
+
+And now they saw a procession coming through the orchard headed by the
+President of the Academy to proclaim the stupid girl as a virgin
+prophetess who had revealed to that world many great truths that had
+been hidden from the minds of the old masters. And when the old masters
+saw the apples that lay about the girl dropping up, one by one, to the
+tree above her, they became filled with holy zeal and abject worship and
+bowed down humbly before her and cried:
+
+"Hail, hail, prophetess, for the end of the world cometh, and thou, in
+thy holy wisdom, must tell us what we should do to be saved."
+
+"Oh, forget it till next week," said the girl, "and then you will see me
+in my new-style bathing suit."
+
+And Gud departed from that place in great sorrow, for once again he saw
+a world confounded and worshiping a fool.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+
+About a decade later, Fidu came running up to Gud. For a moment he was
+too excited to speak and could only bark, but when he again found his
+articulation the Underdog said: "Oh master, come quick, for there is a
+poor beggar sitting over there on the steps of the almshouse and holding
+out his hat for alms; but few give to him and he is weak and starving."
+
+Gud followed Fidu and came to the beggar who was poor and wretched
+indeed. And Gud said to him: "I will not reveal my lack of intelligence
+by dropping coins into your hat, for I know as well as you do that
+indiscriminate charity does not alleviate poverty. So throw your coppers
+into the gutter and put your hat on your head, while we discuss the
+cause of your impecunity."
+
+The beggar discarded his few coins and placed his hat on his head.
+
+"Now," began Gud, "let us consider your situation intelligently. There
+is usually some relation between cause and effect. The effect in your
+case is poverty complicated by charity. I could destroy the effect by a
+miracle and make you rich, but I have tried tampering with the law of
+cause and effect, and I find it dangerous business. It is best to change
+the cause and let the law change the effect.
+
+"Quite right you are, kind sir," agreed the beggar.
+
+"What was the cause of your poverty?" asked Gud. "Was it indolence, or
+drink, or--"
+
+"No, no," interrupted the beggar, "none of those common things. My
+poverty was caused by the ruin of my profession."
+
+"What was your profession?" demanded Gud.
+
+The beggar straightened up as proudly as he could and said: "I was a
+novelist!"
+
+"Yes," said Gud, "Go on."
+
+"And my profession has been blasted and ruined utterly."
+
+"And how did that happen?"
+
+"I do not know how it happened," replied the beggar, a baffled look
+coming into his eyes; "worse yet not even the critics know--but it
+happened--it happened--the impossible happened."
+
+"Come, come," called Gud, shaking him by the shoulder, "you are
+babbling, speak up, what happened?"
+
+The beggar looked up at Gud, a glint of horror in his eyes, and murmured
+slowly: "Someone destroyed the eternal triangle.... There can never be
+any more novels, ... nor plays ... nor movies ... nor realism ... nor
+romance ... nor royalties ... nor dinners at the Alhambra with
+Gwendolyn ... nor.... Please sir, just a copper, I am old and lame."
+
+"Cheer up," encouraged Gud, "I feel it my duty to help you. Was this
+triangle that seemed to have been the life of your business equilateral
+or isosceles?"
+
+"Neither," replied the beggar, now with the bearing of a true novelist,
+"it was the eternal triangle which is a plot of a certain very literary
+relation of the sexes, in which three individuals form the angles."
+
+"Why just three?" asked Gud.
+
+"It seems that three sell best," said the novelist. "Two do not interest
+the reader, and four, five or more tire him; three characters sell best,
+which is why such a triangle is called eternal."
+
+"I understand that three elements make the best triangle--and one
+shouldn't fool too much with mathematics. But what about these sexes?"
+
+"It makes no difference," replied the beggar, "how the sexes are
+arranged, just so both sexes are represented on the triangle."
+
+"Both sexes," repeated Gud--"then you only have two sexes?"
+
+"Certainly, three characters of two sexes form the eternal triangle, any
+way you arrange them; isn't that perfectly simple?"
+
+"It is simple, more simple than perfect. Now, pick up the coins you cast
+into the gutter and buy yourself a pencil and a pad and start to work.
+You will find eternal triangles have become as plentiful as lies, and
+what is more important, perfectly moral."
+
+"You speak," replied the novelist, "with authority, and my understanding
+will come, no doubt, with inspiration. I thank you sir, especially for
+your hopeful words about the possibilities of fiction becoming moral.
+You can not realize how the necessity of dealing with immorality wears
+on the conscience of a novelist; nor how those hypocritical critics
+revile us by insinuating that we write of immorality because we live it.
+We write of it, sir, because the editors and the public demand it, and
+for no other reason. If immorality in fiction were not profitable we
+would not write at all. Again I thank you sir, and good day to you."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+
+As Gud and the Underdog walked on their way, they passed through a dark
+valley where they could hardly see in the murkiness to keep their feet
+on the Impossible Curve, and so they proceeded slowly with eyes and ears
+alert.
+
+Presently Fidu stopped and cocked his ear, for his sense of hearing was
+more acute than his master's. When Gud refused to stop, Fidu ran on for
+a time, and then he stopped again and listened, and this time Gud
+stopped and listened also, whereupon he heard from afar, the sound as of
+a heavy clanking chain.
+
+As they traveled on again the sound grew louder and was mingled with
+mumbling and smothered curses. It was Fidu, as usual, who ran ahead and
+found the object from whence came the mumblings of smothered curses.
+
+When Gud drew near he saw a poor being chained to a great rock. Gud
+tapped the rock with his staff and discovered from its adamantine nature
+that it was the Rock of Conservatism. But he could not identify the
+being who was so securely chained, thereto.
+
+"Who are you," demanded Gud, "and why are you chained up here in this
+brutal fashion?"
+
+The being only answered with more mumbled cursings.
+
+"If he cannot state his case," said Gud, "why should he expect me to
+free him?"
+
+"But master, there is a smaller chain across his mouth."
+
+"So there is," observed Gud, and he reached over and severed that
+smaller chain.
+
+"I thank you," said the prisoner, "but there is little more that I can
+say, for I am still chained to the Rock of Conservatism."
+
+"Oh, very well," replied Gud, as he severed the great chain also. "And
+now please tell me who you are and why you are bound here?"
+
+The creature arose and stretched his aching bones. "I am Free Speech,"
+said he, "and who are you?"
+
+And Gud replied: "I am Gud."
+
+"I never heard of you and what is your business?"
+
+"I am retired. What is your business?"
+
+"My business was talking too much until they bound me. But now that I am
+again free, I intend to go on talking and saying just what I please. For
+one thing I do not like that ridiculous old bath robe you wear. If you
+don't care for pants, why wear anything?"
+
+"Have you always been in the business of talking too much?" inquired
+Gud.
+
+"No," replied Free Speech, "I was once a school master but I got into
+difficulty. I had a private school and both the Just and the Unjust sent
+their children to my school. The Just believed that the world was flat
+and the Unjust believed that the world was round--"
+
+"Which was it?" asked Gud.
+
+"Keep still and let me talk. The Just wanted me to teach their children
+that the world was flat and the Unjust wanted me to teach their children
+that the world was round. So I organized two classes in geography and
+taught the children of the Just that the world was flat and the children
+of the Unjust that the world was round. The Just had me arrested, but I
+escaped and went into the business of talking too much and saying what I
+pleased and asking all the questions I wanted to; and while I am
+grateful to you for your releasing me, all you did was your duty, and I
+don't feel there is any privilege of back talk coming to you; and yet
+you look like you were pretty wise, and there are one or two things that
+I don't know yet. For instance, has a ghost a soul or is he a soul?
+Well, I see you don't know, but maybe you can tell me whether sins are
+washed away by death-bed repentance, though I really don't care, for it
+is not important. But I would like to know if faith will remove
+mountains. I don't believe it will for when I was a small lad I went to
+live with my grandmother. There was an ugly mountain back of her house
+and grandmother decided to remove it by faith and she prayed all one
+evening that the mountain be moved that night. The next morning she woke
+up and looked out the kitchen window and said: 'I knew that old mountain
+would still be there.' Which reminds me of a fellow I knew who was a
+faith healer by profession, and mighty successful, too, and went all up
+and down the land healing by faith and getting paid handsomely for it.
+But his wife at home was an invalid: I asked her why her husband did not
+heal her and she said, 'I lack faith in him.'
+
+"Do you know why they call sleep innocent, considering the kind of
+dreams people have? Or why blood is thicker than water? Or what there is
+about a sphinx that makes people think it knows the answer to riddles?
+Or why a greased egg won't hatch? Or whether a man in hot water is more
+uncomfortable than a round peg in a square hole?"
+
+"No," replied Gud, "I do not know any of these things and I am sorry I
+unbound you."
+
+"I knew you would be," cried Free Speech, "I could tell by your old gray
+gown and those antiquated whiskers that you were a conservative and a
+hide-bound Puritan, but I tell you right now that you can't stop me
+talking by tying me up, and that it won't do you any good if you do. And
+that Underdog of yours is no better than you are. The Underdog must be
+educated by me, though he is usually so stupid that he chases after the
+copycat instead of listening to me talk, and so I don't really care as
+much what becomes of him as I pretend I do--and did you ever hear the
+story about--"
+
+But Gud clapped his hand over the mouth of Free Speech and called:
+"Quick, Fidu, fetch me the chain."
+
+As Fidu and Gud marched on their way it was to the sound of muttering
+and mumbled curses and the clanking of a heavy chain.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI
+
+
+"Master," remarked Fidu, "I have long suspected that in following this
+Impossible Curve we are not getting anywhere."
+
+"What difference does it make?" replied Gud, "we are only walking for
+recreation."
+
+"Oh, yes, I know all that, but still, I do not like to walk in a circle,
+because it makes me dizzy."
+
+"But we can't be walking in a circle," argued Gud, "because a circle is
+quite probable and this curve is impossible."
+
+"That may also be true, Master, but nevertheless we just passed that
+world again where you made a virgin prophetess out of a stupid girl, and
+I know that building ahead of us is the almshouse on the steps of which
+we found the poor old beggar whom you made so happy."
+
+Gud looked ahead. "Yes, Fidu," he agreed, "you are right; and perhaps we
+shall meet him again, for he will not be a beggar now but a rich and
+prosperous novelist."
+
+But alas! when they came up to the almshouse they found the same old
+beggar looking more disreputable than before.
+
+Gud reached over and shook him, but he did not stir nor answer. Gud
+turned quickly away and called Fidu, and they passed on.
+
+"Why did he not speak?" asked Fidu.
+
+"Because," answered Gud, "the poor old fellow was dead, apparently of
+starvation."
+
+"And you thought that he would be rich and prosperous."
+
+"Yes, yes, so I did. I gave him the chance of his life, too, by making
+triangles with three sexes and therefore perfectly moral--it just goes
+to show how useless it is to attempt to salvage these mendicants."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII
+
+
+As Gud was knocking about among the stars he saw yet another world
+spinning idly on its axis as it floated aimlessly in the nebulous ether.
+Prompted by curiosity he drew nearer and observed that the ether was
+full of ghosts. Most of them seemed to be observing the conduct of the
+beings in the material world below, and Gud rightly judged them to be
+demised of that reality and amusing themselves by watching the doings of
+their descendants.
+
+But there was one ghost of an old woman that seemed sore troubled and
+full of yearning for the beings of the world below, as if she would
+communicate to them some message and could find not the means of
+communication. Filled with compassion, Gud approached the ghost of the
+old woman and asked if he might be of service to her. But she merely
+gazed up at him out of troubled eyes and did not speak. Again Gud
+addressed her and again she answered not; and Gud concluded that she was
+a very dumb ghost.
+
+Thereupon Gud imagined a powerful medicine and poured it out in a
+make-believe goblet and gave to the dumb ghost to drink thereof. She
+accepted it gratefully and drank copiously; and immediately her mouth
+opened so that she spake volubly.
+
+When she had done with her thanks for the miracle, Gud asked her why she
+was troubled and why she looked upon the world below with such distress.
+
+"It is quite a long story," she began, as she seated herself upon the
+Rock of Ages.
+
+This being the only rock in the neighborhood, Gud was obliged to create
+another rock so that he could be seated also, for the story promised
+well.
+
+When Gud was comfortably seated, the old ghost of the old woman resumed:
+"I was the first lady of the land, that you see below us, and the mother
+of the first family on that poor deluded world. I had a very dear
+husband who was the father of my children--of that there was no doubt,
+for he was never jealous. But I was not his first wife, for he had been
+married before to a most loquacious creature who had talked herself into
+hysterics and died.
+
+"My husband loved me greatly and in order to escape the sound of women's
+voices, he brought me to this world which you now see so full of our
+descendants.
+
+"Then it was only inhabited by savage beasts and we were the first
+people who trod its wild shores. We settled down in a beautiful cave and
+made a happy home there and numerous children came to bless our union.
+
+"My husband loved these children and made many toys to amuse them, for
+he was clever with his jack-knife. One day he came home with a great
+chunk of dry, soft wood and began to whittle on it, while all the
+children stood about and wondered what he was making.
+
+"Day by day they watched him as he shaped and carved the wood until he
+had made a most comical and grotesque object with grinning teeth, and
+eyes which he blackened with charcoal. The children were afraid of this
+ugly, carved wooden creature, and yet they loved it because their father
+had made it for them. So when it was all finished, he perched it up on
+the mantle over the horsehair sofa and told the children not to touch
+it.
+
+"When they asked him what it was he said that it was Bahgung; and he
+told them that while they slept Bahgung stole out of the cave and went
+on long expeditions and had great adventures. The children loved these
+tales of the doings of Bahgung, and so my husband made many tales of
+Bahgung and his adventures.
+
+"I wanted to warn him that the children could not discriminate between
+fact and fiction and might believe these tales, but I was dumb and could
+say nothing.
+
+"When my dear husband saw the worry in my eyes he guessed the cause and
+said: 'When they get older, I will explain to them that these are only
+fairy tales and they will forget them.'
+
+"But he did not explain, and went on making up more and yet more tales
+of the might and prowess of the wooden carved Bahgung. If the children
+were naughty, he told them that Bahgung would punish them, and when they
+were good he told them that Bahgung would award them.
+
+"One day when I came quietly into the cave I saw my little girl kneeling
+before Bahgung, and she was talking to him and beseeching him to cause
+her brother give back a pretty shell which he had taken from her. I was
+worried at all this, but being dumb I could say nothing.
+
+"It was a few days later that my dear husband was eaten by a crocodile
+while he was fishing. There being no remains we had a modest private
+funeral, none but the family being present; and I took up as best I
+could the duties of providing for my children.
+
+"After their father's death the children talked still more to Bahgung
+and told him all their troubles. They seemed to love the idol and yet to
+fear him, and to believe he was alive though they could see him before
+them as only a carved wooden thing.
+
+"So much they worshiped Bahgung that I feared to destroy him, and I
+therefore allowed the wooden idol to stand on the mantle over the old
+horsehair sofa that we had brought with us from another world.
+
+"I still supposed that when the children grew up they would forget this
+miserable idol of carven wood. But alas! they did not. I did not dare
+destroy the idol, for the children adored it more than they did me who
+had brought them into the world of my own flesh and blood. I wanted also
+to explain to them that Bahgung was only a wooden idol and as dead and
+worthless as any rotten stick, but being dumb I could say nothing.
+
+"When my children left home, they would come back on pilgrimages, and to
+me it seemed that they came back more to worship Bahgung than to see
+their old mother. So in my desire to see my children the more I
+permitted Bahgung to stand on the mantle above the horsehair sofa in the
+cave.
+
+"One day my oldest son and oldest daughter came at the same time to
+visit me and to worship Bahgung. It was then that my son proposed that
+he take Bahgung to his own cave. Being dumb I could say nothing, but my
+daughter objected.
+
+"'Very well,' said my son, 'leave the old thing here. I will make a
+better one of my own.'
+
+"The next time I visited my son, I found that he, too, had made a
+creature, which he modeled out of clay, even more cleverly than his
+father had carved. And this creature was sitting on a little pedestal in
+a small cave of its own and my son was teaching my grandchildren to
+bring it offerings and make worship and prayers to it--all of which I
+thought most silly.
+
+"Finally I died and my numerous descendants gave me a grand funeral and
+paraded Bahgung at the head of the procession and all their lesser idols
+after him. But being dumb and dead also, I could say nothing.
+
+"So that was how it all started, the idol worship, in that world you see
+below us, and for thousands on thousands of generations those poor
+deluded descendants of mine made and worshiped idols of wood and clay
+and stone and metal, while I hovered over them, knowing all the while
+how the delusion started in my own dear husband's innocent desire to
+amuse our children with a home-made toy."
+
+"That is a very interesting account of the origin of idol worship,"
+commented Gud, "I never heard so plausible a theory."
+
+"Theory!" repeated the old ghost, "but it isn't theory, I would have you
+know. It is plain fact--did I not see the whole beginning of this folly
+with my own eyes, and did I not heft that old carcass of rotten wood
+with my own hands?"
+
+"Perhaps," admitted Gud, "still--" and he peered searchingly through the
+haze at the world below--"still, I do not see them worshiping idols down
+there now? The only idols I can see are in the museums along with the
+stuffed mermaids and two-headed serpents."
+
+"Of course," replied the old ghost, "they have long since grown too
+sophisticated to worship material idols of wood and stone, but they have
+idols just the same, which they call 'gods not made with hands'."
+
+Gud felt a little uncomfortable at this remark, but before he could
+think of anything to say the ghost of the first woman of that land which
+lay below them, continued. "I will tell you how that came about, too,
+for I was hovering near at the time. There was a lazy philosopher. He
+had no idol except a worm-eaten old wooden one which some one had given
+him, and which he kept in a hovel. One day the shanty caught fire from a
+defective flue and his idol was burned and there was no insurance. The
+philosopher was too lazy to make another and too poor to buy one, for
+the idol makers by that time were charging high prices. So the lazy fool
+sat out on a stump and dreamed how to get another idol without working
+to pay for it.
+
+"His thoughts, as I read them at that time, ran something like this: 'An
+idol is a material creature of wood or stone or metal, which is used by
+the worshiper as a material nucleus to concentrate the attention and
+stimulate the imagination. The imagination constructs an immaterial
+being or god to dwell within the material idol. As this imagined god is
+the creature that answers supplications and heaps curses on one's
+enemies, therefore the benefits to the worshiper must come from the use
+of his own imagination. Now it would be more difficult to imagine a god
+without having the idol to start from, hence if one could achieve it he
+would use his imagination more and thereby get a better god.'
+
+"So the philosopher set his imagination to work and imagined himself a
+god without going to the expense of buying an idol. He was so well
+pleased with his wholly imagined god that he went out and proclaimed to
+others, and soon he had a host of lazy chaps who agreed to pay him for
+the privilege of worshiping his imagined god and thus saving the cost of
+idols.
+
+"The scheme was so lucrative that other philosophers set up other
+psychic idols, and that is what they have down there now. If you doubt
+me, look over there in the left corner of the nearer hemisphere and you
+can see the smoke of a war. Those people are fighting, trying to make
+each other accept their particular psychic idols."
+
+Gud looked and saw the war, that it was great and that there was much
+smoke; and even a faint stench was wafted up to him of the flesh of
+unbelievers being burned by the faithful.
+
+Gud looked also toward another quarter and saw other smoke. "And what is
+that war?" he asked, pointing it out.
+
+"That," replied the old ghost, "is a war between two groups who both
+want to worship the same psychic idol, but one group wishes to worship
+it in silence and meditation and the other wishes to worship it with
+drums and cymbals."
+
+Gud sniffed the ether from that direction and found that it also smelled
+of burning flesh. He did not like the odor and he arose as if to go
+toward the unhappy world.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked the old ghost.
+
+"I was just wondering, whether, if those unhappy people had a real god
+would they not quit all this war and devote their time to harmonious
+worship?"
+
+"Don't be a fool," laughed the old ghost, "if you go down there as a
+stranger preaching some new god they will pour oil on you and set you up
+to light the town for a night."
+
+Gud sighed and sat down on the stone again. "I suppose they would," he
+admitted, "and I suppose now that I have given you back your power of
+communication, you will be wanting to go down there and find a good
+medium and preach atheism through spirit messages, since you know what a
+fraud all their gods are."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the sort," declared the old ghost. "Of course, if
+I could have had a great doctor like you to have restored my speech
+while I was yet alive, then I could have explained to my children just
+how it all started, and this folly would have never been. But it is too
+late now."
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked Gud, for he saw that the old ghost had
+arisen with a very determined look on her face as if she surely meant to
+do something.
+
+"I am going down there," she asserted; "but I shall not bother with any
+silly mediums. I am going to materialize as a woman of great wealth and
+beauty, and I am going to captivate and hire the best sculptors and
+architects in the land, and under my direction they will build an
+enormous fine temple and set up a great idol, the splendor of which that
+miserable world has never seen--"
+
+"Just what kind of an idol?" interrupted Gud.
+
+"An image of Bahgung, of course," cried the old ghost. "What else would
+you suppose? Wasn't he the first of all their idols, and the best of all
+them?"
+
+"But--" said the astonished Gud, "I thought that you did not believe in
+that idol and disliked to see your children worship him."
+
+"So I did, in a way, because it was only a crude, wooden carving that my
+silly husband had made with his jack-knife--but Bahgung was a great god
+for all of that. Why, didn't he heal my youngest child of that terrible
+fever when I prayed to him that fearful night? And didn't he tear the
+great stone from the cliff that rolled down and killed the tiger? And
+didn't he--"
+
+But Gud heard no more, for he was racing madly through the ether and
+pinching himself to see if he were real.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII
+
+
+Having come a long way and being footsore and weary Gud felt that it was
+time to retire. But he possessed no sleeping garments. So he caused a
+deep sleep to fall upon the Underdog and then Gud lay down and slept in
+his waking garments.
+
+But the Underdog dreamed a dream and when Gud heard what the Underdog
+was dreaming, he arose and drew his long knife and cut off the
+Underdog's ear so that the beast could not hear what he was
+dreaming--for it was the kind of dream that Underdogs should never hear,
+and, if it is not deleted by the censor, this is what it was:
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX
+
+
+    Thirteen respectable spinsters
+      Of the respectable town of Murch,
+    Gave a very respectable party
+      For their eminent orthodox church.
+
+    On a green and grassy pasture
+      By the side of the River Runch
+    They sat with the Reverend Quondam
+      And partook of a dainty lunch.
+
+    None could have said they were pretty,
+      Not even those in the "know,"
+    Yet no one denied in the city
+      That their names were as white as the snow.
+
+    And just at the moment of eating
+      The breast of a tender chicken,
+    The Reverend Quondam observed
+      The grey skies overhead thicken.
+
+    Within a neighboring farmhouse
+      He betook his respectable form,
+    Accompanied by all of the ladies
+      In deadly fear of the storm.
+
+    Then lightning came and the thunder
+      Like the crashing of seventeen earths,
+    And in that respectable party
+      Occurred three premature births.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX
+
+
+The next morning when the Underdog awoke he had an imagination that a
+fly had alighted on the ear which Gud had cut off. The Underdog grieved
+because he could not flop the ear which he no longer possessed and so
+dislodge the fly that he imagined had alighted thereon.
+
+This made bad blood at the breakfast table so that the Underdog growled
+ungratefully over the bone of contention which Gud threw him.
+
+All that day they walked with their eyes averted and said nothing until
+they came to the place where the birds of faith roosted on the waves of
+the wireless; and then they both rejoiced, for here was good game,
+easily ensnared because it had faith and trust.
+
+So Gud spoke comradely to the Underdog and the Underdog wagged
+cordially. Gud built a snare out of weeping willow twigs, and the
+Underdog ran round the birds and barked the birches. Presently an old
+bird that was steadfast in the faith walked into the snare and Gud
+reached out his hand and took the bird, and it perched upon his shoulder
+and told him why love grows cold. This made Gud very happy, for he had
+always wanted to know.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI
+
+
+    The mists that whirl in greater mists
+      Around the cliffs of space
+    Leave little drops of glistening water
+      Upon His wrinkled face.
+
+    Have you heard Him, as walking through
+      The valleys of the night
+    He paces ever back and forth,
+      Silent, old and white?
+
+    Upon some jagged piece of dust
+      As high as night is high
+    He watches all the tiny worlds
+      Go spinning down the sky.
+
+    Around Him are the burning stars
+      That toss like little ships
+    And winds blow out of dim unknowns
+      Across His very lips.
+
+    Have you heard Him amid the silence,
+      Vast as a silken cloud,
+    Lifting His arms with jewelled pendants,
+      Cloaked in a heavy shroud?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII
+
+
+As Gud and Fidu journeyed on they came to a rippling rivulet and saw two
+women who were bathing in the laughing water. Gud was not astonished at
+what he saw because Gud sees all things, and familiarity breeds
+contempt. Neither were the women alarmed, because they were busy talking
+and did not see Gud.
+
+"I am sick of love," one woman said.
+
+Whereupon the other woman said: "My husband understands me."
+
+Just then the Underdog came up panting and athirst and started to lap of
+the laughing waters of the rippling rivulet. Gud thrust his hand out and
+jerked the poor beast away. Alas, too late! Fidu had drunk of the
+bewitched water and when the moon changed its name and a meteor fell
+into a fit of despondency; the Underdog went mad and frothed at the
+mouth and bit the hand that fed him, which was the right hand of Gud.
+
+Gud made a tourniquet out of a miser's heart-strings, so that the
+infection did not pass above the elbow; and he applied leeches to the
+wound and also an ointment of soothing words so that the pain abated.
+But the poison of falsehood was so potent that Gud found his right hand
+had become a deceitful hand and could not write the truth. So Gud
+exchanged his right hand for his left hand, which was very easy to do
+since he was in the Nth dimension and outside the limitations of
+three-dimensional space.
+
+When Fidu, the Underdog, went mad he lost his reason. Gud did not note
+this at the time because of his own affliction. But after his wound had
+healed so that it ceased to hurt anything but his conscience, Gud
+observed, as they walked along, that Fidu had lost his reason. The poor
+dog walking along there without his reason looked so unreasonable that
+Gud's heart was touched with compassion and he said: "Fidu, it grieves
+me to see you without a reason. Here, take mine."
+
+Fidu looked up gratefully out of his sad, mad eyes as Gud handed him his
+reason. Glad to have a reason again Fidu seized it in his mouth and ran
+off, frisking and twisting and wanting to bark, which he could not do
+because he was carrying Gud's reason in his mouth. So he ran ahead and
+came to a place where the curve crossed over a deep, dark stream.
+Glancing down into the mirror-like surface of the water, the Underdog
+saw his reflection. He did not think the reflection was another dog with
+another reason in his mouth--for Fidu had his reason in his mouth and
+was still mad in his eyes. When he saw his reflection in the water, he
+thought it was a porcupine or a civet cat or some other unapproachable
+creature, and so he barked; and in doing so he let Gud's reason fall
+into the water. Down, down sank the reason of Gud into the dark, deep
+water, for it was a very weighty reason.
+
+Fidu did not attempt to dive after it, but the poor, mad dog just stood
+there and let it sink out of sight into the deep dark water.
+
+When Gud came up he, too, was without his reason and he thought Fidu,
+standing forlornly on the bridge, was an evil genius. When the mad dog
+ran on into the gloomy wilderness that was beyond the stream, the mad
+Gud followed after him and became lost in the wildness of the
+wilderness.
+
+As Gud wandered on amid the gloomy shadows, the void in his mind, where
+his reason had been, became filled with many strange illusions, and he
+discovered that he could now believe many things that he had not
+previously been able to believe because they had been unreasonable.
+Faith in things unseen grew within him. The fourth dimension and the
+squared circle no longer annoyed him. He found that chimeras were very
+real and also wyverns, and that metaphysical hypotheses were as solid
+substance and as proven facts.
+
+Gud now understood for the first time in his life that he was Gud and at
+the same time he was a holy ghost, and that he was also his own father.
+This last bit of unreasonable comprehension especially relieved Gud. He
+was sorry he had not accepted it sooner, for because of it he had never
+really written his autobiography. When he had started to write, he began
+by describing his father as being in existence before his own birth, and
+yet Gud had realized that such could not be, as he and his father were
+one and the same being. The situation had confused Gud's reason, but now
+with his reason gone it was all very clear.
+
+There were also many other things which Gud had been unable to accept
+with his reason, but which now, with no appeal to reason, he gladly
+embraced, and so reveled joyously in his growing faith. The
+transfiguration of souls particularly entranced him, and he spent many
+happy hours, as he walked along amid the gloomy shadows of the wildness
+of the wilderness, in picking out favorite animals to have been and to
+be. He rather favored having been a quacking ornithorhynchus and going
+to be a ring-straked giraffe; and yet the claims of the groundhog, which
+sleeps half its life away, also appealed to Gud, because he had a long
+time to live. Having considered these and many others, Gud decided to
+have been all the unattractive animals in the past and to be all the
+nice ones in the future. After all, he had plenty of past and future and
+there was no occasion for abbreviating the list.
+
+With his reason gone Gud also accepted polytheism as being quite
+compatible with monotheism. He no longer found it objectionable to be
+the only god and yet have a lot of assistant gods, for he saw that this
+would relieve him of a great deal of labor.
+
+And thus it came about that through the loss of his reason many
+irrational things which he had previously disputed and disbelieved were
+now lucid and believable. So gratified was Gud as he realized the
+magnitude of his growing faith that he gave a great shout of joy.
+
+The shout echoed through the wildness of the wilderness, and the echo
+came back to Gud; and Gud thought it was a lion's roar.
+
+The mad Underdog also heard Gud's shout and the echo of Gud's shout, and
+he thought the shout was the blast of a war trumpet, and that the echo
+was the noise of the celebration of peace.
+
+But Gud did not know what Fidu thought, for Gud was mad. If Gud could
+only have looked sanely into Fidu's insane eyes, a deal of trouble might
+have been avoided. But he could not; and Gud thought the echo of his
+shout was the roar of a mighty, wicked lion, and he thought Fidu thought
+so, too. And maybe he did.
+
+Then the lion's roar roared again. But Gud was not afraid, for he had
+no reason to be afraid. Filled with unreasonable faith and valor, Gud
+seized his staff and charged into the jungle after the lion's roar. And
+Fidu, the Underdog, followed after Gud, for why shouldn't a mad dog
+follow a mad master?
+
+The lion's roar roared yet again. The hair on the mad Underdog's back
+bristled. The dark, dank jungle trembled with the lion's roar. The
+monkeys in the tree tops chattered with excitement, for it looked to
+them as if there was going to be a fight.
+
+Gud charged through the underbrush brandishing his staff and came face
+to face with the lion's roar. And Gud struck viciously and valorously at
+the lion's roar. But it was only the illusion of a lion's roar and Gud's
+staff went through the incorporeal stuff like a whip lash through mercy.
+
+Then the lion's roar roared once again, and this time so mightily that
+Gud died of fright.
+
+When the Underdog came upon the scene, the roar, ashamed of its
+unreality, had slunk off into the wilderness, and all was quiet in the
+gloom and the shadow of death.
+
+Fidu sniffed pathetically at his dead master, and then, filled with
+remorse, he whined piteously, for now that his master was dead the poor
+mad dog regretted that he had lost Gud's reason.
+
+For a long time Fidu sat in silent vigil by his dead master's side,
+grieving as hard as a poor mad dog could. But at last he arose and
+licked the right hand of Gud, which he had bitten in his madness, and
+gazed again into his dead master's face.
+
+Then, mad though he was, Fidu turned and trotted with unerring canine
+instinct back to the bridge across the stream. Reaching the bridge he
+faltered not but dove off bravely into the deep, dark water and
+retrieved Gud's reason.
+
+All wet and cold, he came back to his poor master's side and laid Gud's
+reason down beside Gud's head and then barked loudly.
+
+But Gud did not hear the bark of the Underdog, for Gud was dead. So it
+must be that the hero of this tale, in what shall come hereafter, is
+only the Ghost of Gud.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII
+
+
+    The mists that whirl in greater mists
+      Around the cliffs of space
+    Leave little drops of water
+      Upon his wrinkled face.
+
+    Have you heard Him, as walking through
+      The valleys of the night
+    He paces ever back and forth,
+      Silent, old and white?
+
+    Upon some jagged piece of dust
+      As high as night is high,
+    He watches all the tiny worlds
+      Go spinning down the sky.
+
+    Around Him are the burning stars
+      That toss like little ships,
+    The winds blow out of dim unknowns
+      Across his very lips.
+
+    Have you seen Him amid the silence,
+      Vast as a silken cloud,
+    Lifting His arms with jeweled pendants
+      Cloaked in a heavy shroud?
+
+    When sweeping through the open night
+      Great pinions touch the face;
+    Vast wings that fold the face of God
+      Against the breast of space;
+
+    We hear the hills that all one's life
+      Were silent as the sun,
+    Break forth in songs that waited there
+      Since life had first begun.
+
+    We reach out for the fluttering hand
+      And finding it is gone,
+    We know the stars that shake the sky
+      Are only old and wan.
+
+    We stand and listen and we know
+      That rising through the night
+    Pass all the hosts of all the years
+      Death ever hides from sight.
+
+    So much and yet so little then
+      With thrust that follows thrust....
+    The paltry things of paltry life
+      Shrink swiftly into dust.
+
+    We lift our hungry hands to Heaven
+      For pity and in pain
+    The only answer ever given
+      Is that fancy and faith remain.
+
+    Wars we wage that One might rule....
+      Proud and jealous is He.
+    With fire and sword we crush the fool
+      Who does not bend the knee.
+
+    Temple and palace, hovel and hut,
+      Dreamer and doer of deeds,
+    At least one door is never shut,
+      God answers all our needs.
+
+    He walks the crest of some far hill
+      Against the setting sun,
+    The presence of a mighty will
+      Whose journey is never done.
+
+    Into the night and over the dawn
+      All the things that are
+    Through empty voids go plunging on....
+      Planet and sun and star.
+
+    Yet He we worship died years ago
+      Like some poor human clod,
+    And that which wanders to and fro
+      Is only the ghost of God!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV
+
+
+"A bear went over the mountain," sang the child (Gud stopped to listen,
+for the child had had its voice cultivated prenatally) "to see what he
+could see. A row of hanging skeletons, a swinging in the wind, was all
+the bear could see in front, and he could not see behind."
+
+"See here," interrupted Gud, "you have the song mixed--what the bear saw
+was the other side of the mountain."
+
+"Awh, I know," replied the child, "that was what the preteristic old
+bear saw, but I sing of the futuristic young bear."
+
+Gud shook his head sadly. It made him feel archaic to come thus face to
+face with the younger generation in art and literature. Somehow he felt
+that there was something amiss in this new universe that seemed to have
+arisen Phoenixlike out of the ashes of nothing.
+
+Gud turned from the child with the prenatally cultivated mind and went
+on his way sorrowfully. And as he walked he hummed softly to
+himself--"The old-time creation, the old-time creation, It was good for
+Unph and Godumph ... and it's good enough for me...."
+
+"Come, come," monologued Gud--"I must not get retrospective--I destroyed
+it all--ashes to ashes and dust to dust."
+
+As Gud trudged on, trying to shake this mood of a sentimental
+retrospection from him, he found the light waning and the ether about
+him turning grey and grim and gruesome.
+
+Then like an avalanche of dead ravens, sable darkness came tumbling down
+upon him. But there were whitish outlines in the darkness, moving and
+swaying, and there were rattlings and clanking sounds, and eery
+whistlings.
+
+Rachitic with fear Gud's knees bent beneath him and he sank down in the
+blackness and shuddered in his soul.
+
+Before him, like a great grey army marching, the skeletons of all the
+mortal dead, of all the worlds and all the ages that had ever been, were
+filing by.
+
+In measured time they marched, their gaunt legbones swinging in great
+sweeping strides, their backbones bending and creaking as they marched;
+while the winds between the worlds whipped through empty eyes and hollow
+skulls and made eery whistling sounds--and all the dry bones rattled.
+
+So the material dead, in the empty mockery of marching, passed by Gud in
+vain review.
+
+And Gud sat shuddering and alone and watched them--for eons and epochs,
+and epochs piled on eons of unmarked time.
+
+After all the countless and infinitely innumerable swinging, swaying,
+clanking, dry-boned skeletons had marched by Gud, they started around
+again.
+
+Gud knew that they were going around a second time, because he saw one
+pass, bearing before his bleached and grinning fact the glow of a good
+cigar.
+
+There could be no mistake about it, for these were the bones of the only
+smoker who had ever believed that tobacco was as injurious as the
+non-smokers said it was!
+
+Thus made aware that the show was being repeated on him, Gud realized
+that even the most gruesome and ghoulish sights and sounds became
+commonplace with repetition; and he became bored, and his fear died
+within him. So he arose and walked right through the marching mass of
+swinging, swaying, rattling, whistling, dry-boned skeletons, and out
+into the sunlight of a new day where he found Fidu digging up a freshly
+planted lawn in search of a bone he had buried on a golf course
+countless eons before.
+
+"Come, come," said Gud, "let the dead bones stay buried--the future of
+eternal life is long enough without digging up the past."
+
+Having dissuaded Fidu from his search for provender Gud offered him a
+portion of his own lunch.
+
+"Do you remember," remarked Gud to the Underdog, as they sat munching
+their sandwiches, "the time I was on that little world back there--"
+
+"Which one?" asked Fidu.
+
+"The one I am talking about, silly--I ran into an earthquake. It shook
+things up rather badly and toppled over about half the houses, killing
+and maiming millions of mortals."
+
+"What caused it?"
+
+"I don't know, probably it was accidental--but that isn't important.
+What interested me was what those poor mortals thought caused it. As I
+was strolling through a town watching the relief committee at work, I
+happened to see people going into a steep roofed building, which being
+well constructed, had not fallen down. I joined the crowd and went in.
+One of their kind was standing on a box at the far end of the building
+and talking. I sat down with the others and listened to him.
+
+"He was talking about the 'divine visitation.' For a moment I became
+self-conscious, thinking my incognito had been discovered. But I soon
+realized that he referred to the earthquake.
+
+"His theory was interesting. He thought their silly little world had
+been shaken up by their divinity. I knew that he was mistaken, for I
+knew the chap who had that world in charge; he is a weak little god who
+could not shake up a good-sized island."
+
+"For what reason did the mortals think your friend shook them up?" asked
+Fidu.
+
+"The one who was talking had two theories about it. You see they had two
+kinds of folks in that world--one bunch was called 'sinners' and one was
+called 'righteous.' Plenty of both bunches were killed by the quake. But
+it seemed that the fellow who was talking, wanted the sinners killed and
+he was praising my friend for doing it. But his difficulty was in
+explaining the death of the righteous, whom I gathered were friends of
+his that had been in the habit of paying him to talk to them. There were
+a good many empty stalls in the room with black cloths on them, and some
+of the women in the crowd were weeping.
+
+"Well, after the talker got through explaining that their deity had
+caused the earthquake for the purpose of killing the sinners, he had to
+admit that it also got a few of the righteous. He said that this was due
+to the 'mysterious working of the divine purpose' or some such vagary."
+
+"Well, what of it?" asked Fidu.
+
+"Nothing in particular, only it struck me as funny."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"About," said Gud--"but as I left that world, I took hold of its axis
+and gave it another shake."
+
+"Did you know," said Fidu, "that the Copycat had been visiting?"
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Because there are five little copy kittens."
+
+After which they journeyed on until they came to a wall. In this wall
+were two doors. Before the wall stood a great multitude and they stared
+at the two doors with fixed glassy eyes.
+
+Gud turned and spoke to the multitude and said: "Why stare ye at the
+doors in the wall and durst not enter?"
+
+"Alas, Great Gud," cried the multitude, as with one voice, "we wish not
+to enter the doors, but would only know which door the man entered."
+
+"That I will find out for you," said Gud, and he stepped up and examined
+the knobs of the doors. Then he turned and bowed to the multitude, and
+turned yet again, and seizing the knob of one of the doors he swung it
+boldly open.
+
+And behold, there stood a man-eating tiger, contentedly licking his
+chops, his belly with fat lover lined.
+
+And Gud beckoned to the tiger which came out through the door and faced
+the multitude, and on the tiger's face there was a faint fragrance of a
+smile.
+
+And the tiger bowed to the multitude, and Gud also bowed with the tiger.
+
+And from the eyes of the multitude the glassy stare faded, and they
+turned and walked away, and some spoke exultant words to the others.
+
+"But," asked Fidu of Gud, as they again went on their journey, "how did
+you know which door to open--did you smell the blood?"
+
+"No, you hundopomorphic canine fool, I looked for finger prints on the
+knobs of the doors."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV
+
+
+Gud, sauntering through the Market of Knowledge, came to a stall of a
+prophet and passed the time of day with him.
+
+"Business is terrible," lamented the prophet.
+
+"What is the trouble?" asked Gud sympathetically.
+
+"Unfair competition," replied the prophet. "Those up-start scientists
+across the way have berated my goods and stolen my customers until I
+have none left save a few old ladies. Indeed, I fear me we shall never
+again see those good old days when even young men believed there was
+magic in the stars."
+
+"But," said Gud, as he glanced about, "your goods look shelf-worn."
+
+"Shelf-worn you say? And why not? I have rare antiques here. See, here
+is the Golden Fleece and there is the Philosopher's Stone. That box in
+the corner is the Hope Chest of Venus. And there in the window is the
+Fountain of Youth. That puzzle beside it is the Riddle of the Universe.
+And this vial here contains the Evil Eye preserved in spirits of mocking
+wine."
+
+"All very fine antiques," agreed Gud, "but in this age a merchant must
+keep up-to-date; you need new goods on your shelves."
+
+"And new goods, I have had in time and again," declared the prophet.
+"But they have stolen them from me. Did I not once make good money
+auguring from the entrails of animals, till these scientists found that
+they were useful for sausage casings? And when the stars paled in
+popularity because the scientists turned their spy-tubes upon them, did
+I not sit over a wall of gas and make myself drunk with its stinking
+fumes, while my wife sold my insane babblings for wisdom, until those
+scientists stole the gas and ran it through pipes to the houses to make
+fuel for pots to boil? And did not I read the cracks in fools' palms,
+until the scientists made fingerprints to identify criminals, and then
+the people durst not give me their hands to read lest I be a spy in the
+employ of the state searching out their crimes? And did I not call
+messages out of the air from distant lands, until the scientists trained
+the lightning to bring messages and harnessed it to vehicles so that the
+people could go and see for themselves that the lightning had not lied?"
+
+"Did you ever try interpreting dreams?" asked Gud.
+
+"Bah!" said the prophet. "That was the idea with which I began business
+when this world was young. But they have spoiled that also and taught
+the people that dreams were merely neurotic emanations of a bad bellyful
+of beef and beans. I tell you, my friend, they have left me nothing,
+nothing of mystery and magic to sell the people; and here I am, a
+prophet, wise in all the ways of prophecy, and sitting in an empty shop
+full of musty bones!"
+
+Taking leave of this disgruntled prophet, Gud strolled through the
+Market of Knowledge to see for himself how it was that these scientists
+had ruined the honorable business of prophecy. And Gud saw many wonders
+and much business going on. In one stall he saw a chemist with tubes and
+retorts brewing pretty smells to scent ill-favored women. In another he
+saw a doctor with a microscope studying the germs of disease and making
+poisons to kill them. And in another was a chemist analyzing foods to
+see how much fatness or leanness they contained, so that he could sell
+recipes that would make the waists of his customers of a girth suited to
+the length of their lovers' arms.
+
+And in all the shops of the scientists, Gud discovered that young men
+were busy analyzing things and dissecting and dismembering them and
+finding out of what they were made, so that they could prepare some
+recipe or medicine or knowledge and sell it and get gain. And Gud
+wondered what was left that his old friend, the prophet, could dissect
+and analyze and sell as a scientific product and so get gain.
+
+As Gud pondered this he chanced to stroll into the shop of a
+psychologist whose secretary had the nose bleed so that she fainted, and
+Gud asked: "What is the matter with her?"
+
+"She is unconscious," replied the psychologist, "her mind has lost its
+awareness."
+
+"Is her mind dead?"
+
+"No, no," retorted the psychologist.
+
+"Then why does she not talk?"
+
+"Because her mind is unconscious and she cannot use it to talk with."
+
+"But, what is she doing with it?"
+
+"Dreaming, most likely," replied the psychologist.
+
+"Why do you not dissect her unconscious mind and see of what her dreams
+are made?"
+
+"Get out!" cried the psychologist, "I am a married man and I do not want
+to know of what her dreams are made."
+
+When Gud left the shop of the psychologist it was growing dark in the
+Market of Knowledge. So he waited until the lights in the houses were
+being extinguished and the people were falling asleep.
+
+The next morning when Gud entered the shop of his old friend, the
+prophet, he carried a sack, the contents of which he dumped on the
+table.
+
+"What are these things?" demanded the prophet.
+
+"They are unconscious minds," said Gud, "and they are full of dreams. I
+want you to dissect them and analyze them and see how the dreams are
+made and what are the elements of them. Thus you shall make a science of
+dreams to sell to the people and get gain."
+
+So saying, Gud left the shop and walked up the side of a grassy mountain
+where all the birds were singing and all the ewes were lambing and the
+little toadstools were pushing up great rocks with the power of the life
+that was in them. And Gud lay down upon the new-grown grass and fell
+asleep, and slept till winter came. When the snow began to fall upon the
+feet of Gud, he dreamed a dream.
+
+Upon awakening, Gud wondered what the meaning of the dream might be; and
+thus he recalled the Market of Knowledge, and went straightway to the
+shop of the prophet to have his dream interpreted. As he approached the
+shop he saw a line of people on the sidewalk, and took his place in the
+line. As the line moved through the door each one handed the doorkeeper
+a sum of money. But Gud said he was a friend of the prophet and was
+permitted to enter so that he could hear the dreams being interpreted.
+
+A man said: "I dreamed that I once misspelled a word by omitting the
+letter 'M.'
+
+"That means," answered the prophet, "that you once knew a girl whose
+name began with 'M.' Probably her name was Mary."
+
+A young woman said: "I dreamed I was an old maid and yet I was going to
+hell."
+
+"That means," said the prophet, "that virtue is its own reward."
+
+"I dreamed," said a man, "that I was dead and in my grave, and that I
+could hear the clods dropping on my coffin."
+
+"That means," interpreted the prophet, "that you are a pessimist, and
+that you have that same infernal tin roofing on your house that I have
+on mine--I heard it raining last night myself."
+
+"I dreamed," a young girl related, "that I was being run over by a steam
+roller, and I am anxious to have the dream interpreted because I am sure
+it is very significant."
+
+"No, you are mistaken," explained the prophet. "And you ought not to be
+reading those uncensored books on psychoanalysis, for they are very
+suggestive. What your dream really means is that you have something
+between your teeth and need a toothpick. The analysis is simple. A
+toothpick was formerly a goose quill--a quill is part of a
+feather--feathers help birds to fly--airplanes also fly and have
+engines--so do steam rollers, the reason steam rollers do not fly is
+because they roll."
+
+Said a man: "I dreamed that the woman I married and whom I love very
+dearly had eloped with the janitor. Then I woke up and found that she
+had, and I want to know what it all means."
+
+"It means," replied the prophet who was very strong on professional
+ethics, "that your dream has come true and doesn't need interpreting;
+ask the doorkeeper to give you your money back."
+
+"I dreamed," related another man, "that I had been captured by
+cannibals; the fire was roaring; the pot boiling; I was led forth, my
+head laid on the chopping block, the battle ax was lifted--and then the
+cannibal chief's daughter rushed forward with a joyous cry and flung
+herself upon my neck in place of the ax and so I was saved."
+
+"That means," replied the prophet, "that the sex instinct is stronger
+than the nutritional instinct."
+
+"I dreamed," stated another man, who was just in front of Gud, "that I
+was in love with my brother."
+
+"That means nothing indecent," expounded the prophet, "because dreams
+are the voices of the unconscious mind which we inherited from an
+earlier period of our evolution. Homo-sexual dreams merely hark back to
+the time when we were all asexual creatures, hence they are entirely
+proper. By similar psychic law we whitewash dreams of incest, murder,
+torture, rape, arson, cannibalism, and political graft. All such dreams
+are perfectly respectable and may be told with pride to your wife, your
+mother, or your pastor, because they indicate that the unconscious mind
+is perfectly natural. But there is one dream that should not be told to
+your wife. To wit: a dream of polygamy--it is too damned natural."
+
+Now Gud had supposed that his friend would recognize him. But the
+prophet was busy with some figures in a small book and he merely called,
+"Next." So Gud told this dream:
+
+"I dreamed," replied Gud, "that I heard a most wonderful melody. But
+when I woke up I found that I was sleeping near a strawstack and was
+listening to the braying of a jackass."
+
+"That means," replied the prophet, "that you are one too. Five dollars
+please, and what did you come in here for? When I was dealing in black
+magic and making prophecies by poking into the steaming entrails of
+virgin goats, I at least had my self-respect. And now you get out of
+here before I call the Centurian and have you arrested for stealing the
+subconscious mind of the President of our Academy of Science."
+
+Ingratitude is sharper than a woman's tongue; and when Gud heard what
+the prophet said, he whipped out a ram's horn and blew a withering
+blast. When the ground trembled with the echo thereof, all the shops in
+the Market of Knowledge fell down and a great tidal wave swept in from
+the Sea of Trouble.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI
+
+
+After everyone else had drowned, Gud came up for air. He lit a cigarette
+and blew a smoke ring and tossed it on the water to see if it would
+float. It did and so Gud climbed upon it and sat there cross-legged to
+wait for his robe to dry.
+
+Presently he saw a man coming toward him running on the water and
+carrying a package under one arm and a half-finished manuscript under
+the other. The man came up panting and out of breath and cried: "Save
+me!"
+
+"Perhaps," said Gud. "But what have you in the package?"
+
+At this the man hurled the package at Gud and sank into the depths with
+bubbling groan.
+
+Gud unwrapped the package and found that it contained three mountains.
+These Gud tossed upon the water where they floated equidistant on the
+surface of the sea. On the first mountain was a man in dire agony of
+soul. On the second mountain was a beautiful woman about to plunge a
+dagger into her heart because of her love for the man. On the third
+mountain was another woman no less beautiful, and she was about to cast
+herself into the sea because of her hate of the woman who loved the man.
+But Gud, who knew all things, was not interested in what would happen
+next; and, his robe being dry, he arose and walked leisurely away on the
+water and did not once look back.
+
+Tiring of walking on the water Gud looked about for a conveyance. Just
+then a deep-sea fish came to the surface and winked at Gud with his
+glassy eye.
+
+"I came up to see if I could find out," said the fish, "who that fellow
+was who came tumbling down into my depths a little while ago."
+
+"Why do you wish to know?" asked Gud.
+
+"Because," replied the fish, "I feel as if I had swallowed a theological
+discussion and it is giving me indigestion."
+
+"Suppose you turn over and let the sun shine on your belly," suggested
+Gud. "Sunlight is very healing."
+
+"Thanks, but my belly is white and I do not wish to have it
+sunburned--but who do you suppose is coming in yonder boat?"
+
+When the boat came nearer Gud and the fish saw that the boat also
+contained a man and two women. The man was talking. "Suppose," said he,
+"that the boat should upset: neither of you can swim, and what would I
+do? For I could not save you both. I could not let my dear old mother
+drown and yet how could I let my beautiful wife drown? If I had realized
+how I was going to worry about it, I should have insisted on going to
+the mountains for our vacation."
+
+Upon hearing the man's words the two women set up a great weeping.
+
+"I wonder," said Gud, "which one he would save!"
+
+"Let's find out," laughed the fish; and without further ado he dived
+beneath the boat and upset it with a mighty stroke of his great scaly
+tail.
+
+"Help!" screamed the mother.
+
+"Help!" gurgled the young wife.
+
+"Now I am in a devil of a fix," groaned the man, "which ever one I save,
+the neighbors will say I should have saved the other one." And he
+started off alone swimming rapidly toward the shore.
+
+Then the fish remembered that the young wife was quite plump--even if
+she wasn't beautiful as her husband had said she was, so he dived deep
+into the sea and left Gud standing there on the water without a blessed
+thing to do and nothing to think about.
+
+And now a wind came sighing over the deep blue sea, and little ripples
+stirred upon the surface of the water, and then the wind came soughing
+over the roughened sea, and larger wavelets raced and ran atop the cold,
+damp water. And soon the wind began to howl and tear the wild, wet sea,
+and mighty waves began to break and toss and splatter--and it made Gud
+seasick.
+
+So he began to wonder why the waves kept going on and leaving him
+behind. The more he thought about it, the more it worried him; and
+finally it occurred to Gud that he was opposing the waves
+subconsciously. So he sublimated his subconscious conflict and
+harmonized his ego with the spirit of the waves, and when the next wave
+hit him he rode atop it like a cat on the ridgepole of a cabin going
+down the river in a June rise.
+
+As the wave struck the shore, it began to break and make breakers. As
+soon as it was broke, Gud dismounted and strolled along the beach
+looking for flotsam and jetsam.
+
+He didn't find any, so he picked up a jeweled casket and started to
+wonder with a great curiosity what it contained. Then suddenly, he
+tossed the jeweled casket aside without even examining the padlock, for
+he had remembered that he knew all things and hence could not wonder nor
+possess curiosity. But upon further consideration he realized that lack
+of wonder and curiosity on his part would kill all the suspense in his
+story, so he began to wonder what the wild waves were saying, and why
+sea shells are pink inside, and what the ink-fish was writing on the
+sands of time.
+
+Gud pondered these things as he walked along the beach until he saw
+before him a series of shallow depressions. At first he thought they
+were ordinary soul tracks. Then he looked again and gave forth a low
+whistle of surprise and amazement and bent low to examine the
+footprints--and shrank back in horror, for they were stained a deep
+crimson.
+
+Cautiously Gud touched his finger to the stain and examined it
+critically. "'Tis blood!" he cried.
+
+Gud began to trail the stained footprints along the beach and followed
+them until they turned and led into the sea. At the edge of the water he
+paused and sighed, for his robe was now nicely dehydrated. But curiosity
+is a compelling instinct and wonder a powerful emotion; and so Gud
+followed the trail as it led down the sloping beach and on down along
+the bottom of the sea.
+
+At last the trail led to a rocky cavern where phosphorescent eyes stared
+out of opalescent water. Here the trail came finally to an end as it
+entered a door in the side of a barnacle-covered hull of an ancient
+galley.
+
+"And what is this place?" asked Gud of a mermaid, who was sitting on one
+of the ship's knees: "and what bold criminal with a blood-stained trail
+has entered here?"
+
+"Can't you read?" retorted the mermaid. "The sign tells you plainly
+enough that this is our Deep-Sea Butcher Shop, and he who just now
+entered was the butcher's boy, who had been up on the shore to get some
+red-blooded meat. We tire dreadfully down here of having seven Fridays
+in a week. And now if you will quit being silly and playing at amateur
+detective I will sing you a song." And so she sang:
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII
+
+
+    It was a soulful song he sung,
+      A doleful song sang he,
+    For in the sun her body swung
+      High on the gallows' tree.
+
+    The loathsome vultures swooped among
+      The shadows hungrily,
+    As though awaiting for the dung
+      That swayed there horribly.
+
+    Then as a distant church bell rung
+      Slowly, peacefully,
+    Out through the night a mad cry flung
+      Red echoes suddenly.
+
+    A mad cry, then the silence clung
+      O'er sky and shore and sea;
+    He dead below, and she that hung
+      High on the gallows' tree.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVIII
+
+
+"Oh, listen to the mocking bird!" cried the crustacean.
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed the crinoid, "that is only a mock turtle."
+
+"Oh H_{2}O!" snorted the good red herring, "you talk like a fish out of
+water."
+
+"She has a necklace of shark's teeth," whispered the jealous water baby.
+
+"And a pearl without a price," piped the sea lady.
+
+"But why do mermaids have fish tales to tell?" demanded Gud.
+
+"I don't know," answered the deep sea diver, who was looking for the
+treasure. "But they call 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea'
+prophetic fiction, but you can't shoot a rifle under water without
+blowing your head off."
+
+Just then the Underdog barked at the copycat and Gud woke up and
+realized that all this marine stuff was just the subconscious yearning
+of a writer born in the short grass country to imitate Conrad, and that
+he, Gud, was still lying in the pasture, and that the snow had changed
+to rain and his feet were wet.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIX
+
+
+    And old Giasticuticus
+      Stood on a mountain side,
+    His right legs shorter than his left,
+      And scratched his tough, thick hide.
+
+    "I live upon a bias, true,
+      With legs I'd like to hide,
+    But that arose from dwelling here
+      Upon the mountain side."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XL
+
+
+And Gud came upon a paradise, its streets of hammered gold. Iridescent
+fountains played beneath o'er-hanging palms, and gentle breezes, wafting
+through the glistening latticery of ornate edifice, made music soft and
+low that lulled of peace and quiet and eternal joy.
+
+Here was a paradise prepared for most exacting saints. Gud strolled its
+million leagues about and wondered why there was no sign of occupants.
+These heavenly mansions were not newly built but rather spoke of use.
+While all the major structures were intact, the minor furnishings gave
+evidence of chaos and disorder. This paradise, it seemed to Gud, had
+once o'erflown with life, but now was empty and abandoned.
+
+All this puzzled Gud and worried him. He was familiar with the ruins of
+many a paradise that had been smashed and broken by rebellion or by war,
+but his mind could find no reason why a heaven so fine as this should be
+deserted, and yet remain in such fair state of preservation.
+
+The most likely theory which he could conceive, was that some pestilence
+had raged and stripped the place of every living soul. Over this Gud
+cogitated. Had it been a dwelling place of mortal flesh, a pestilence
+would have left its tell-tale stench or whitening bones. But immortal
+souls--how could pestilence have slain them? His theory thus became a
+paradox or worse yet a dilemma, and either one is harrowing to the mind.
+So Gud started out again in search of facts.
+
+After much meandering he was rewarded by finding himself looking down
+into a high-walled garden, most beautiful of any spot that he had yet
+discovered. And better still, he noted signs of life. He hastened to
+descend, that he might explore the garden. It was there beneath a bower
+that he found a female soul most radiant. She was sitting on a gorgeous
+purple rock, and singing, and knitting as she sang, while all about her,
+tumbling on the grass in a most completely idiotic fashion, were little
+souls at play.
+
+"Good morning," said Gud.
+
+The soul stared up at him in most incredulous manner and replied; "I
+thought they were all dead."
+
+With much patient questioning, Gud wrested from this soul, alone in a
+vast heaven--save for the little souls that played most idiotically upon
+the grass--a tale of a paradise gone wrong because of a theological
+blunder.
+
+It was a tedious tale and she who sat knitting there upon the purple
+rock told it to Gud in broken fragments of narration. First she related
+how the place had been peopled by all the host of souls passed over from
+a certain muddy sphere, and who came to this heaven as the result of
+faith in a most liberal theology that promised universal salvation to
+saint alike with sinner.
+
+And so they all in one triumphal procession came to claim the rewards
+and demand the fulfillment of the promises. And yet they had not
+tarried--none but she who told the tale and the bevy of little tumbling
+spirits, who were none other than the souls of idiotic babes born into
+their material world of long ago, deaf and blind as they were imbecile.
+
+Gud suspected, even as the tale unfolded, that there had been some
+fearful blunder in the promises; and right enough he was, for the ninth
+promise of their creed had been, "Then ye shall know the truth."
+
+So all the myriads of saved souls, who had cherished the promises, had
+come to know the truth as it had been promised them. When they arose in
+glittering gowns and halos bright upon that Resurrection Morn and
+started singing, one by one and then by twos and tens and soon by scores
+and thousands they remembered all that they had wished to know of all
+their pasts and ponderings. And to their minds, reborn to omniscience of
+the truth of what had been as it had really been, came also the memories
+of what they thought had been.
+
+The books of hymns had fallen from their hands, and voices lost the key
+and shrieked in agony. Insane ravings, babblings and cursing smote the
+air of heaven. Chaos reigned supreme and all the hosts of heaven went
+raving mad and babbled as they raved.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLI
+
+
+    I buy my clothes in high-priced shops;
+      My collars match my shirts;
+    I swing a dapper cane with ease
+      And ogle all the skirts.
+
+    I follow the ads in the Satevepost;
+      I have picked the car to buy;
+    I read the "Book of Etiquette,"
+      And "Sappho" on the sly.
+
+    A bit of my handkerchief always shows
+      In a pocket of my coat....
+    I carry a letter next to my heart
+      That a movie actress wrote.
+
+    I said to a lady I flirted with:
+      "I'm a gent!" But then she ran,
+    Though over her shoulder sweetly said:
+      "That's a third of a gentleman!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLII
+
+
+And Gud came to a great Republic and sat himself down at meat in a
+tavern of the capital city thereof. Said the damsel who came to serve
+him: "Alas, there is no meat, for we have civil war, and all the meat is
+requisitioned for the soldiers."
+
+When she had said that a volley of guns sounded in the street. Gud
+looked out of the window and saw two armies firing at each other. The
+one army was composed of men richly garbed, and the other of men poorly
+clad, and the rich men and the poor men were killing each other. Seizing
+the white table linen, Gud went out into the midst of the murderous
+armies and waved the table linen peacefully.
+
+The General of the Rich Men and the General of the Poor Men rushed up
+angrily to Gud and both demanded in aggrieved tones to know why he was
+peacefully interfering with the war.
+
+"Because," said Gud, "The soldiers are eating all the meat."
+
+"But," cried the generals, "you have stopped the war--and now what shall
+we do? We had tried the courts; we had tried the ballot; we had tried
+arbitration and all failed. So we resorted to war, which is the last
+resort of civilized people, and we do not wish to revert to savagery."
+
+"I stopped the war," said Gud, "because I dislike to have the streets
+covered with blood--it makes them slippery, but I am sorry. Is there
+anything I can do to help you start it again?"
+
+The generals shook their heads sadly, for they saw that the Poor Men and
+the Rich Men were fraternizing and exchanging cigarettes, and they knew
+that the war was over.
+
+"I wonder," said Gud, "since I spoiled the war, if you would mind
+telling me what it was all about?"
+
+"Gladly," said the generals, and they invited Gud into the tavern--and
+now the damsel brought meat which Gud ate, while the generals of the
+late war related the cause thereof.
+
+"It so happened," they said, "that we wished to erect a shrine to the
+President of our Republic while he was yet alive to be worshipped
+therein. The rich men gave the money and the poor men held their hats to
+receive it.
+
+"When the money was gathered, the committee took it to our beloved
+President and asked him the manner of shrine he would have. And our
+President said: 'All that any man is, his mother made him--therefore I
+ask that the shrine shall consist of a great gallery, and in this
+gallery shall hang the portrait of my mother.'
+
+"So our committee called upon all the artists and they selected the two
+best. One artist's name was Jake Smith, and he was born naked into the
+world amidst dire poverty and considerable adversity, but he had become
+a great artist for all that and had painted the portraits of many rich
+and be-jeweled ladies.
+
+"And the other artist bore the name of Glengary Du Peyster, and he was
+born with a silver spoon in his mouth; but in spite of that he also
+learned to paint, and he had searched out all the poor and wretched old
+women of our slums and hovels and painted of them very great pictures.
+
+"When these artists took samples of their work to show to our President,
+he said: 'You may both paint my mother, and then my mother shall decide
+which is the best painting.'
+
+"'Very well,' said the artists, 'will you conduct us to her home?'
+
+"So the President took them to a little flat in K Street where lived a
+poor, blind widow and he said: 'Artists, meet my mother!'
+
+"Glengary Du Peyster was over-joyed, for this was the kind of a woman he
+could paint best, and he wished to send immediately for his canvas and
+brushes.
+
+"But it was not to be so, for the President now conducted the artists to
+a mansion in D Street, and here in a great hall hung with tapestry and
+shaded lights was a fine old lady, and the president said again:
+'Artists, meet my mother!'
+
+"And now it was Jake Smith's time to rejoice; and he glared at Glengary
+Du Peyster, and neither of them durst speak their thoughts.
+
+"Then the President took them both back to his official residence and
+feasted them on grouse and wine, and as they sat about their cigars Jake
+Smith said: 'Mr. President, which is your mother?'
+
+"'Alas,' said our great President, 'I do not know.'
+
+"At this both artists lost their artistic tempers and rushed into the
+street. As the news-makers gathered about them, they told what had
+happened and what the president had said, and it was published abroad in
+our great Republic, together with photos of the two women, each of whom
+the President had introduced as his mother.
+
+"Then our citizens warmed to heated arguments and gathered themselves
+into two parties, the poor to themselves under the leadership of Jake
+Smith, for they agreed with him that our great President should have a
+fine and noble lady for his mother. But the rich, under the leadership
+of Glengary Du Peyster said: 'Surely our President was born of the poor
+and lowly mother, how else can we be a true republic, where all men are
+born free and equal?'"
+
+"That is very interesting," said Gud as he took another forkful of meat,
+"but why did you not ask the women themselves?"
+
+"We did ask them," said the leaders of the late war, "but both said they
+did not know. So we thought war was the only way to settle the matter.
+And now you have spoiled the war, which is the last resort of civilized
+people, and we shall surely revert to savagery."
+
+The following day Gud was conducted with great pomp and ceremony to the
+Hall of Justice, where he sat down upon the judge's bench.
+
+Said Gud to the President of the great Republic, who was there in his
+own person: "Bring in your poor mother and put her on the witness
+stand."
+
+The President did so, and Gud saw before him a stooped, wrinkled and
+blind creature who was poorly dressed but neat and clean.
+
+"Now," said Gud in his most kindly tone, "we will dispense with the
+swearing and you may tell me all that happened in your own language."
+
+"Believe me, your honor," said the poor mother, "it was no fault of
+mine, for I was blind and how could I tell which one was which? You see,
+I was a widow, because my husband died by the falling on him of a stone
+in the quarry when he was getting out rocks for the cellar of the house
+of Eben Gratz. And so when they buried him I was left all by myself, but
+for the babe that was coming. When it came it was a twin and they both
+cried just alike, so that I could not tell which one was which.
+
+"And nobody had ever seen them until the day I heard a fine automobile
+driving up the road, purring like a cat fed upon cream. It stopped by my
+cabin and a lady with a rustly gown got out and came into the cabin. I
+sat waiting for her to speak to me, thinking that perhaps in her rich
+kindness she might have brought some clothes for my twins. I heard her
+go to the old cow trough where the twins were lying under the horse
+blanket. Then, without saying a word, she rustled out again and was
+gone.
+
+"And presently the twins began to cry and I could tell now that they did
+not cry alike, and I knew that she had stolen one of my babies and left
+another in its place.
+
+"So I raised them up as best I could. The girl she was good and dutiful
+and married a good man. But the boy, he was smart and did not marry
+anybody; and he became the President of his country just as I knew he
+would. While I am not saying whether he is my son or not, I can not say
+he isn't; and he can't, either, because he can't remember whether it was
+himself or his sister that was brought that day by the fine lady and
+exchanged for his brother. So you see, sir, just how it is."
+
+Gud did not see, but disliked to admit it, so he asked that the rich
+mother of the President of the Great Republic be brought also before
+him.
+
+As she came into the room he saw what a grand old lady she was, for she
+walked erect and proud and her manners were queenly and stately, and Gud
+could see how she impressed all the poor men in the courtroom with her
+greatness.
+
+When the rich mother of the President began speaking in a low, melodious
+voice that quivered with emotion, she said:
+
+"Your honor, there is naught I can tell save to confess that when my
+child was born I was so overwhelmed with maternal emotion that I became
+ambitious for my child. But I knew that I was rich and lived in a
+mansion and that riches are a handicap to any child. I recalled that it
+was always the boys born in log cabins and nurtured in poverty that
+became our great men, and presidents of our great Republic.
+
+"So I took my darling babe with me in my car and drove out into the
+mountains where the soil was rocky and the people were poor, and finally
+I came to a very picturesque log cabin that had only three sides. I
+stopped the car, and took my own child and stole toward the cabin and
+peeped in. There sat a poor, blind, widowed mother knitting with a ball
+of coarse yarn.
+
+"And over in the corner I saw a cow trough and a horse blanket and it
+was from there that the cry of the child came. So I stole over and
+raised the blanket and saw there the faces of two sweet babes. I closed
+my eyes and tore off the wrappings from my own child and quietly placed
+him in the trough; and then, seizing one of the babes in the trough, I
+wrapped it in the silken robes I had taken from my own child and
+hastened back to my car.
+
+"The child I stole, when he learned to talk, told me that he was a boy."
+
+"Pardon me, madame," interrupted Gud, "but what was the sex of your own
+child that you left in the cow trough?"
+
+At the question the refined lady blushed painfully. "Do not insult me,
+sir," she said icily. Then she continued: "I raised this child of the
+poor blind widow and he became the best dancer of the younger set. But
+while I lavished on him all of a fond mother's care, deep in my heart
+was the love for my own child that I had so bravely committed to the
+care of the poor blind widow in the log cabin with only three sides.
+
+"So I employed detectives to keep secret watch about the cabin, and when
+the two children were old enough to be dressed distinctively the
+detective reported to me that one was a boy and one was a girl.
+
+"It was then that I realized my grievous error in exchanging my own
+child for one of two twins, for I could not know whether the boy or the
+girl was my own child. So I waited to see how they would turn out. And
+when the girl married a clam digger down on the river I decided to say
+nothing to her. But when the boy worked his way through college by
+delivering milk before dawn, I sent for him and confessed to him that
+I was either his mother or his sister's mother.
+
+"So from that day to this he has been a dutiful son to me as well as to
+the poor blind widow who may also be his mother. And when he was elected
+President of our Great Republic, both she and I rejoiced. All would be
+well, if only his love for his mother had not prompted him to wish to
+have her painting hung in the memorial shrine. That is all I have to
+confess."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIII
+
+
+    Who shall say that his love was not good
+    For the dummy of cloth and wax and wood?
+    I know that more curious things exist
+    Than the love of a dreaming ventriloquist.
+
+    He liked to perch her on his knee
+    Combing her black hair lovingly,
+    Then talk by the hour just as though
+    She understood and ought to know.
+
+    Her chatter merged with his and twice,
+    I know, he struck her ... it wasn't nice.
+    Repenting, he bought her costly things--
+    Gowns, rare necklaces and rings.
+
+    One night they found him on the floor
+    Stark dead ... each year I wonder more
+    Why, killing himself, he never wrote
+    Of the dagger he sank in her wooden throat.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIV
+
+
+Now the fame of Gud's wisdom was broadcast about, so that important
+personages of other worlds came and laid their problems at the feet of
+Gud and begged of him solutions.
+
+Among them were two citizens of a world that was in dire distress. And
+one of these citizens was a Keeper of Morals of his sphere, and the
+other was the Vital Statistician.
+
+To Gud the Statistician said: "Our world is full, so that there is no
+more room for further population, and I have therefore ordered that the
+issue of birth permits be curtailed."
+
+"And in doing so," cried the Keeper of Morals, "you have ignored the law
+which bade us be fruitful and multiply."
+
+"That have I done," replied the Statistician, "because the facts have
+obsoleted the law. Our world is full, and what good would it do to issue
+more birth permits when there is no more room to be born into?"
+
+"But you should make room," protested the Keeper of Morals, "by issuing
+more death permits. Surely it is not as great a sin to die as it is not
+to be born."
+
+"But I insist," declared the Statistician, "that to issue more death
+permits than there are people ready to sicken and die would be to
+encourage suicide and murder. Do you countenance such unmoral ways of
+dying?"
+
+"Certainly not," retorted the Keeper of Morals, "suicide and murder are
+crimes. We must not encourage them, but neither must we discourage
+births, for we are commanded to be fruitful and multiply."
+
+"I agree with you," said Gud, addressing himself to the Keeper of
+Morals, "in your belief that it is wrong to discourage births, and also
+wrong to encourage deaths--for unrestricted birth and unpremeditated
+death are great moral principles and nothing must be allowed to
+interfere with them."
+
+"Exactly," replied the Keeper of Morals, "yet this Statistician is
+interfering by producing his unwelcome facts. He tells us that our world
+is full and that there is room in it for not a single being more."
+
+Gud turned to the Statistician and demanded: "Is this fact that you have
+produced a true fact or is it only a statistical fact?"
+
+And the Statistician replied: "The fact is a true fact. Indeed, when we
+left to come here to consult you, we were obliged to make dummies and
+leave them in our places so that we would find room for ourselves when
+we returned. All this I can readily prove to you, if you will come with
+us and see for yourself that there is room in our world for not a single
+being more."
+
+"It is not necessary for me to go out of my way," said Gud, "to see your
+world, but I will send for it." And Gud called Fidu and commanded the
+Underdog to go and fetch the world from whence his visitors came.
+
+So Fidu went and fetched that world, and brought it and laid it at the
+feet of Gud.
+
+Gud looked upon that world and saw that the fact of its fullness was a
+true fact and that there was room thereon for not a single being more.
+So Gud turned and said to the Keeper of Morals: "The fact of the
+absolute fullness of your world is a true fact and also obvious and
+incontrovertible. What do you propose to do about it?"
+
+"Why, nothing, Your Deity," replied the Keeper of Morals, "it is not my
+business to deal with facts when they interfere with morals--I merely
+ignore them."
+
+"Then," asked Gud, "why quarrel you with this Statistician? Why do you
+not let him and his facts alone?"
+
+"And that I should do gladly, if he would but let me and my morals
+alone, but he is withholding the issuing of birth permits."
+
+So Gud addressed the Statistician and said: "Why do you not let this man
+and his morals alone?"
+
+"Because," the Statistician made reply, "his morals are incompatible
+with my facts, which are: First, our world is absolutely full: Second,
+there can be no more births than deaths: Third, we must either issue
+more death permits or cease to issue so many birth permits. That is
+absolutely logic, yet this Moralist refuses to accept it."
+
+"I certainly do," shouted the Moralist. "Away with your sinful facts and
+your wicked logic! The morality of our world must be preserved at all
+costs. We must not encourage murder nor suicide, nor dare we discourage
+births, for that is also murder of those who would be born, and so it is
+race suicide. On these moral principles I stand as on the rock of truth,
+and no torrents of facts or floods of logic can dislodge me."
+
+"You will have to admit," argued Gud, addressing the Vital Statistician,
+"that the Moralist has the courage of his convictions. Therefore the
+great truth of moral principle should be regarded above the smaller
+truths of material facts and mental logic--and many of the inhabitants
+of your world, if I know mortal nature, will agree with me."
+
+"Sad but true," agreed the Statistician. "I am only able to hold my job
+because I am under civil service and not subject to popular election.
+But you, Great Gud, appear to me to be a rational being."
+
+"Oh, yes," confessed Gud, "I am quite rational at times; but from the
+nature of my position it is only right that I should uphold morality
+when it clashes with rationality, as I regret to say it often does.
+Because I must do this, I can see both sides of the case, which neither
+of you gentlemen can. So to me the solution is very simple, and will
+outrage neither morals nor reason. Murder and suicide must not be
+encouraged, births must not be limited, yet your world is full.
+Obviously, you must proceed to empty it. There is only one moral way to
+do that. You must have a war--preferably a righteous war. That requires
+a cause with two right sides. Such causes are plentiful. Any question
+that can be looked at from two sides, either of which, when looked at
+rightly is the right side, will serve as the cause for a righteous war.
+This dispute that you gentlemen bring me will do nicely. Let the
+moralists fight for their moral principles and the rationalists fight
+for their facts."
+
+"But," interrupted the Statistician, "my side would have very few
+adherents; men do not fight to defend facts. We would be overwhelmed by
+superior numbers and annihilated."
+
+"Certainly," said Gud, "what more could you expect if you espouse an
+unpopular cause?
+
+"But why stand here babbling? See, your valorous enemy has already
+returned to his followers and is calling them to arms. Why do you not
+hasten to join your colors?"
+
+"Thanks," replied the Statistician, "but I left a dummy in my place and
+I am going to stay right here and count the stars."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLV
+
+
+Passing a heap of fossil platitudes Gud came to an oasis in a Desert of
+Righteousness and saw nineteen pretty murderers hanging in a row. There
+also he saw the couple who were parted at the altar, a woman who had
+lost her intuition, and a herd of ambitious animals who believed in the
+transmigration of souls.
+
+Gud entered the caravansary of the place and bargained with the keeper
+thereof to make a supper with meat and wine--after which there should be
+dancing.
+
+To the supper, Gud bade a Skeptic, a Cynic, a Critic and a Cryptic. And
+Gud and his guests made merry.
+
+Gud blew four halos of phosphorescent smoke and gave one to each of his
+guests. Whereupon they were flattered and waxed loquacious, and the
+Cynic said to Gud: "If you had not insisted on following that Impossible
+Curve, but had come here by the straight way, how much sooner you would
+have joined us."
+
+"True," agreed the Critic, "but the straight and narrow way would have
+seemed much further, for it lies wholly in the Desert of Righteousness."
+
+"But most of all I hate to see," remarked the Cynic, "is a female cat
+sitting on a gravestone in the moonlight, after I carefully killed her
+the day before."
+
+"Quite true," replied the Cryptic, with a weary shrug.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVI
+
+
+Then the Skeptic related to Gud some of the gossip of the place. "We
+have here," said he, "a powerful sheik who rules over this oasis in the
+Desert of Righteousness. The sheik being old, had twenty young wives;
+and each of these wives had a lover. Came a time when the old sheik went
+on a journey but returned a day before he was expected. Finding only one
+of his wives in the harem, he called the masons and walled up the
+windows and doors of the place, and that is why the nineteen pretty
+murderers are hanging in a row."
+
+"But," said Gud, "the story seems incomplete."
+
+"Not at all," replied the Skeptic, "it is only that you do not
+understand our laws and customs. These things are relative, you
+know...."
+
+"If you will listen well," spoke up the Cryptic, "I will expound
+relativity to you. Now, if a man should buy a lot on time and the lot
+had but two dimensions, then if time should be destroyed, could the real
+estate agent justly demand payment for the lot?"
+
+"Why, certainly," answered Gud. "Is not the Impossible Curve in the Nth
+dimension?"
+
+"But I have not told you yet," interrupted the Skeptic, "what the old
+sheik did. You see, he felt so remorseful that he endowed a School of
+Theological Mathematics, and each year he grants a doctor's dilemma to
+the young man who can most nearly solve the problem of the trinity."
+
+"What is the solution?" asked Gud.
+
+"We do not know," replied the Skeptic, "for as yet no man has ever
+solved it."
+
+"But I was explaining relativity to our host," cried the Cryptic, "and
+you interrupt me with this trifling gossip. Now, if a mass of silence
+traveling at the speed of light, should be deflected by a caricature of
+a phantom magnetic force, would the energy engendered--"
+
+But at that moment the keeper of the caravansary appeared in the doorway
+and looked upon Gud questioningly. Gud nodded to him approvingly,
+whereupon five beautiful damsels entered dancing to flats and sharps,
+and flute and cymbal.
+
+So the discussion of relativity was forgotten, as all things of the
+intellect are forgotten, when damsels young and beautiful dance to lute
+and timbrel.
+
+After there had been much joyous dancing, the Cynic plucked at Gud's
+sleeve and asked:
+
+"Who be these beautiful damsels, who dance so divinely, and whence came
+they?"
+
+And Gud made answer and said: "These damsels be the daughters of the
+Pope, but I know not whence they came."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVII
+
+
+And it came to pass that as Gud was making a long journey to a certain
+place he neared a wayside inn, and being weary he entered and found six
+characters drinking tea.
+
+"Good evening," spoke Gud. "Why are you drinking tea?"
+
+"We are drinking tea," replied the Clerical Collar, "so that we can
+engage in theological disputation without cutting one another's
+throats."
+
+"What is the dispute about?" asked Gud.
+
+The Black Bathrobe made answer and said: "It concerns our belief in
+Gud."
+
+"May I join you?" inquired Gud.
+
+"Delighted!" cried the Vest with the Silver Horseshoes, not recognizing
+the caller.
+
+Gud sat down and the Clerical Collar poured him a cup of hot water, but
+neglected to pass him the tea ball. Not wishing to attract attention to
+the oversight, which he realized was due to the host's being absorbed in
+spiritual matters, Gud was about to convert the water into tea by a
+miracle. Upon second thought he refrained, lest the display of
+miraculous power would reveal his incognito. Still Gud did not like the
+idea of drinking water straight; so instead of performing a miracle he
+reached over and helped himself to the tea ball--noting, as he did so,
+how much simpler it is to get results by natural laws than by
+unnecessary miracles.
+
+The venerable Beard being less wrought up over the disputation,
+explained the nature of the meeting to the newcomer. Said he: "We are
+all worshipers and ministers of the one true Gud, having been born and
+baptised in the faith and duly ordained in its ministry. But of late
+certain heresies have arisen among us, and we are gathered here to
+ferret out the heretic and bring him to the bar of ecclesiastical
+justice. Sad to confess, I find that I alone have remained staunch in
+our faith, which is founded on the rock of unchanging truth."
+
+"Liar," cried out the Spectacles of the Student, "we modernists are also
+staunch in the faith; it is merely the conceit of fundamentalist bigotry
+to argue that truth cannot be changed. Indeed, it must be changed or
+intelligent people will cease to believe it."
+
+"You are more accurate than expedient," admonished the Vest with the
+Silver Horseshoes. "The faith of the people is waning fast, but it will
+never be restored by your muddled mixtures of science and psychology.
+What is needed is a great faith-arousing event, such as the trial and
+burning of a heretic, and for that purpose are we assembled here."
+
+"Sad, but true," agreed the Threadbare Coat. "Any burning at the stake
+would tend to revive faith, but the revival would be much stronger if
+the burning flesh savored of heresy."
+
+"What?" shrieked the horrified Spectacles of the Student. "Is it
+necessary to burn human flesh in this modern age? Would it not do quite
+as well to set fire to a cage of black cats? Surely the burning of cats
+would create a stench that would smell to high heaven."
+
+"Tut, tut," sniffed the Clerical Collar.
+
+Then the Venerable Beard spoke up nobly. "The red hand of heresy
+grapples white faith by the throat. What is the use of all our
+theological blue laws if the black heart of atheism continues to control
+our yellow press?"
+
+"Softly, softly, Brother," the Threadbare Coat made answer; "It is not
+charitable, neither is it wise, to bite the hand that feeds the press."
+
+"Do not worry," replied the Vest with the Silver Horseshoes. "I never
+let my theological hand know what my secular hand doeth. Let us proceed
+to business. The burning of any heretic is good for a headline."
+
+The Spectacles of the Student now arose in righteous indignation,
+pointed a finger of contempt at the Vest with the Silver Horseshoes and
+cried: "Do not tell me that you merely wish to burn a heretic to make
+news for your paper. I know why you are a fundamentalist. You have a
+monopoly on the oil!"
+
+"Young man, you betray your ignorance," spake the Clerical Collar. "The
+church has its own oil reserves."
+
+"But we should save the oil to pour on troubled waters," suggested the
+Threadbare Coat; "and that we could do if we had an obese heretic who
+would burn in his own fat."
+
+The Vest with the Silver Horseshoes became self-conscious. "There is no
+necessity of my being the martyr," he said. "I am already known to the
+masses. Moreover a heretic, to burn brilliantly, must have ideas, not
+mere fat."
+
+A look of great fear now came into the Spectacles of the Student, who
+cried out: "You all assume because you see a light in my attic that I am
+burning the midnight candle at both ends in search of ideas; but I tell
+you it is the light of faith that shines from my window."
+
+"What use is a false faith?" retorted the Clerical Collar. "I know that
+my faith alone is the true faith, because my mother told me it was so.
+But I will reveal the heretic to you." And he pointed an accusing finger
+at the Venerable Beard.
+
+"If you have no respect for my grey hairs," wailed the accused, "I will
+pluck them out." And he seized his beard and tore it from his face.
+
+"Do not think, brother," replied the Clerical Collar, "that by doing
+penance with self-torture, you can avoid the stake. Moreover you should
+feel honored at my charge, for I do not accuse you of any petty heresy,
+such as doubting that the eclipse of our moon is for the purpose of
+hiding the angels at their baths. I accuse you of the _Heresis Maximus_,
+that you doubt the virgin father!"
+
+"Why, how absurd!" remarked Gud naively. "There never was one to doubt."
+
+No sooner were these words out of the mouth of Gud than the six
+characters in search of a heretic pounced in frenzied joy upon him.
+Binding him with chains of iron and fetters of brass, they dragged him
+forth to the heretical pyre, to which the Vest of the Silver Horseshoes
+applied the torch, while the presses hummed with the news of the
+burning.
+
+But as the flames licked hot about the feet of Gud, he slipped his
+chains; and blazing with ethereal fire that dulled the smoke of
+intolerance and the smudge of inquisition, Gud, the martyr, arose in a
+flame of splendor. And using the stars as stepping stones, he strode
+across the heavens to the place where he was going--for he had an
+assignation there.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVIII
+
+
+She came toward Gud with an arch smile. In fact, her smile was very
+arch. Her brows were also arched. But her nose was as straight as the
+road to Hell and her lashes were curved as the new-born moon. They were
+also long and drooping. Her eyes were opalescent, her complexion
+translucent, her forehead high, and her cheekbones low. She had a
+cupid's bow mouth and her lips were very ruby. Her teeth were like
+genuine pearls and her chin was dimpled and single.
+
+When she spoke to Gud her voice was as musical as the song the silkworms
+sing.
+
+And when Gud spoke to her, she sighed in ecstasy of lavender-scented
+flattery, and her eyelids drooped like languid draperies across a
+seacoal fire.
+
+"I have brought my book," she murmeled as she reached into her corsage
+and drew forth a manuscript bound with skins of humming birds. "May I
+read it to you? It's title is 'Art and Wealth and Anatomy Sesame.'"
+
+She opened the book at random--which is the proper way to open any
+non-fiction book written by a woman--and her voice warbled as she read:
+
+"The lambent enoughness of atomless ultraness vegetateth for eons in
+ultramarine slime and thence crawleth hencely, attaining esoteric power
+by the sublimation of the egomania into splenetic colorature which by
+chemic vortices electrifying plasmic erotifcanaticism ascends to organic
+indefinability and multitudinous indefinity, and soareth toward the
+inordinate fulfillment of superconscious metapsychoses."
+
+She of the dimpled and single chin, laid aside her manuscript and stared
+reproachfully at Gud. "Do you comprehend it?" she beseeched.
+
+"Why, certainly. But what does it mean?" said Gud, who was always
+willing to increase his knowledge if he could do so without interfering
+with his previous beliefs.
+
+"It is a new theory," replied the ruby lips, "of the conquest of
+anatomy. This theory is based on the hypotheses that the organ called
+the brain is nothing but an adventitous, radio-active tumor that yields
+two secretions. The external secretion is what is called the mind and
+the internal secretion is known as the soul. From this hypothesis there
+follows the tetravalent truth:
+
+"All life is anatomy.
+
+"All anatomy is matter.
+
+"All matter is nothing.
+
+"Therefore nothing matters."
+
+"Then why bother about it?" asked Gud.
+
+But she did not answer, for her drooping eyes had again sought the open
+book that lay on her dimpled knees, and her voice whippled and yodeled
+as she read.
+
+"The immortal soul is destroyed by the psychic spirit.
+
+"The psychic spirit is destroyed by the mental psyche.
+
+"The mental psyche is destroyed by the rational mind.
+
+"The rational mind is destroyed by the common sense.
+
+"The common sense is destroyed by the emotion.
+
+"The emotion is destroyed by the instinct.
+
+"The instinct is destroyed by the physiology.
+
+"The physiology is destroyed by the anatomy.... How do you like my
+eyes?"
+
+"Very," said Gud, "for your pupils shine as unborn souls of May-green
+stars floating in the nebulous nonentity."
+
+After which her butler came to say that Messrs. Confucius and Buddha
+were calling.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX
+
+
+    We have built our own skyscrapers
+    Out of slender metal girders,
+    We have flung our shining cities,
+    Reaped our harvests from the sod....
+    With our paths of empire crimson
+    From a list of countless murders,
+    We go shrieking down the darkness,
+    Bent on worshipping a god.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L
+
+
+Gud came around a bend in the Impossible Curve and lo, the Curve
+broadened into a great highway which was very smooth. The way had been
+rough before, so Gud now rejoiced and struck his staff gleefully on the
+pavement, as he walked on in the middle of the great highway. But ere he
+had progressed far, there came from behind him an agonizing shriek, as
+of a man being flayed alive because he loved his neighbor's wife.
+
+The agonizing shriek startled Gud, so that he leaped sideways rather
+spryly--considering that he was not slender. Just as he leaped, a
+chariot rushed by with the speed of light, which is the speed limit. Had
+Gud been less spry he would have ended fatally, the chariot would not
+have stopped, and Gud would have never known what it was. But having
+been spry, Gud had leaped almost out of the way; only his staff had been
+knocked from his hand and his elbow broken. Observing the injury done to
+the pedestrian, the demon who drove the chariot caused its speed to
+abate, and presently it wheeled about and came roaring back to where Gud
+stood, and stopped.
+
+The demon alighted and said: "Seems we had a little accident."
+
+"Nay, it feels, I know not seems," returned Gud, rubbing his elbow.
+
+"Pedigreed?" asked the demon.
+
+"No, fractured," said Gud.
+
+"Dead, I take it," remarked the demon, and he kicked something that lay
+limp and prone on the highway.
+
+Then Gud observed that the Underdog was dead.
+
+"How much?" asked the demon. And before Gud could speak, the demon
+pulled out a roll of the medium of exchange and unrolled it and handed
+Gud a portion of the medium.
+
+As Gud had no pockets he put the medium under his girdle and remarked:
+"If my staff had not been broken, I could revive him."
+
+"A pulmotor would be more likely," said the demon; and he went to the
+chariot, brought back an instrument and applied last aid to the
+Underdog, who presently wagged his tail feebly, opened his eyes and
+whined piteously.
+
+Gud realized that the demon had paid him because the Underdog had been
+dead; and now that Fidu was no longer dead, Gud felt constrained to
+return that which the demon had given him.
+
+Thereupon the demon looked more gracious and said: "Where are you
+going?"
+
+"We were walking for pleasure," answered Gud.
+
+At this foolish reply the demon looked confounded. "Well I don't see any
+pleasure in walking," he remarked. "Better jump in--I'll take you as far
+as Progress. It is just beyond Advertising."
+
+So Gud assumed alacrity, and jumped into the chariot; and the demon
+threw the Underdog, which was still whining piteously, into the rear of
+the chariot, and then sat himself beside Gud.
+
+The demon manipulated many mechanisms skilfully; and the chariot began
+to roar mightily and then to purr contentedly, as the great highway
+slipped beneath it.
+
+Gud was pleased with the demon's chariot and sat back on the cushions
+and sighed enviously.
+
+Suddenly the chariot swerved and shrieked its agonizing shriek, and Gud
+saw a lesser chariot, like unto the demon's chariot but smaller and
+meaner looking. And the demon smiled scornfully, and said: "That was a
+Lord."
+
+And they had not gone far after they passed the Lord when they came to a
+small place with a great sign: "SPEED LIMIT THE SPEED OF SOUND."
+
+And the demon swore balefully, and the powerful chariot heaved and
+groaned distressingly. Gud looked out upon the way and saw that it was
+rough like a washlady's board, and there were many sharp turns and
+detours; and at one place there was a sign: "THIS ROAD TO HIGHWATER."
+Presently there was another sign: "THIS ROAD TO BREAKFAST."
+
+Gud asked: "What place is this?"
+
+Just as he had spoken the chariot reversed its direction so that Gud
+could see behind it, and there was a sign which read: "FREE AIR AND GAS
+TO BURN, BUT DON'T ASK FOR WATER."
+
+Gud was about to ask the meaning of all these strange signs and wonders
+when the chariot turned a somersault, and Gud saw another sign being
+written on the sky. This was mightier than all, and as Gud read it the
+Lord passed beneath them; for the reading of the sign was: "THIS IS
+HELL."
+
+When they had passed through Hell the road became smooth again, and the
+demon smiled and began to burn up the road; and Gud looked into a small
+mirror and could see Hell diminishing according to the law of
+perspective. But of a sudden Hell ceased to be visible, for the demon
+was angry; and he was exceeding the speed limit, which was the speed of
+light, and that is why the light of Hell could no longer reach them.
+
+As there was nothing now to be seen in the rear, Gud looked ahead and
+found that he could see more than twice as fast as usual, for they were
+meeting the light that came from that direction at more than its own
+speed. So Gud saw the tail light of the Lord that had passed them in
+Hell. The demon turned on the warning glare to apprize the little Lord
+of his approach, but this action was without avail since they were
+exceeding the speed of light and the glare could not shine fast enough
+to warn the Lord; and so the Lord was unwarned. Then the demon swore
+unjustly and called the Lord "A way-swine"; but it availed nothing and
+the Lord was run down and run over, and left as an empty tin that had
+been stepped on by a dinosaur with an iron heel.
+
+After they had passed through Advertising and through Alltalk, which was
+a suburb of Advertising, they came to Progress and the demon slowed down
+and began to show Gud the town.
+
+The Underdog had recovered from his injuries and crawled out and stood
+on the running board with his fore feet on the front defender and barked
+joyfully, for Progress was a lively enough town and largely made up of
+show windows and chariot factories.
+
+When the demon came to the end of his journey Gud alighted and said:
+"Much obliged."
+
+The demon said: "Not at all."
+
+The Underdog jumped from the chariot and ran gleefully up to one who was
+standing in front of a factory and playing with an enormous horse-power.
+
+Gud was jealous when he saw how much the Underdog seemed to love the
+stranger and how much the stranger seemed to love the Underdog, and Gud
+asked the demon who the stranger was. And the demon said: "Why, that is
+Lord, who makes the little Lord chariots. If you won't tell him I ran
+over one, I'll introduce you."
+
+So Gud met Lord, and Lord said: "I think I make a pretty good chariot."
+
+"Yes," said Gud, "It can pass any chariot in Hell."
+
+After that Lord excused himself and went into his office to dictate an
+article on the "Importance of Eating Pork"; and Gud was left at the
+mercy of Lord's sales force.
+
+So Gud went across the street and entered the palatial office of a great
+chariot maker and once inside he was obliged to pledge his honor and his
+name. And when Gud came out of that place he was the proud possessor of
+a great chariot with a mild roar.
+
+They started off and went back toward Hell, for they were headed that
+way and could not turn around. They passed through Hell and went on from
+Hell to Breakfast, and the chariot roared beautifully.
+
+Then the price of faith, which the great chariot burned, began to
+increase at each filling station, and the hope, which smoothed its
+running, became full of grit, and the charity on which it rolled began
+to blow up, and the way became rough and the curves became impossible,
+even for a great chariot; and Gud began to wish for a Lord.
+
+But there was no Lord in sight. Gud tinkered with the great chariot with
+patience, and energized the battery with nerve, but all was of no avail.
+
+So when a Blackamoor came along on a gray mule, Gud made a bargain and
+exchanged the great chariot for the mule. But Gud recalling the story
+about the old man and his son and the jackass, Gud threw his animal into
+the river at once, to avoid criticism.
+
+Gud now whistled to the Underdog, and the Underdog harkened to the
+whistle and followed after Gud, for they were both meek in the humility
+of wisdom.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI
+
+
+They had not gone far until Gud was arrested. His thumb print was taken
+and he was cast into jail. As he did not know how to change his thumb
+print, he wished to know why he had been arrested, in order to judge
+whether it would be honorable to escape. So he inquired of one of his
+fellow prisoners. And the prisoner listened to Gud's story and made
+answer: "You have been arrested because you drove a high-powered chariot
+without being possessed of a large amount of money. The catalog of crime
+which such a combination engenders is tedious and fulsome."
+
+"But what is the remedy?" asked Gud, for he did not like to remain a
+criminal.
+
+"Money," replied the prisoner, "you should make money. If we could get
+out of this place I would show you how, for I am by trade a
+money-maker."
+
+"Very well," said Gud, and he commanded the walls of the jail to fall
+down, and he and the money-maker walked out over the fallen walls and
+proceeded to the money-maker's den.
+
+But Gud soon tired of the tedious process of copper engraving; and going
+out for a stroll about the town he came upon the booth of a
+fortune-teller.
+
+"I wish you would tell me a fortune," said Gud, "for I am badly in need
+of one."
+
+"But for that I charge money," said the fortune-teller.
+
+"Why?" asked Gud.
+
+"Because, I know what is going to happen."
+
+"So do I," said Gud.
+
+"Liar!" cried the fortune-teller. "If you knew what was going to happen,
+and had any insight whatsoever into future events, you would not be
+standing idly here, for you would be in the Street."
+
+"Thanks for the suggestion," replied Gud, "I will go there immediately."
+
+When Gud reached the Street he found many bulls there and bears and
+lambs, and men who were busy watering their stock. And Gud found there
+also a private secretary who was watching the tape. And Gud said: "Why
+do you watch the tape with eager eyes?"
+
+And she answered and said to Gud: "Because I wish to know what figures
+are on the tape as quickly as any one else."
+
+"And how would you like to know more quickly?"
+
+"Indeed," she cried, "if one could, he would soon own the earth."
+
+"It is easy," said Gud. "All you have to do is to read these figures
+before they appear instead of afterwards."
+
+"Can you do that?"
+
+"Why certainly! It is easy to read the future, if you know how."
+
+And so Gud showed her how to read the future, and she showed Gud how to
+cash in on the readings, and presently they owned the earth.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII
+
+
+    He loads the dice, scratches the cards,
+    Hoists us up by our own petards;
+    And when low music thrills the banquet halls,
+    His shadow like a silent spectre falls
+    In grotesque imagery upon the walls.
+
+    A mad child left an empire's might
+    The kingdom of the day and night
+    And as he babbles on the palace floor,
+    He listens to the silver thunder roar
+    Like troubled seas upon some distant shore.
+
+    With froth upon a sensual lip,
+    He sinks in play some crowded ship.
+    Then lightly in an idle mood of mirth
+    As though it were a trinket of no worth
+    Down starry skies he flings some living earth.
+
+    Life's roulette table stops for him
+    To any cackling vagrant whim.
+    His own police are venal, full of doubt;
+    Indeed the cheapest little racetrack tout
+    Knows more what sportsmanship is all about.
+
+    His gold face and his jet black hair
+    The jewels his madness makes him wear.
+    His laws, a madman's irony
+    The moon his mask above the sea
+    Some morning he will turn his vacant eyes
+    And see the sun with jealous new surprise
+    And on the following day it will not rise.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII
+
+
+And when the last sound had gone howling by and tumbled into the
+bottomless pit of silence, Gud held his breath, and even Fidu ceased to
+breathe and listened ... and listened for the echo that was still ...
+and it was as quiet as the missing link, as silent as a broken heart, as
+mute as a withered violet in a virgin's dream.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV
+
+
+Gud had traveled many infinite distances since he had seen any sign of
+matter or mind or spirits. In this region things were not merely dead!
+they were absolutely non-existent, and Gud became a trifle lonesome.
+
+He was in his ghostly incognito, for he always traveled lightly in
+vacuous and doubtful regions. To sojourn as an immaterial spirit among
+material beings gives one a sense of power, for what could be more
+glorious than to see without eyes, hear without ears, ring bells without
+hands or kick over tables without feet? But it is a very dull business
+to journey along as a spirit in absolute nothingness.
+
+Indeed it is a business as dull as a Latin conjugation. So Gud now
+realized that he was sensing something with his seventh sense, which was
+more acute than the canine instinct of the Underdog and almost as
+unerring as a woman's intuition.
+
+This seventh sense told Gud that he had entered a spiritual realm, and
+he became aware of a black ghost of a white cat with one ghoulish
+unseeing eye, sitting on the shadow of a back fence echoing a diabolical
+howl.
+
+Gud could not hear the ghost cat howl, but he knew that it was howling
+because with his seventh sense he felt the vibration of its howl
+quivering through the impalpable and ghostly ether.
+
+The howl of the ghost cat petrified Gud's gall, for he sensed that the
+creature had nine notches on its tail; hence would never live again, and
+had nothing to howl about.
+
+So Gud picked up a stone and threw it at the ghost cat, but he aimed
+high, and the stone, passing through a bush of credulity, killed two
+birds of promise; whereupon the ghost cat ceased to howl.
+
+As Gud went on he became aware of ghosts strolling about among the ruins
+of nothing.
+
+And Gud said to the ghosts: "Where is your king?"
+
+And the ghosts replied to Gud: "We have no king."
+
+"Then," said Gud, "I would be told of your form of government."
+
+But the ghosts answered: "Our government has no form because we have no
+government."
+
+"Then," said Gud, "I would meet your doctors or lawyers or great and
+famous ghosts."
+
+And they made answer that they had none.
+
+"Then," said Gud, "I would be told of your religion and learn of your
+faith."
+
+Said the ghosts: "We have no religion and no faith, for we are too
+immaterial to sin; and are therefore without fear of death, and thus
+need no religion and no faith."
+
+"Then," said Gud, "this is a dull place. What do you call it?"
+
+Replied the ghosts, who had a very long time to live: "We have no name
+for the place, but we are very happy here."
+
+When Gud learned that this place was nameless, he whistled for his
+Underdog and they went on and passed through an impalpable fog of
+etheric vibrations, and over a great gulf of sublimated emptiness, and
+through a dark forest of neglected memories, and across a sandless
+desert swept by a breathless wind.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LV
+
+
+    The graveyard of the gods is silent under a heavy sky,
+    Where all the gods who never lived are buried when they die.
+
+    Pale angels kneel beside the graves, stretching row on row,
+    And madmen carrying mouldy flowers quickly come and go.
+
+    A withered lily in her hand Saint Any-One-At-All,
+    With pale, thin fingers opens the gate in an ivied wall.
+
+    Her face an open wound of wonder, bleeding with defeat,
+    And as she walks, the shining snow crunches under her feet.
+
+    The ghosts of trees reach icy arms up to a starless sky,
+    Mourning the gods who never were that rest here when they die.
+
+    Pale angels kneel beside the graves stretching row on row,
+    And madmen carrying mouldy flowers quickly come and go.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI
+
+
+Having passed through the graveyard of the gods, Gud came to a vast
+beyond where there really was nothing, when the gods are dead there can
+be nothing. And so Gud journeyed on, for he would not stop at nothing,
+and he came to a church, because it was Saturday night.
+
+Crouched by the steps of the church was a poor old skeptic begging alms
+of faith.
+
+"Why do you beg?" asked Gud.
+
+"Because I have need of faith," said the skeptic.
+
+"If I should give you a great amount of faith, would you use it to
+destroy your doubts, or would you go out and proclaim it to others, and
+thus give it all away?"
+
+"Try me," said the skeptic.
+
+"Then believe that I am Gud."
+
+"I will, if you can prove it to me!"
+
+"What proof shall I offer you?" asked Gud. For while he knew that proof
+was not necessary to faith, yet he was willing to humor the poor old
+skeptic because he was so weighted down with his burden of doubts.
+
+"If you be Gud," said the skeptic, "then you should know all things."
+
+"And that I do."
+
+"Very well," said the skeptic, "how mad is a wet hen?"
+
+Whereupon Gud called down fire from the heaven of that place and smote
+the blasphemer so that he died.
+
+But when Gud called down the fire that smote the skeptic, alas, he
+destroyed the church house also. The next morning when the sun arose,
+behold the spot where the church had been was a greensward of two-bladed
+grass. But presently worshippers came and seated themselves upon the
+grass and lifted up their eyes in prayer.
+
+Gud did not wait to see who answered their prayers, for he had gone on
+into a realm where the nights are as cold as greed, and where little
+stars are born--and comets, like tadpoles, lose their tails, and burst
+into shining suns.
+
+And yet again Gud passed on beyond all stars and on and on until he
+reached the limits of thoughts, beyond which were only dim traces of
+imagination. And passing still on and ever on he came to a place where
+only the hope of faith abides, and lo, he was confronted here with a
+great wall of light.
+
+And Gud knew--for he still knew all things--that this wall of light was
+the great and mighty wall that flings its shining reaches round about
+the City of the Forgotten Ghosts. These ghosts feared that dark
+memories, which were their only enemies, might find them out, so they
+had builded this mighty wall of light about their ghostly city.
+
+But those who know all things need stop at nothing, and Gud, first
+casting off all memories that clung about him, kneeled down beside the
+wall of light and rubbed a little ring of pale intrusion. And behold a
+door of darkness opened in the wall of light. Gud arose and passed
+through the door of darkness in the wall of light. When he had passed
+through, the door of darkness closed behind him, and, having revoked all
+memories, Gud could not recall that it had been.
+
+As Gud now journeyed through the outer environs of the City of the
+Forgotten Ghosts, he rejoiced to become aware that these were holy
+ghosts--for behold the way was lined with the shadows of ten thousand
+crosses whereon hung ten thousand crucified ghosts.
+
+Seeing that he was among friends, Gud decided to tarry yet a little
+while.
+
+He was very much interested to learn that the inhabitants of this realm
+were not merely the spiritual leftovers of deceased material beings, but
+were true ghosts who had always been ghosts. This fact puzzled Gud, but
+there was no doubt about its authenticity, for the ghosts had a
+revelation that testified to their purely ghostly origin.
+
+All the ghosts accepted this revelation of their origin, but there were
+differences of opinion as to their destination. Having an honest
+difference of opinion about an unknowable matter, there was, of course,
+ample justification for the ten thousand crucified ghosts that hung on
+the shadows of crosses.
+
+Among these ghosts, who were so positive about their origin and so
+uncertain about their destiny, there were two sects: the Spiritualists
+and the Materialists. The Spiritualists, knowing that they had always
+been spirits, argued that they would always remain spirits. But the
+Materialists decried this pessimistic faith and held forth a great hope
+that if they adhered to all the platitudes they would have the pleasure
+of shuffling off the immortal coil and being reborn as material beings.
+
+It was the tenets of this sect that Gud espoused, for he admired the
+faith of these mere ghosts who had never sensed matter, and yet had
+lifted up their eyes in the hope of material life.
+
+With his experience in such affairs Gud readily assumed the role of a
+prophet of this Materialistic faith. But it is not sufficient merely to
+call the righteous to repentance, and Gud indulged his imagination to
+think of some way to impress the skeptical Spiritualists with the truth
+of the Materialist faith.
+
+It was Fidu who gave Gud the idea for the great miracle, for Fidu had
+remained close to his master, both of course, in their spiritual beings.
+
+The ghosts were not aware that Fidu was among them, and not being
+familiar with dogs they walked right through him, ignoring the poor
+beast quite utterly, which was very humiliating to Fidu.
+
+So Gud, in sympathy with the Underdog's humiliation, conceived of a
+great idea, and he called the leaders of the Materialist sect together
+and asked: "Have any of you ever sensed a material being?"
+
+"No!" answered they, "we have never sensed matter, which is why we have
+faith in its existence."
+
+"True," said Gud, "enough for the faithful, but these infidels, some of
+whom you neglected to crucify, have not faith without works. Let us
+therefore create a material being wherewith to confound them."
+
+"And of what will you create a material being?"
+
+"I usually create things out of nothing," answered Gud.
+
+"But Master," cried the Ghosts, "we have very little of nothing. How
+much would it take?"
+
+"It will suffice," said Gud, and he whistled to Fidu and straightway
+materialized him.
+
+A real live dog weighing about twenty-seven pounds, running around
+through the ghosts, made quite a sensation; and it greatly delighted
+those of the Materialist faith and converted most of the Spiritualists.
+
+Gud thought for a time he had converted all the infidels and skeptics in
+the realm to the true faith, but he later found that there was one
+little band upon whom the materialization of Fidu had made no
+impression. This sect denied the spiritual existence that they were
+living, and taught that there was no such a thing as the spirit, but
+that all was matter.
+
+Gud could not understand why this sect should call themselves
+Materio-Spiritists, since they were certainly not Spiritualists, as they
+denied the existence of spirit--and yet they were not Materialists, for
+they did not believe in matter as matter, but in spirit as matter.
+
+These Materio-Spiritists were not impressed by the miracle Gud had
+wrought in the interest of the orthodox Materialist faith. They believed
+that all was matter, yet they did not recognize matter when they met it
+in the road. They denied the matter-of-fact Fidu, and said he was only
+an illusion of the non-existent spiritual mind and hence could have no
+existence, material or immaterial.
+
+Even when Gud took the material dog to their place of worship and had
+him bark at the service, they still argued that the material Fidu was
+non-existent.
+
+Gud was a little crest-fallen at his inability to convert the
+Materio-Spiritists, and yet the more he argued with them, the more
+doubtful he became of his own convictions. In fact, he became so
+confounded that he forgot what his convictions were, and was not sure
+whether he was a ghost or not, or whether the material dog was real or
+imaginary.
+
+Finally, to settle his doubts, Gud decided to kill all the ghosts and
+see whether they would be reborn as material beings or disappear
+altogether. When he proclaimed his intention there was much rejoicing in
+the ranks of the Materialists, who thus saw the fulfillment of their
+faith.
+
+As the day of the spiritual death approached there was a great revival
+of faith, and much repentance and divers preparation to assume the
+material role.
+
+Gud was a little puzzled as to how to kill so many ghosts at once.
+Earthquakes and floods and all that sort of thing were clearly
+inadequate, but he recalled that the crowing of a cock was very
+destructive to ghostly life. So he sent Fidu back to the last material
+realm they had passed, to retrieve a cock which could crow most lustily.
+
+The cock arrived amid a vast darkness, and Gud prepared a great light,
+at the sight of which the cock crew mightily--and every ghost died of
+fright.
+
+As the cock was pedigreed, Gud sent Fidu back to restore it to its
+owner, while he sat himself down to wait for the appearance of the
+material beings.
+
+None appeared.
+
+After a while Gud grew tired of waiting.
+
+The place was very still and very dark for the wall of light was dark on
+the inside. In spite of his own ghostly being Gud found that he was
+getting nervous. He had creepy sensations up and down his spine--
+
+This is a flunk. Ghosts of the ghosts are too much for my imagination.
+It was Hersey's idea anyway. When you kill a ghost, of course you would
+have a ghost of a ghost to take its place, and one ought to be able to
+imagine it. But if you kill that, then you should have the ghost of a
+ghost of a ghost, and that is straining the imagination to its cracking
+point. And if you kill that then you should have the ghost of a ghost of
+a ghost of a ghost--et cetera, ad infinitum, to the Nth expansion--me
+for Einstein and his warped light.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII
+
+
+As Gud strolled along trying to forget the past he stumbled over the
+soul of an old blind ghost who was sitting on a petrified memory and
+sentimentalizing over her woes.
+
+"Pardon me," said Gud, "but why are you so blind that I could not see
+you?"
+
+"I am blind," replied the old soul, "because I strained my eyes out
+looking at the moving pictures, and now I am very miserable because I
+can not see them."
+
+"Oh, if that is all," answered Gud, "I will restore your sight. It will
+cost you nothing but a little praise and gratitude."
+
+When the old soul received her sight she looked around the barren astral
+landscape and was sorely disappointed, for there were no moving pictures
+there; and she complained bitterly in her disappointment.
+
+"I could make a motion picture for you if you would tell me how,"
+offered Gud.
+
+"That I will do gladly," cried the old soul, "but first you must have an
+author to write the scenario."
+
+"That is easy," replied Gud. "There--I have created one. Speak to her,
+author, for the poor old soul was blind."
+
+"So I see," answered the author, as he extracted a cigarette. "And she
+wants a story, I take it; but she has been blind and is probably
+illiterate, and can not read, and I never tell my stories as poets
+recite their verses--it is bad taste, you know."
+
+"I will restore her literacy," offered Gud, who was in a miraculous
+mood, "and then she can read."
+
+"It would be doing me no good," sighed the old soul, "for even if I
+could read the directions on patent medicine bottles because they are
+printed in so many languages, yet I could never read fiction stories on
+account of the quotation marks, and it's the pictures I want anyway."
+
+"Oh, pictures," said the author, as he ignited his cigarette, "now that
+is a different matter; I create stories for the love of art, but moving
+pictures can not be created for the love of art, for there is no art in
+them to love."
+
+"Since we are both creators," said Gud, "I don't like to dictate to you,
+so suppose we compromise. You write a poem for art's sake--as there is
+no other excuse for writing one--but put it in the form of a scenario."
+
+"Now that is what I call clever!" exclaimed the author, and he whipped
+out his Corona and wrote the scenario forthwith.
+
+What it was you shall never know, for movie scenarios could never get by
+heavenly censors without mutilation, and when the censors had done with
+this one there remained not even the mutilation. However, the author
+read it to the old soul.
+
+"That is a fine scenario," cried she to Gud, "but you will have to make
+a director to make the picture out of the scenario."
+
+So Gud made a director. He had never made one before but they are easily
+made, as they can be made out of most anything.
+
+"Well, I see we have the scenario," remarked the director, when Gud had
+finished making him, "but it hasn't the proper ending."
+
+"I am sorry," said the author, "but I didn't write a proper ending as I
+knew you would use your own anyway."
+
+"I know his ending," cried the ugly old soul, "and it is very
+beautiful--it's the one where--"
+
+"Shut up, you old fool," bawled the director, "don't you know you will
+spoil the suspense by telling the audience how it is going to end?"
+
+"But in this case we have a real plot," said the author, "and it ought
+not to be mutilated--"
+
+"Shut up, you conceited pup," howled the director, "and here, take your
+scenario and have it printed if you like. I don't need it anyway."
+
+And so the author took the scenario and folded it and put it in his
+inside pocket and walked away, inhaling angrily on his last cigarette.
+
+"Now," spoke the director, "as that infernal ass is gone we can get
+busy."
+
+"What can I do?" asked Gud.
+
+"Make the cast for me, pick out the sets and rig the props. But first I
+must have six beautiful girls. It is going to be an all-star cast and I
+want each of them as beautiful as she can be, yet distinctive, so the
+audience can tell which is which."
+
+So Gud made six girls, all as beautiful as they could be, and yet all as
+different as wives are from concubines.
+
+"Fine," exclaimed the director, as he pawed them over affectionately.
+
+"I love you," said the girl with the Cupid's bow mouth.
+
+"I loved him first," spoke the girl with the sorrowful eyes.
+
+"But I love him most," cried the girl with the angel-child curls.
+
+"But I love him like the flower loves the dew," wailed the girl with the
+human form divine.
+
+"But I love him so that I could die for him," sobbed the girl with the
+very tender heart.
+
+"Then die," shrieked the old-fashioned vampire, as she plunged a dagger
+into the very tender heart.
+
+All the girls brought orange blossoms and laid them on the coffin and
+wept much in each other's arms, and the director renounced his
+professional ambitions and went back to his old job as market reporter
+on an undertaker's weekly.
+
+"Oh, thank you so much," spoke the ugly old soul to Gud.
+
+"For what?" asked Gud.
+
+"For the beautiful sentiments of the picture," she replied.
+
+"But that wasn't a picture," corrected Gud, "that was reality."
+
+"What are you saying?" queried the old soul, "I was blind, you know, and
+didn't hear very well either."
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Gud. "I am glad you enjoyed it." For he saw that she
+had taken reality for romance, which is a far more beautiful illusion
+than taking romance for reality. So Gud went quietly on his way.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII
+
+
+And Gud overtook a thief who had stolen an ocean and loaded it into a
+wagon which he had hitched to a star. The thief was making a poor
+getaway, for the wagon was leaking badly and was dropping clues at every
+step.
+
+To avoid being drowned in the drippings, Gud turned into an unexplored
+dimension, but before he could get his bearings he was run down by an
+insane comet collector, who was madly chasing a comet that was buzzing
+dangerously near an incandescent sun--so hot that its nearest molecules
+were farther apart than the hearts of a bigamist's wives.
+
+To avoid the net of the comet collector Gud hid himself in an ethereal
+cavern. There he found a spiritual paleontologist at work reconstructing
+extinct souls from the merest fossil fragments.
+
+Gud picked up a tiny fragment and asked the paleontologist what manner
+of soul it had been.
+
+The paleontologist scrutinized it through his confounded monocle and
+replied: "It is a bit of ectoplasm from the soul of a woman killed by
+curiosity. She was forever asking her lovers, 'How much do you love
+me?'"
+
+The paleontologist now reached up to a geometrical plane and brought
+down another small fossil. "Observe," said he, "the marking on this
+other bit of petrified ectoplasm, and note how the two differ."
+
+"Yes, I see," said Gud, "what is that one?"
+
+"That," replied the paleontologist, "is a fragment of the aura of a
+woman who wished to be loved for herself alone."
+
+"It is very interesting," agreed Gud, "but tell me why those two
+completed models on the nebulous shelf behind you look so
+argumentative."
+
+"Ah," said the paleontologist, "they are the pride of my collection,
+being the reconstruction of two friendly enemies. One was the soul of a
+deist and the other the soul of an atheist, and they argued and argued
+through one eternity after another. They argued not wisely but too well,
+for each finally converted the other, and the deist became an atheist
+and the atheist became a deist. Then they started arguing all over
+again. But before the atheist who had become a deist could convert the
+deist who had become an atheist back to deism, or the deist who had
+become an atheist could convert the atheist who had become a deist back
+to atheism, the astral plane was rotated into a cosmic epizoid,
+resulting in a cataclysm that buried these two poor souls in an
+avalanche of metaphysical debris which was stratified under the radiant
+pressure, just as we find it here."
+
+"It is very wonderful," said Gud, "but why do you probe into secrets of
+the dead past when there are so many living souls existing in poverty of
+hopes or a sorrow of memories?"
+
+The paleontologist removed the confounded monocle from his eye, and
+wiped the lens with a bit of chamois skin.
+
+"I am no base utilitarian," said he, "but a pure scientist seeking truth
+for truth's sake."
+
+"Well," said Gud, "a good deal of it isn't worth seeking for any other
+reason. Do you know I have often wondered what any one would do with all
+the truth if he did find it--for my part I have never been able to make
+use of half I possessed."
+
+"But you misunderstand the aims of pure science. We scientists have no
+use for truth either, after we have found it; but the search for truth
+raises us above the base utilitarian."
+
+"Yes," said Gud, "pure science is all right in its place, but you wipe
+the lens of your confounded monocle with a chamois skin, and how could
+one get chamois skin unless there were farmers and butchers and skinners
+and tanners to farm, butcher, skin and tan the chamois?"
+
+"Mere hewers of wood and drawers of water," repeated the pure scientist
+with disdain, "let them serve truth and searchers after truth; for
+knowledge is power and the truth shall make us free."
+
+"Free of what?" asked Gud.
+
+But the paleontologist did not answer, for he had spied another bit of
+fossilized ectoplasm and was readjusting his confounded monocle so that
+he might examine it, to see if it were part of the fragment of the soul
+of the infant prodigy who had mastered calculus before it cut its canine
+teeth, or merely another piece of that soul of the man who had gone
+spiritually to pieces when he met his fame.
+
+Alas, it was neither but something worse, and so Gud asked what it was.
+
+"It is the fragment," replied the paleontologist, "of the soul of an old
+maid who committed suicide because she could not live in eternal doubt."
+
+"And what did she doubt?" asked Gud.
+
+"Her virtue."
+
+"And why did she doubt that?"
+
+"Because she suffered from a dual personality complicated by amnesia."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Gud, "she wanted to know how the other half lived."
+
+"No, no," protested the fossil collector, "she was not a sociologist but
+one of the minor female poets who specialize in ballads in the romantic
+manner. See, here is one of her manuscripts that she had translated so
+that she could take it with her."
+
+"Translated into what?" asked Gud.
+
+"Into spirit language," said the paleontologist, "and if you read it you
+will see for yourself how very spiritual it is."
+
+Gud took the poem and glanced at the first line. "Pardon me," he said,
+"but is there a graveyard handy?"
+
+"As you should judge for yourself," replied the paleontologist, "from
+the number of bones I have been digging up, this place itself was once a
+graveyard."
+
+"All things that were can be again," said Gud, as he turned back the
+wheel of time until he came into the graveyard as it was in the days of
+its prosperity.
+
+Seeing that he was in the respectable part of the graveyard, Gud
+hastened to walk down the hill to the less respectable portion.
+Experience had taught him that in the part of a graveyard where rich men
+are buried he was likely to be annoyed by relatives who felt they had
+been cheated in the wills and were anxious to have resurrections
+performed.
+
+As Gud strolled through the disreputable portion of the cemetery he came
+upon a man who was sitting on a grave and weeping bitterly.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIX
+
+
+    The Gods of the Gallows ride tonight
+    Their shadowy faces spotted white.
+    The creature who watches through the bars
+    Hears every footfall under the stars.
+    The gods of the gallows need no rest--
+    They ride like chieftains--twelve abreast.
+    And now they have vanished, leaving hope,
+    And a thing that hangs at the end of a rope.
+
+    Under the lattice a rosebud trembles, a rosebud trembles gently....
+    Under the trees the shadows fall
+    In a silver pool by the garden wall;
+    Then here and there among the trees
+    Wind whispers rouse low litanies.
+    Like tiny voices of tongueless grief
+    That stir the silence of every leaf.
+    And who would know that under the lattice, under the lattice window,
+    Where the rosebud stirred like a startled fawn,
+    Two hands are creeping up the wall,
+    Two hands that are slim and white and small?
+    And who can hear the lattice open, the lattice open gently?
+    Now over the lip of the window sill,
+    A rustle of silks, the lattice closes,
+    No one has heard, the night is still,
+    Save unblossomed buds of the startled roses.
+    Yet were attentive ears to hearken: enemy ears to listen
+    Far off, far off, where the white road bends,
+    And the upturned cup of the blue sky ends,
+    They might have heard a horse's hoofs
+    Go clickity, clickity, clickity hack, clickity hack, clickity ...
+      clickity ... clickity ... hack
+    Wisely wondered why late at night
+    So speedy a horseman rode its back....
+    Then the echo dimmed at the edge of a wood,
+    And the sound and the horse were gone for good.
+    The creature who watches through the bars
+    Heard every footfall under the stars.
+
+    Beside the doorway of his cell
+    Imprisoned in that iron hell,
+    He taunted the guards of the King--the King's own guards they were--
+    With scarlet breeches and purple coats,
+    Shining buckles upon their boots.
+    He taunted them with sneering jests.
+    He sneered at the medals on their breasts;
+    Laughed in the haughty captain's face,
+    Cut short the chaplain's plea for grace,
+    And hummed the popular air of the day
+    When they read the sentence, and bade him pray.
+
+    "I promised her at our final tryst,
+    When our aching bodies clung and kissed,
+    That come what may, no matter when
+    I should see her to tell her I love her again."
+
+    And he laughed through the bars
+    In a redcoat's face,
+
+    Then he looked through the window
+    Up at the stars,
+    And saw that the dawn was taking place.
+    I'll be returning ere the dusk is down,
+    I'll be returning....
+    Wait for me!
+    I'll be returning though life claims
+    Allegiance under lying rames.
+
+    This was the song he sang for her--for her this song he sang.
+
+    So there by the pool where the rose leaves drift.
+    She waited knowing the dawn was near,
+    And when she saw the shadows lift
+    And all the skies turn deep and clear,
+    She fled to her room--he had not come.
+    They dared not speak to her of him,
+    Her mother, her sister--aye, any of them.
+    For her face was carven out of stone
+    And her little lips made moan, made moan.
+
+    Yet late that night when the house was still
+    She heard a horse ride over the hill.
+    "It is he, it is he," her heart sang sweet.
+    Then out of the window climbed to meet
+    The lover who made her hot heart beat.
+    Yes there he was with his handsome head,
+    And now the same dear things he said
+    As he drew close with a sweep of his arm.
+    The gods of the gallows need no rest--
+    They ride like chieftains twelve abreast.
+
+    One flower touched as she fluttered by,
+    Swung on its stem,
+    And one bright star in the purple sky
+    Shone over them.
+    And what he said, it matters not,
+    Nor what she said to him.
+    And he stopped to listen like one who is stirred;
+    His horse even hearkened, as though he heard.
+    For down the road there came abreast
+    Twelve men in ancient armor dressed.
+    There was something strange in the way they rode;
+    There was something odd in their manners.
+    They did not see the lovers there,
+    Nor heed the house at all,
+    But they rode like mad their horses backs....
+    Rode through the solid wall.
+    When she had opened her frightened eyes
+    What was her pitiful heart's surprise
+    To find him gone
+    And the yellow dawn
+    A roaring flame in the new day's skies.
+
+    And now they have vanished leaving hope,
+    And a thing that hangs at the end of a rope.
+
+    They found her there
+    In a little heap
+    As though she had walked
+    In her lilied sleep.
+    And they never knew,
+    Though her mother said:
+    "It's a pity, so,
+    With her lover dead
+    On the gallows' tree
+    Three days ago...."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LX
+
+
+"Why do you weep?" asked Gud, "since most of these dead ones will go to
+Hell anyway."
+
+The man did not answer but kept on weeping. So Gud paused to read the
+epitaph on the tombstone of the grave on which the man was sitting. The
+inscription was: "IN THIS GRAVE LIE THE DAMNED SOULS OF UNBAPTIZED
+BABES."
+
+"Come," said Gud, shaking the weeping man by the shoulder. "If your
+child wasn't baptized it ought to be damned, but there is no use weeping
+about it."
+
+"I never had a child," said the man, "but if I were going to have one, I
+would take no chances, for I would call the priest before I sent for the
+doctor."
+
+"Then why are you weeping?" repeated Gud.
+
+"Not over the contents of this grave, I assure you, but because of the
+contents of that grave there by the creek's edge."
+
+"Is a relative of yours buried there?" asked Gud.
+
+"He was no relative of mine," said the man. "And yet I am weeping
+because he is dead, and you would weep, too, if you were in my boots.
+You see, I am the hangman and I hanged that man only a fortnight ago."
+
+"Ah, ha!" said Gud, "you hanged an innocent man!"
+
+"Indeed I did not! And if I wept over every innocent man I have hanged,
+I would never have time to clean the scaffold. But I hanged that man for
+a petty crime that was never committed."
+
+"And you weep?" asked Gud.
+
+"I weep," said the hangman, "because since I hanged him, we have
+discovered that he was guilty of a great crime for which I hanged
+another man a year ago."
+
+"Then you are weeping for the other man?"
+
+"No, no!" retorted the hangman, growing quite angry, "I am weeping
+because, having hanged this man for a petty crime which was never
+committed, I cannot hang him now for I have already hanged the other
+man."
+
+"At last I understand," said Gud, greatly relieved, "and I think I can
+help you out. Go get your rope and call your citizens!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXI
+
+
+As he was sitting one night by a campfire waiting for the beans to boil,
+Gud picked up a newspaper. Glancing over the advertisements, his eye
+fell on this item:
+
+     PARTNER WANTED: Fine opportunity for experienced deity to share
+     control of fully evolved world. Will call at any address to
+     give details.--I. B. DEVIL.
+
+This interested Gud, for his vacation was getting irksome. So he called
+Fidu and let him sniff the advertisement and said: "Go get him!"
+
+Fidu immediately hit the trail through the great darkness, baying
+beautifully.
+
+When the Underdog returned there followed at his heels a handsome Devil.
+
+Gud shook hands with his caller and, removing the pot of beans from the
+hot rocks in the center of the fire, asked him to be seated.
+
+The Devil, throwing off his cape, sat down in the flames and poked his
+feet comfortably into the glowing coals.
+
+"You are very considerate," said the Devil, as he took out his pipe and
+filled the bowl with brimstone; "most fellows of your ilk would let me
+shiver or make me start my own fire."
+
+"Don't mention it," said Gud. "You have, I believe, a partnership
+proposition."
+
+"That I have," returned the Devil, "but first may I ask how you came to
+be out of employment?"
+
+"I smashed everything," explained Gud, "and quit business. The place got
+too big to be handled easily and I couldn't get efficient help. I
+thought I would retire, or at least take a long vacation; but you know
+how that goes, we are all creatures of habit."
+
+"Yes," agreed the Devil, "many of us are like that. We try to do too
+much, and get discouraged and throw up everything. However, I have
+always been a hard worker and rather liked it."
+
+"But you are out of a job now," said Gud significantly, "and before I
+can talk business I will have to know why."
+
+"Certainly," said the Devil, "I am out of employment for the very
+excellent reason that my god died."
+
+"What! You don't mean it?"
+
+"Why not? You fellows don't want to take your immortality too seriously.
+It's a necessary pose, of course, as a matter of business; but you see
+my god was really very old. He had a premonition, too, and very
+thoughtfully left me a letter of recommendation. Would you like to see
+it?"
+
+"Thanks, but I never look at letters of recommendation. I have written
+too many of them. But tell me about this death of your employer."
+
+"My partner, you mean," corrected the Devil. "Of course, I was only the
+junior partner, but I had a share in the loot. As I said, this chap was
+old and had won and lost many realms. I was with him on his final
+venture, running a hell as usual, and a purgatory on the side--the heavy
+end of the job, I call it, on that three-realm theology. This old god
+had nothing to do but sit up there surrounded by his angels--yes, he
+really had angels, old-fashioned place, you know--and wait for the
+resurrection when I was to deliver up his share of the loot from
+purgatory, and the Chief Arch was to blast the sleepers out of their
+graves."
+
+"That's a bit muddled," remarked Gud.
+
+"I grant it, but we had it arranged that way. Well, we got everything
+ready and I turned the crowd out of purgatory as per agreement; and the
+Arch blasted out the sleeping souls, and they all went trooping into
+heaven, demanding to see their god.
+
+"It was a sorry affair, all those countless souls who had lived and
+died, and some of them had suffered in purgatory for eons. And finally
+they came trooping into heaven and no god in sight.
+
+"They sent an angel down for me, for the situation was beyond those harp
+playing satellites. I found that the old god had died peacefully in his
+sleep, leaving the letter for me and a proper will drawn up, but he was
+dead.
+
+"I fixed up a double and set him on the throne to keep the crowd quiet
+while I stood behind a screen to prompt him. But some disgruntled little
+wing flapper betrayed us and the fraud got out. The crowd stopped
+squabbling about their gowns and harps, and dropped their hymn books and
+stared up at us.
+
+"It makes me sad yet when I think about it. I have roasted them and
+flayed them and boiled them without mercy; all that was nothing like
+seeing the disappointed expression in the eyes of those poor souls, all
+arrayed in their new celestial gowns and with harps in hand, staring
+like little lost children up at a dummy on the throne, and wailing
+because their god was dead!"
+
+"When did all this happen?" asked Gud.
+
+"A long while ago--like you, I've been on a vacation. The fact was that
+experience gave me a distaste for my profession. But you know how it is.
+We are all creatures of habit, as you say, and there are ups and downs
+in all business. I feel now that it is about time I got back to
+work--especially since I discovered this virgin world. With that we can
+start all over, everything new, all our experience to help us, and the
+likelihood of good luck this time by the law of averages."
+
+"Right you are," agreed Gud, "there is nothing like work. A shoemaker
+should stick to his last and die with his hammer in his hand. Yes, I
+think I will consider your proposition. Where is this property you speak
+of?"
+
+"In the eighth plane."
+
+"The eighth plane!" repeated Gud incredulously. "My dear fellow, there
+are only seven planes!"
+
+"That's just it; it's being in a place where it could not be explains
+why it is still there."
+
+"A fascinating tale," said Gud dubiously, "but how can mortals stay
+rational and civilized if they do not know that we exist, or that there
+are immortal joys and torments awaiting for them after they are through
+with their brief span of mortality?"
+
+"Now I can't answer that question as to theory, but I can report my
+observation of the fact that they manage it very decently well."
+
+"It seems incredible to me," sighed Gud.
+
+"It doesn't to me," replied the Devil, "for if I were mortal I would
+surely make the best of the life I had instead of pining and worrying
+about another, which, as you know for yourself, is never quite up to
+mortal expectations."
+
+The Devil knocked the ash out of the bowl of his pipe on one of the
+glowing rocks. "Naturally we haven't as much interest as you have in
+keeping the superstition alive, since we have the dirty end of the deal.
+But you know very well that you can't do business without us. It has
+been repeatedly demonstrated that mortals quickly lose interest in those
+one-sided theologies which, like their own Utopias, are insipid with
+perfect goodness and boresome with joy. What pleasure could there be in
+hoping to go to an eternal sunparlor without knowing that one's neighbor
+was going to hell?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I grant that argument, but this virgin world of yours is
+hardly plausible."
+
+"Holy comets!" exclaimed the Devil, springing up angrily, "do you doubt
+my observation or my veracity?"
+
+"Both," said Gud.
+
+"We are wasting words. If you will step this way you can see for
+yourself."
+
+"Just a moment," said Gud, who then arose and set the pot back on the
+hot rocks, and commanded Fidu to tend the fire and not to spill the
+beans.
+
+"Watch your step," called back the Devil. "There are some ugly holes in
+the void beyond the seventh plane."
+
+"How is that for a sphere?" spoke the Devil as he pointed out his find.
+
+"Not half bad," admitted Gud, "but it's a little flat at the poles.
+Strictly speaking, it is a spheroid."
+
+"Don't quibble over details. And now, if you don't mind, I'll
+materialize as a prosperous gentleman and you can be my cane-bearer."
+
+"Not on your smoke," retorted Gud, "you advertised for a partner. We
+materialize as equals or we stop right here."
+
+"Have it your way. I'll be a king in exile, and you can be a bricklayer
+on strike."
+
+So in that guise they stepped aboard, taking care to alight on the north
+pole to avoid the chance of an ugly fall.
+
+"Which way, now?" asked Gud.
+
+"South. We must obey their natural laws."
+
+So they traveled south to the equator, passing along the seashore where
+the thriving cities were. As Gud walked along between the Devil and the
+deep blue sea he saw many things that were never intended for him to
+see.
+
+"Now," said the Devil, "we have seen the northern hemisphere, and the
+southern one is just like it."
+
+"I am quite interested," admitted Gud.
+
+"Then let us step up the side of this volcano where we can both be
+comfortable while we close our deal."
+
+So they climbed the volcano and the Devil found a seat on a heap of
+freshly crusted lava, and Gud sat down on a nearby glacier.
+
+"First," began the Devil, "I would ask you if they had any souls?"
+
+"Not a soul," admitted Gud. "One could see it in their eyes."
+
+"And what about evidence of proprietorship?"
+
+Gud picked up a rock and examined it critically. "I see no evidence of
+design," he confessed.
+
+"And how about their rationality?"
+
+"That's what worries me. They are entirely too rational. If we try to
+give them souls they might reject them."
+
+"I can solve that," laughed the Devil. "Give the souls to the females
+first."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Gud, "that has never been heard of. To give them all
+souls at once is quite as radical a move as I could consider."
+
+"Well, I won't quibble over details. How long will it take you to fix up
+your pace?"
+
+"I should say it would take me an eon."
+
+"Make it an epoch."
+
+"Oh, very well."
+
+"And how do you propose to divide the booty? Would you be satisfied with
+predestination on a fifty-fifty split?"
+
+"I would not," returned Gud decisively. "I consider such collusion to
+suppress competition most unprofessional. I will give them a revelation,
+you can plant seeds of doubt and temptation, and we will divide on the
+usual tests of faith."
+
+"But what about those that pass over without hearing the revelation?"
+
+"I get them on the mercy clause," said Gud.
+
+"That's too liberal," replied the Devil, "and you know it; they belong
+to me by right of original sin. If you insist on taking them we will
+call the whole deal off."
+
+"Let's compromise on transmigration and reincarnate them till they do
+hear my revelation. It will mean quite a saving in the stock of new
+souls, for we will have to buy them. I was never good at designing
+home-made souls; I could never get them of even size, and the big ones
+were always knocking the little ones about."
+
+"Very well," agreed the Devil, who was anxious to get going. "Order the
+souls when you get ready."
+
+Just then the volcano conveniently erupted and dematerialized the king
+in exile and the bricklayer on strike.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXII
+
+
+    Once Gud sat all alone
+    High on his shining throne.
+    The Devil had been driven
+    Flaming out of heaven;
+    And this was eons after
+    Gud suddenly burst with laughter,
+    Remembering with a shout
+    A story the Devil told
+    Before they drove him out--
+    (Though even then 'twas old)
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXIII
+
+
+I. B. Devil paced restlessly about in his brand new Hell. Everything was
+running in apple pie order, but not a soul in torment. That fact worried
+him, for it had been nearly two generations since Gud had planted the
+souls. He had done it well, had plunged the busy sphere into a day of
+thick darkness. There had been a mad howling and babble among the
+conceited rationals until the whole race of them had tumbled in their
+tracks and fallen into a profound slumber. It was then that the souls
+were planted.
+
+One of Gud's newly employed assistants had made the count of the
+mortals, and the Devil had marvelled at his accuracy, for there were
+only six souls left over. These Gud had laughingly handed to the Devil,
+who had given them to six of his firemen--appreciative chaps they were,
+and it hadn't spoiled them, this thing of having two souls.
+
+After the soul planting was finished, the Devil and Gud had parted
+cordially enough. They had agreed it was best not to be seen together
+after that. By the agreement Gud was first to visit the sphere alone and
+give out his revelation, and the Devil was then to make one visit to sow
+doubts and temptations.
+
+The Devil had glanced at Gud's revelation most casually; it seemed quite
+ordinary--old stuff, and he had been rather careless in planting his
+doubts and temptations. The competition had looked easy. But now two
+generations had passed on the sphere and not a soul had arrived for
+torment.
+
+The Devil was profoundly puzzled. He wondered if Gud had been unethical
+and double-crossed him with a spurious revelation, getting out another
+one later with utterly different beliefs and morals, so that the doubts
+and temptations were thus all obsoleted. This possibility made the Devil
+furious, for it was plausible enough--yet that Gud chap had seemed such
+a fair and simple sort!
+
+Half a dozen times the Devil started to go up and see about it--yet, had
+he not pledged his own incombustibility on his keeping away from the
+sphere after the first visit? He had been a simple fool, and here he was
+with a fully equipped hell on his hands and a big payroll to meet and
+the best of his helpers deserting right and left, because they were
+bored with idleness. As good a hell as ever burned brimstone and not a
+soul to roast!
+
+Drearily enough, the Devil began his rounds again. He had to keep the
+boys cheered up. How he wished that he had not been so democratic and
+told them just when things had been started on the sphere. The best he
+could do now, was to lie out of that and claim that this was just a
+trial run. But he could see that many of his once loyal helpers had
+utterly lost faith in his leadership. He had been proud of those
+helpers, some of the brightest demons in the game. He had bid them off
+good jobs in older hells by promises of greater freedom to try out their
+own ideas. In that way he had obtained a superior set of tortures for
+special sins. But now no souls--and half his demons deserted and the
+cleverest of his torture machines rusting from lack of use.
+
+At last he could stand it no longer, and he went back to his private
+chambers. Telling his valet that he was not to be disturbed, he locked
+the door and took a sleeping potion gauged for a century.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Boom! Boom! Boom!
+
+I. B. Devil awoke and tried to stretch himself, but he was so stiff he
+could hardly move. Cold, icy cold penetrated his very bones. He managed
+at last to sit up on the edge of his couch, and then the chamber door
+fell in before the battering ram of the last of his faithful followers.
+Six shivering demons piled into the chamber--the six grateful firemen to
+whom he had given the extra souls.
+
+"The last of the fires are out, Your Majesty, and all the others have
+deserted."
+
+"But why," demanded the Devil, "did you not keep my private furnace
+fired? We shall all freeze to death."
+
+"But, Your Majesty, there is no one to work the mines. Do you not
+remember that you arranged for them to be worked by the souls of scabs
+who were to be killed by strikers?"
+
+"Another blunder," sighed the Devil. "Well, there is a grate and in that
+case yonder is my private stock of smoking brimstone. Light it, for I
+must get thawed out so I can think."
+
+The two-souled firemen hastened to obey and the seven of them were soon
+sitting around the spluttering blue flames and inhaling the delicious
+vapors.
+
+The Devil got out a set of heavy, asbestos furs, smiling as he recalled
+for whom he had ordered them. He had intended to keep her in his private
+chamber to light his pipe and brew his tea--and he had chuckled many a
+time at the thought of her in summer furs.
+
+He laid the furs on a chair and went to his desk and wrote busily for a
+few minutes.
+
+"Now, boys," he said, "here are your passes for mortality, and remember
+you have two souls."
+
+The firemen vanished and the Devil was alone in Hell.
+
+He drew on the furs and wrapped his own travelling cape about them. Then
+he went into the outer chamber. Across the room the windows, into which
+usually shone the cheery redness of roaring flames, were now frosted
+with weird designs, and the fireproof platinum fittings on the great
+door were hoary white.
+
+Slowly the Devil trudged across the chill chamber and, with a fur-clad
+hand, grasped the frosted handle, swung open the great door, and stepped
+out on the balcony.
+
+For a moment he was blinded by the dazzling, sparkling white. He
+stumbled over some object and bent down to find the huddled form of a
+demon frozen stiff as an ice idol. It was poor little Beezel, who had
+come all the way from the hell of the three-ringed planet to try out his
+new scheme of torture for trigamists.
+
+I. B. Devil stepped lightly over his frozen disciple and went to the
+balcony rail. Shading his eyes until they became accustomed to the white
+glare, he now looked far up and down the wide stretches of his domain,
+puzzled, dumbfounded and subdued. The water mains that supplied the
+steam baths had burst and flooded the place, and all hell was frozen
+over!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. B. Devil leaped from the balustrade and straight as an arrow shot
+upward to Gud's Paradise.
+
+He paused for a moment only outside the portals to discard the furs he
+wore, then he pushed open the great unguarded gate and stepped inside.
+
+It was a goodly heaven, vast and beautiful and shining in its new-made
+emptiness.
+
+I. B. Devil did not pause for admiration, but went straightway to Gud's
+private office and kicked open the door. There was no one there. Beside
+the larger desk was a lesser one, and on this lay a powder puff and a
+small mirror. The Devil stepped to the file cabinet, flung it open; and
+with uncanny accuracy reached in, pulled out the carbon copy of the
+order for souls, and read:
+
+"In accordance with your quotation, you may ship us at once three
+billion mortal souls."
+
+"Poor old chap," mused the Devil, "I should never have trusted one."
+
+Then he stepped outside and mounted to the throne of Gud. There he found
+a note pinned to the upholstery. It read: "We have gone to Hell."
+
+The Devil went back to the portal of Gud's heaven and picked up the
+furs: "I guess," he said, "I had better take them down to her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Gud let her go to Hell alone, for in the course of their headlong
+flight, he heard the faint sound of far off barking. Wheeling in the
+ether Gud made straight for the campfire, where he had left Fidu
+watching the beans.
+
+"Did the beans boil over?" asked Gud.
+
+"No, indeed," said Fidu, in his best dog language, "but you were gone so
+long that I caught a nice wild boar so that there is pork in the beans."
+
+"Don't you know, Fidu," admonished Gud, "that I disapprove of eating
+pork?"
+
+"But," said Fidu, "this was a vegetarian pig, for he was rooting for
+peanuts when I caught him."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXIV
+
+
+    There are figures in the shadow but the shadow hides the faces,
+    And their silence is a subject that must flagellate the flesh.
+    There are hands and arms that touch you with their lingering embraces
+    Like the petals of clipped flowers still miraculously fresh.
+
+    There are voices through the darkness 'round which darkness swiftly
+      closes;
+    Remembered words and phrases that are only lost in death,
+    Heard within some misted twilight in a garden filled with roses
+    As though our own youth whispered with its awed and hollow breath.
+
+    There is nothing in the shadow that will satisfy our quest,
+    For each shore that's undiscovered has been lined with molding wrecks,
+    And if we should burst on Beauty with her healing hands of rest
+    Life would bind us down in duty to some slavery of sex.
+
+    There is something quite sardonic in the race's old ideals,
+    And the struggle for their gaining is derisive as a jest....
+    He who prays unto his Godhead will be wiped out as he kneels,
+    While the wonders of decay will destroy all the rest.
+
+    We are grinding in the shadow for the glory of the ages,
+    Though no hope of immortality has ever come to stay;
+    Yet each human soul is fretting at the bars of separate cages
+    Hearing rhythms of tomorrow in the discords of today.
+
+    All the ones who started seeking when the game was strange and new,
+    See the beauty of believing lost in wonders of deceit
+    There is truth in every vision, but the day is hardly through,
+    Ere the night is all around us with her silence and defeat.
+
+    There is dogma, there is duty in the urge of dead emotion
+    Through the worshipped gods of yesterday the present gods exist
+    Hid away among our temples for the dreams of our devotion
+    The alters of the ages in their ruins still persist.
+
+    Let the mothers bear their children for the centuries to come
+    There is truth in adoration for the thing that is adored
+    And if all the many answers on the lips of life are dumb
+    At least the coming children may be murdered for the Lord.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXV
+
+
+After Gud had regaled himself on pork and beans he laid down under a
+deadly nightshade tree and fell asleep. As he slept a worm happened
+along and stepped on Gud, and Gud turned.
+
+"Pardon," said the worm, "but I did not notice you until you turned. You
+see I was very preoccupied, for I have just returned from the Diet of
+Worms, which was called by the Conqueror Worm to suppress a book. As
+soon as I heard that a book had been suppressed I went in search of a
+copy. I found one in the Master's chamber of a deserted mansion of the
+newly cultured. I carefully chewed it up and removed the fragments to my
+nest, where I pieced them together again."
+
+"What kind of book is it?" asked Gud. "I am rather fond of forbidden
+books."
+
+"It is a book of etiquette," replied the worm, "and if you will promise
+me not to mark it up or tear out any choice passages, I will lend you my
+copy."
+
+So Gud sat down upon a gravel and the worm climbed a stalk of timothy
+and handed Gud the book; but it was so badly patched up that he could
+not read it.
+
+"Perhaps," suggested the worm, "I should read it to you. See, this is
+the table of contents. It says:
+
+"'How to shake hands with gloves on.
+
+"'How to introduce people who already know each other.
+
+"'How to steal postage stamps without having a guilty conscience.
+
+"'How to dance without knowing how.
+
+"'How to pretend to understand relativity.
+
+"'What to wear if you don't like spats.
+
+"'How to tell a risque story in the presence of a minister.
+
+"'How to get rich without making your friends envious.
+
+"'How to catch large fish with little worms.'
+
+"Ah," cried the worm, "that is the very line that caused the Diet of
+Worms to suppress the book, for that is an allusion to the bitter truth
+that worms are put on hooks to catch fish. We worms, who know that in
+the end we shall conquer man himself, do not like to be reminded that in
+the meanwhile man may use us for fish bait."
+
+Gud smiled at the thought that the worms could only suppress the truth,
+whereas he could change it. So he made it to be that men should no
+longer put worms on hooks to catch fish, but should henceforth put fish
+on hooks to catch worms. That is how came the great sport of worming;
+and some of the worm tales men tell do not need to be suppressed, for
+there is no truth in them.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXVI
+
+
+And now Gud came to a place where the ether was as thick as coal tar. It
+was so dark that Fidu could not even imagine a moon, and Gud could not
+see any reason for existence.
+
+Just as he had about decided that there would never be any more light,
+Gud saw a wee small flicker shining in the inky void, as might an
+invisible star if there never had been brighter stars to pale its flame.
+
+Hastening on Gud and Fidu came upon the source of light and found it to
+be a man with a torch in his hand who was very much occupied in
+searching for something.
+
+"Have you lost anything?" asked Gud.
+
+"No," replied the man, "but I am looking for something."
+
+"I shall be glad to assist you," offered Gud, "and my dog here is very
+good in locating lost articles; so if you will kindly tell us what you
+are looking for we will help you find it."
+
+"I am looking," replied the man, "for creation's dawn and the end of all
+things. I also wish to find the unknowable first cause and the eternal
+varieties and the limits of space. I am searching for the cause of hope,
+the reason for despair, the explanation of love and the excuse for
+crime. I am seeking a reason for all that is, and a cause for all that
+ever was and an accurate prophesy of all that ever will be. I am also
+hunting for the fundamental principles, the absolute truth, the laws of
+nature, the theories of science, the hypotheses of metaphysics, the
+interpretations of creeds, the aims of arts and the melodies of songs
+that have never been sung. And I do wish so to locate all the unknown
+stars, and trace all the lost comets, and determine what kept the
+heavens in order before the law of gravitation was enacted. But most of
+all I want to find out why my wife thinks I am a fool to be out here
+looking for these things."
+
+"If you do not object to a little operation," said Gud, "I can find all
+these things for you and show you where they all are."
+
+Then without waiting for the man to reply, Gud caused a deep sleep to
+fall upon him, and straightway Gud opened up the man's skull and took
+out his brains and laid them upon a platter.
+
+When the man awoke he looked upon his own brains and saw that they were
+very much like calf's brains, except that they were more convoluted and
+sutured.
+
+"And why is this platter set before me?" demanded the man as he stood
+there gazing upon his own brains.
+
+"Because," replied Gud, "therein lies what you were looking for, and you
+need search no further, for it is all there and much more besides."
+
+"So, so," said the man, "I see it all, and now I shall go home to my
+wife and find if a child has been born unto her while I have been away."
+
+"Then," said Gud, "would you give me your torch, since you will not be
+needing it longer?"
+
+The man did so; and after he had gone, Gud took the torch and set the
+darkness on fire.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXVII
+
+
+Once more Gud walked along the Impossible Curve, which had now become
+more impossible than ever.
+
+Gud was lonely, for he missed his faithful companion, the Underdog, whom
+he had sold into slavery. His heart was filled with grief, and remorse
+preyed upon his soul, and Gud resolved never again to be ungrateful and
+never to be unkind, and to grant to all creatures their wishes and to
+help them to realize their hearts' desires and make their dreams come
+true.
+
+In his sorrow and loneliness Gud walked on until his feet were sore and
+he was athirst. Then he came to a flowing fountain of pure water. He
+paused and kneeled at the fountain. When he had quenched his thirst, he
+removed his sandals and bathed his feet in the stream that flowed from
+the fountain.
+
+Then Gud laid himself down by the fountain and fell asleep, and dreamed
+that a beautiful bubble appeared on the surface of the fountain.
+
+The bubble which Gud saw in his dream was iridescent with a great
+iridescence; for the colors of the bubble were many and they were ever
+changing, so that it was never twice alike.
+
+In the iridescence of the bubble Gud saw the essence of transcendent
+beauty, for its beauty was as the beauty of youth, and as the beauty of
+faith, and as the beauty of love, and as the beauty of a woman, when she
+is young and has faith and a longing for more love than she has found.
+
+As Gud looked upon the beauty of the bubble, he saw that it was no
+longer a bubble, for it had become a woman of flesh and blood, and hope
+and love and beauty. And he saw that she looked upon him with faith and
+trust. This pleased Gud, so he spoke in his dream to the woman of his
+dream and said: "Who art thou and what wouldst thou of me?"
+
+And the woman replied, "Oh, Gud, I am a searcher after mysteries that
+have not been revealed and things which can not be understood. And I am
+sore distressed because I have looked and have found them not."
+
+Gud asked, "Have you looked into the mind of man?"
+
+"I have looked into the mind of man," replied the woman, "and it is very
+simple."
+
+Again Gud asked: "Have you looked into the heart of woman?"
+
+She replied to Gud and said: "Into the heart of woman have I also
+looked, and though it is not so simple, yet do I understand it, for am I
+not a woman?"
+
+"Of a truth you are a woman, and you are very beautiful."
+
+And she smiled upon Gud, and when she smiled, he vowed that he would
+grant her all her wishes and the fulfillment of all her dreams.
+
+But first he would know who she was, and so he spoke to her again and
+said: "Of a truth, and who art thou?"
+
+And she of the iridescent beauty, which is the beauty that is ever
+changing, made answer to Gud: "Of a truth, great Gud, I am no other than
+the reader of this book which two men are writing about you."
+
+"What's this?" asked Gud, for he was much amazed, albeit not displeased,
+to hear that Hersey and I were writing this book about him.
+
+And the iridescent woman said again, "I am the reader of 'The Book of
+Gud,' which Dan Spain and Harold Hersey are writing about you."
+
+"How do you know they are writing it?"
+
+"I know," said the woman, "because it is common gossip in the Village,
+for every one there gossips about anything Hersey has a hand in."
+
+"Where is this village?" asked Gud, "and who is this Hersey creature?"
+
+"The Village," she replied, "where Hersey burns his wee small flame, is
+South of Fourteenth Street and West of University Place, in the City of
+New York, which is the Gateway to the Melting Pot of the Planet Earth in
+the Solar System of the Universe."
+
+"Which universe?" asked Gud.
+
+"My universe," said the woman.
+
+"It must be a nice one, but what do you wish that I should do for you?"
+
+"What I wish," said she (who is none other than the reader of this book)
+"is to find some great mystery in art or literature or in some psychic
+science; and I wish that you would inspire these men to put something
+into 'The Book of Gud' that no one can understand."
+
+"I will look into the matter," said Gud. And he did.... Then he looked
+again into the iridescent eyes of the ever-changing woman and said to
+her: "It is useless, for I have searched the soul of that fellow Spain
+and he is not an inspired writer but only a disgruntled hack who could
+not possibly write anything that you could not understand."
+
+Whereupon the woman was vexed with disappointment so that she began to
+weep, and in the small compass of each tear she shed was the iridescence
+of a tiny rainbow. As Gud saw her tears, that they were beautiful, his
+heart overflowed with tenderness, and he said with a gentle voice: "I
+will try again."
+
+And now Gud searched the soul of Hersey. His search was not without
+reward and when he returned again to the beautiful woman she ceased to
+weep, for in his hand she saw that Gud held a poem. Seating himself
+beside her, he read her this poem that Hersey had written in the white
+heat of inspiration:
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXVIII
+
+
+    She stood there carelessly arrayed
+    All in jewelled dress,
+    And leaning on the balustrade
+    She wept with bitterness,
+    For facing her there stood a maid
+    Of rival loveliness.
+
+    Once she had been indifferent
+    To languishment or guile,
+    But when I argued with intent
+    To hold her by a smile,
+    Upon my eyes her own were bent
+    For quite a little while.
+
+    The lady raised her fluttering hands.
+    "The night is cold," she said,
+    "For tropic men in northern lands,
+    For old maids still unwed,
+    And for the evil one who stands
+    In heaven when he's dead."
+
+    She turned and gazed upon that face
+    As lovely as her own,
+    The poise of beauty and of grace
+    That matched her grace alone....
+    And in that close and silent place
+    I heard the lady moan.
+
+    I held the lady to my breast
+    And kissed her mouth and eyes.
+    She sighed and snuggled down to rest
+    Without the least surprise,
+    While I told tales of sweet unrest
+    That sounded very wise.
+
+    "They say I'm mad," she whispered then,
+    "I weep for dear despair,
+    No matter where I go, dark men
+    Follow me everywhere...."
+    To quiet her I kissed again
+    Her locks of golden hair.
+
+    "Great God!" she cried with finished grace,
+    "That woman whom I hate."
+    I looked and in a mirror's face
+    I saw the lady's mate.
+    Then quiet men of that strange place
+    Came down the halls of state.
+
+    They took the lady tenderly
+    Away from sound and sight.
+    I answered not. It seemed to me
+    As though they must be right.
+    So I smashed the mirror utterly
+    And fled into the night.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXIX
+
+
+And when Gud had finished reading the woman asked: "Is that all?"
+
+And Gud looked at the poem in his hand and said sorrowfully, "That is
+all."
+
+"But that is quite comprehensible," said the woman, "for it is merely
+one of Hersey's usual plagiarisms--a twittering parody of Rossetti's
+'THE BLESSED DAMOSEL', and it is so simple."
+
+"Do you understand it?" asked Gud.
+
+"Of course, it merely means that the love of man is insufficient to
+satisfy the yearning of woman, and so she must look into the mirror of
+her own soul in search of greater spiritual joys. But alas, she is
+shadowed by her sex consciousness as reflected in her beauty of the
+flesh, and she can not escape that haunting shadow which finally drives
+her mad. Is that not simple?"
+
+     To D. S.: I protest. This interpretation is entirely
+     erroneous.--H. H.
+
+     To H. H.: Good God, I know it! but if you had seen what I first
+     wrote about it you would keep still.--D. S.
+
+"I should say," said Gud, "that it is beautiful simplicity."
+
+"That is just the trouble with all that these chaps are writing. They
+are so keen on the obvious. You see, I can understand all that these men
+have written, for it is all explainable by psychoanalysis. It is merely
+the symbolism of a suppressed wish to be famous. And, oh Gud, how I do
+crave true mystery!"
+
+"Then," said Gud, "you shall have it, for am I not Gud the Great?"
+
+"If you are, why do you not inspire these men who are writing this book
+about you to put something into the book that no one can understand?
+Indeed, if you cannot do that I shall be tempted to believe that you are
+not Gud, but only a mere figment of fancy conceived in the brains of two
+conceited young egotists who are seeking a cheap notoriety by shocking
+decent people with blasphemous literature."
+
+"I fear you are right."
+
+"Oh," cried the woman, "then you admit that you are what I said?"
+
+"Not at all. I merely admit that he is what you said."
+
+"Really, Gud, you ought to have had some well-known writer do this book
+about you--some one who had already been suppressed, or, better yet, a
+Russian."
+
+"Who are the Russians?" asked Gud.
+
+"They are the supremists in dancing, the theorists in politics, the
+idealists in economics and the realists in literature. But you are
+romantic, aren't you, Gud?"
+
+"I think so. At least I feel so--did you always wear your hair that
+way?"
+
+"Oh, no, indeed. You see, I used to wear it shorn like that of a boy,
+for that fashion was once the insignia of the female intelligence. But
+all the fat bankers' wives aped us, so now our only chance for
+distinction is to ape our mothers, and I wear my mother's hair. See, I
+will take it off and show it to you."
+
+"It is very lovely," said Gud, as he fingered her mother's hair. "I
+think I should have loved your mother, and it is very sweet of you to
+wear this hair in remembrance of her. Most women who have risen to your
+intellectual heights forget their mothers."
+
+"It is very kind of you to say that, but distinction is in being
+different, and so we ultra-intelligent women are again showing respect
+for our mothers to distinguish us from the mob of the commonplace
+intellectuals who came flopping into the pool of progress and muddied
+the water.... It is a great race, dear Gud, this struggle to keep ahead
+of the apings of the stupid."
+
+"Yes, yes, so I find it. Little up-start muddling gods have quite fogged
+up the milky way with their nebulous creations--but pardon me if I
+suggest that I would rather that you put your mother's hair back on."
+
+She had some difficulty in putting her mother's hair on straight; so Gud
+reached over, and with a few deft touches, arranged it for her. Then,
+plucking a button from his robe, he burnished it on his sleeve until it
+shone silvery bright, and then he held it before her. She looked into
+the mirroring silver and gave a little rapturous cry of joy, for the
+hair of her mother, on which they had both wasted so much henna, had
+been turned into a brilliant shade of fluorescent opalescence--a color
+that no artist of the Latin Quarter had ever painted and that no artist
+of the Village had ever imagined.
+
+"Oh, Gud," she cried, "now I know that I love you, for they will go mad
+about it and I shall be the queen of the studios."
+
+"I would rather that you remain just a woman as you have so sweetly
+shown yourself to be."
+
+"Never!" cried she who wanted something that no one could understand,
+"never, never, will I be content to be just a woman! I must be, oh so
+much more. I must have super-personality, and hyper-yearnings, and
+ultra-strivings and transcendent seekings after ultimate
+mysteries--really I don't think you understand me at all!"
+
+"Has any one ever understood you?" asked Gud.
+
+"No," she breathed in soft expectancy.
+
+"Only a little while ago you were searching for something that no one
+could understand--have we not found it in yourself?"
+
+"Perhaps," she spoke dubiously.
+
+"And if you were in my book, would it not then contain something that no
+one could understand?"
+
+"Do you mean it?" she faltered.
+
+"Yes, dear child, for whom all writers write, if it will bring me one
+more smile from those ever-changing eyes of beauty--I will see that you
+are in '_The Book of Gud_'--if I have to catch these blasphemous scribes
+and pound their heads together!"
+
+"For that promise," said the iridescent lady, "I could love you forever
+and a day. To think that we two should be in a book together! Just me
+and Gud!
+
+"And now," she added, in a lower tone, "I'll confess to you why I want
+to be in the book. You see, I am supposed to be a literary character and
+one has to be in a book to be a literary character, you know."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know. I suppose it will make me one also. But now I must
+hasten to seek out these mundane scribes, and see to it that they put
+you in my book--for they have it about finished."
+
+"Which one of them do you propose to have write me into the book?"
+
+"Which one would you prefer?"
+
+"I hardly know," she said. "That fellow Spain is a woman hater, and I am
+afraid he will say something unkind about me. But that Hersey poet
+prostitutes his art to flatter women. He has an exaggerated idea of the
+importance of the sex consciousness in an intellectual woman's life.
+Really, it is a choice between two evils."
+
+"If that is the way you feel about it," said Gud, "perhaps I had better
+write you into the book myself."
+
+"Could you really? Oh, Gud! I would die of joy to be written by you; not
+even a movie actress ever had a celestial press agent!"
+
+"I'll try," said Gud, "that is, if you will tarry with me as I write."
+
+"Do you mean that I would inspire you?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"That is what they all say!"
+
+"Then it must be true."
+
+"But why do you not say something original, since you are Gud?"
+
+"Because I am talking to you."
+
+"You old brute!"
+
+"Perhaps so, but a straight line is the shortest distance between two
+points."
+
+"Oh, I like that," cried she who had sought for mystery. "It sounds so
+original, and I am sure that no one can understand it--what does it
+mean?"
+
+"It means," said Gud, "that you and I have very much in common that
+quite transcends the reach and grasp of men."
+
+"You flatter me."
+
+"But really, that is true."
+
+"Then quick, write it down before you lose the inspiration."
+
+"But I have nothing on which to write," said Gud.
+
+She blushed and turned away from him, and tore the whiteness from her
+bosom, and turned again toward Gud and handed him the whiteness that had
+covered up the secrets of her heart.
+
+Gud took the whiteness of her bosom and thereupon he began to write,
+while she lay down upon the other side of the pool, and hid her bosom
+away from Gud, lest, now with its whiteness gone, he might see the color
+of her heart.
+
+And so Gud, who is made in the image of man, became as a man. And as he
+wrote he forgot the woman, for when a pen is in the hand of man or god,
+the light that lies in woman's eyes burns dim as some brief candle.
+
+And this indeed is the paradox of all who wield the treacherous weapon:
+that man sets out to write, some woman's heart to flutter; and having
+struck pen to paper, if there be anything in him that rises o'er the
+damp swamp of woman's kisses, then of a truth the instrument that she
+put into his hand becomes a knife to sever the cords with which she
+sought to bind him.
+
+Such is the tragedy of her who flutters near while men make words on
+paper, that in their youth they write for her; and their youth gone,
+they still write on beyond the reaches of her soul.
+
+And so, as Gud wrote upon the whiteness torn from a woman's bosom, he
+forgot quite utterly the woman herself, who lay by the pool trembling
+and suffering and trying to hide her heart from Gud.
+
+And when she saw that he had forgotten her--even though he had told her
+he wanted her near him and needed her for inspiration--she suffered so
+that her heart died within her, and she shrank and withered and fell
+into the pool of the fountain, and, as a brown leaf, floated on the
+surface of the water.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXX
+
+
+When Gud had finished that which he was writing he arose and looked
+about him. He seemed to be searching for something, but could not recall
+what it was, and decided that it was of no importance.
+
+He drew on his sandals and made ready to go upon his way. But the way
+was long and Gud recalled that he had been weary and had been athirst.
+So he knelt by the fountain and stooped over it to drink.
+
+There was a brown leaf floating on the water, but he swished it away and
+drank his fill from the flowing fountain. Then Gud arose and girded up
+his loins and went on his way along the Impossible Curve.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXXI
+
+
+    I met an old man walking through the sky,
+    A sort of startled twinkle in his eye.
+    "And who are you?" asked I.
+    "I am Gud," replied he, with a frown.
+    "Which one?" I asked, polite but terse,
+    But without answer he went shrieking down
+    The shadowy spaces of the universe.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Book of Gud, by Dan Spain and Harold Hersey
+
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