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