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:

"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