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.