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 ma.n.u.script, 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 pa.s.s 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 ma.n.u.script pa.s.s on to the world exactly as it was when G.o.d's lightning stilled forever the pen of Dan Spain.

However, upon going over the ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script.

But at last a great compromising thought occurred to me. I could leave the ma.n.u.script 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 ma.n.u.script. If they did, how quickly we could enrich the literary heritage of American children by expurgating the cla.s.sics 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 G.o.d, religion, science, s.e.x 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 G.o.ds 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 s.e.x 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 G.o.d whose name was Gud.

Gud was not a real G.o.d 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 G.o.ds are made). If there be sufficient faith in a G.o.d, all is well with that G.o.d, 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 s.p.a.ce. All things else had been destroyed save Gud and s.p.a.ce; 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.p.a.ce.

Then Gud said to himself, there being no one else to talk to: "I must find something to do, or I shall go mad."