"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 h.e.l.l," shouted the Critic over his shoulder.

So Gud went to h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.ls, for the people of this sphere, being a righteous people, were amply h.e.l.led.

Reaching at last the bottom-most vault beneath the deepest h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.sed 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 h.e.l.ls, supplying them with new kinds of sins?"

"No indeed," replied the dealer, who seemed a little insulted. "The dwellers in h.e.l.ls 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 cla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing up through h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l, 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 G.o.d, and my companion here, because he believed over confidently that there was a G.o.d."

"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 G.o.d, found, when I died, that there was one, and he sent me to h.e.l.l. But my companion here, who believed that there was a G.o.d, found when he died that there was none; and so he came to h.e.l.l 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.