And Gud overtook a thief who had stolen an ocean and loaded it into a
wagon which he had hitched to a star. The thief was making a poor
getaway, for the wagon was leaking badly and was dropping clues at every
step.
To avoid being drowned in the drippings, Gud turned into an unexplored
dimension, but before he could get his bearings he was run down by an
insane comet collector, who was madly chasing a comet that was buzzing
dangerously near an incandescent sun--so hot that its nearest molecules
were farther apart than the hearts of a bigamist's wives.
To avoid the net of the comet collector Gud hid himself in an ethereal
cavern. There he found a spiritual paleontologist at work reconstructing
extinct souls from the merest fossil fragments.
Gud picked up a tiny fragment and asked the paleontologist what manner
of soul it had been.
The paleontologist scrutinized it through his confounded monocle and
replied: "It is a bit of ectoplasm from the soul of a woman killed by
curiosity. She was forever asking her lovers, 'How much do you love
me?'"
The paleontologist now reached up to a geometrical plane and brought
down another small fossil. "Observe," said he, "the marking on this
other bit of petrified ectoplasm, and note how the two differ."
"Yes, I see," said Gud, "what is that one?"
"That," replied the paleontologist, "is a fragment of the aura of a
woman who wished to be loved for herself alone."
"It is very interesting," agreed Gud, "but tell me why those two
completed models on the nebulous shelf behind you look so
argumentative."
"Ah," said the paleontologist, "they are the pride of my collection,
being the reconstruction of two friendly enemies. One was the soul of a
deist and the other the soul of an atheist, and they argued and argued
through one eternity after another. They argued not wisely but too well,
for each finally converted the other, and the deist became an atheist
and the atheist became a deist. Then they started arguing all over
again. But before the atheist who had become a deist could convert the
deist who had become an atheist back to deism, or the deist who had
become an atheist could convert the atheist who had become a deist back
to atheism, the astral plane was rotated into a cosmic epizoid,
resulting in a cataclysm that buried these two poor souls in an
avalanche of metaphysical debris which was stratified under the radiant
pressure, just as we find it here."
"It is very wonderful," said Gud, "but why do you probe into secrets of
the dead past when there are so many living souls existing in poverty of
hopes or a sorrow of memories?"
The paleontologist removed the confounded monocle from his eye, and
wiped the lens with a bit of chamois skin.
"I am no base utilitarian," said he, "but a pure scientist seeking truth
for truth's sake."
"Well," said Gud, "a good deal of it isn't worth seeking for any other
reason. Do you know I have often wondered what any one would do with all
the truth if he did find it--for my part I have never been able to make
use of half I possessed."
"But you misunderstand the aims of pure science. We scientists have no
use for truth either, after we have found it; but the search for truth
raises us above the base utilitarian."
"Yes," said Gud, "pure science is all right in its place, but you wipe
the lens of your confounded monocle with a chamois skin, and how could
one get chamois skin unless there were farmers and butchers and skinners
and tanners to farm, butcher, skin and tan the chamois?"
"Mere hewers of wood and drawers of water," repeated the pure scientist
with disdain, "let them serve truth and searchers after truth; for
knowledge is power and the truth shall make us free."
"Free of what?" asked Gud.
But the paleontologist did not answer, for he had spied another bit of
fossilized ectoplasm and was readjusting his confounded monocle so that
he might examine it, to see if it were part of the fragment of the soul
of the infant prodigy who had mastered calculus before it cut its canine
teeth, or merely another piece of that soul of the man who had gone
spiritually to pieces when he met his fame.
Alas, it was neither but something worse, and so Gud asked what it was.
"It is the fragment," replied the paleontologist, "of the soul of an old
maid who committed suicide because she could not live in eternal doubt."
"And what did she doubt?" asked Gud.
"Her virtue."
"And why did she doubt that?"
"Because she suffered from a dual personality complicated by amnesia."
"Oh, I see," said Gud, "she wanted to know how the other half lived."
"No, no," protested the fossil collector, "she was not a sociologist but
one of the minor female poets who specialize in ballads in the romantic
manner. See, here is one of her manuscripts that she had translated so
that she could take it with her."
"Translated into what?" asked Gud.
"Into spirit language," said the paleontologist, "and if you read it you
will see for yourself how very spiritual it is."
Gud took the poem and glanced at the first line. "Pardon me," he said,
"but is there a graveyard handy?"
"As you should judge for yourself," replied the paleontologist, "from
the number of bones I have been digging up, this place itself was once a
graveyard."
"All things that were can be again," said Gud, as he turned back the
wheel of time until he came into the graveyard as it was in the days of
its prosperity.
Seeing that he was in the respectable part of the graveyard, Gud
hastened to walk down the hill to the less respectable portion.
Experience had taught him that in the part of a graveyard where rich men
are buried he was likely to be annoyed by relatives who felt they had
been cheated in the wills and were anxious to have resurrections
performed.
As Gud strolled through the disreputable portion of the cemetery he came
upon a man who was sitting on a grave and weeping bitterly.