And Gud replied: "I am Gud."
"I never heard of you and what is your business?"
"I am retired. What is your business?"
"My business was talking too much until they bound me. But now that I am again free, I intend to go on talking and saying just what I please. For one thing I do not like that ridiculous old bath robe you wear. If you don't care for pants, why wear anything?"
"Have you always been in the business of talking too much?" inquired Gud.
"No," replied Free Speech, "I was once a school master but I got into difficulty. I had a private school and both the Just and the Unjust sent their children to my school. The Just believed that the world was flat and the Unjust believed that the world was round—"
"Which was it?" asked Gud.
"Keep still and let me talk. The Just wanted me to teach their children that the world was flat and the Unjust wanted me to teach their children that the world was round. So I organized two classes in geography and taught the children of the Just that the world was flat and the children of the Unjust that the world was round. The Just had me arrested, but I escaped and went into the business of talking too much and saying what I pleased and asking all the questions I wanted to; and while I am grateful to you for your releasing me, all you did was your duty, and I don't feel there is any privilege of back talk coming to you; and yet you look like you were pretty wise, and there are one or two things that I don't know yet. For instance, has a ghost a soul or is he a soul? Well, I see you don't know, but maybe you can tell me whether sins are washed away by death-bed repentance, though I really don't care, for it is not important. But I would like to know if faith will remove mountains. I don't believe it will for when I was a small lad I went to live with my grandmother. There was an ugly mountain back of her house and grandmother decided to remove it by faith and she prayed all one evening that the mountain be moved that night. The next morning she woke up and looked out the kitchen window and said: 'I knew that old mountain would still be there.' Which reminds me of a fellow I knew who was a faith healer by profession, and mighty successful, too, and went all up and down the land healing by faith and getting paid handsomely for it. But his wife at home was an invalid: I asked her why her husband did not heal her and she said, 'I lack faith in him.'
"Do you know why they call sleep innocent, considering the kind of dreams people have? Or why blood is thicker than water? Or what there is about a sphinx that makes people think it knows the answer to riddles? Or why a greased egg won't hatch? Or whether a man in hot water is more uncomfortable than a round peg in a square hole?"
"No," replied Gud, "I do not know any of these things and I am sorry I unbound you."