"One day my oldest son and oldest daughter came at the same time to visit me and to worship Bahgung. It was then that my son proposed that he take Bahgung to his own cave. Being dumb I could say nothing, but my daughter objected.
"'Very well,' said my son, 'leave the old thing here. I will make a better one of my own.'
"The next time I visited my son, I found that he, too, had made a creature, which he modeled out of clay, even more cleverly than his father had carved. And this creature was sitting on a little pedestal in a small cave of its own and my son was teaching my grandchildren to bring it offerings and make worship and prayers to it—all of which I thought most silly.
"Finally I died and my numerous descendants gave me a grand funeral and paraded Bahgung at the head of the procession and all their lesser idols after him. But being dumb and dead also, I could say nothing.
"So that was how it all started, the idol worship, in that world you see below us, and for thousands on thousands of generations those poor deluded descendants of mine made and worshiped idols of wood and clay and stone and metal, while I hovered over them, knowing all the while how the delusion started in my own dear husband's innocent desire to amuse our children with a home-made toy."
"That is a very interesting account of the origin of idol worship," commented Gud, "I never heard so plausible a theory."
"Theory!" repeated the old ghost, "but it isn't theory, I would have you know. It is plain fact—did I not see the whole beginning of this folly with my own eyes, and did I not heft that old carcass of rotten wood with my own hands?"
"Perhaps," admitted Gud, "still—" and he peered searchingly through the haze at the world below—"still, I do not see them worshiping idols down there now? The only idols I can see are in the museums along with the stuffed mermaids and two-headed serpents."
"Of course," replied the old ghost, "they have long since grown too sophisticated to worship material idols of wood and stone, but they have idols just the same, which they call 'gods not made with hands'."
Gud felt a little uncomfortable at this remark, but before he could think of anything to say the ghost of the first woman of that land which lay below them, continued. "I will tell you how that came about, too, for I was hovering near at the time. There was a lazy philosopher. He had no idol except a worm-eaten old wooden one which some one had given him, and which he kept in a hovel. One day the shanty caught fire from a defective flue and his idol was burned and there was no insurance. The philosopher was too lazy to make another and too poor to buy one, for the idol makers by that time were charging high prices. So the lazy fool sat out on a stump and dreamed how to get another idol without working to pay for it.