Yet He we worship died years ago
Like some poor human clod,
And that which wanders to and fro
Is only the ghost of God!
Chapter XXXIV
"A bear went over the mountain," sang the child (Gud stopped to listen, for the child had had its voice cultivated prenatally) "to see what he could see. A row of hanging skeletons, a swinging in the wind, was all the bear could see in front, and he could not see behind."
"See here," interrupted Gud, "you have the song mixed—what the bear saw was the other side of the mountain."
"Awh, I know," replied the child, "that was what the preteristic old bear saw, but I sing of the futuristic young bear."
Gud shook his head sadly. It made him feel archaic to come thus face to face with the younger generation in art and literature. Somehow he felt that there was something amiss in this new universe that seemed to have arisen Phoenixlike out of the ashes of nothing.
Gud turned from the child with the prenatally cultivated mind and went on his way sorrowfully. And as he walked he hummed softly to himself—"The old-time creation, the old-time creation, It was good for Unph and Godumph ... and it's good enough for me...."
"Come, come," monologued Gud—"I must not get retrospective—I destroyed it all—ashes to ashes and dust to dust."
As Gud trudged on, trying to shake this mood of a sentimental retrospection from him, he found the light waning and the ether about him turning grey and grim and gruesome.