tell me the facts of Satan's history, but he stopped there: he wouldn't
allow any discussion of them.

In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five or
six of them, you could set them all down on a visiting-card. I was
disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find
that there were no materials. I said as much, with the tears running
down. Mr. Barclay's sympathy and compassion were aroused, for he was a
most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the head and
cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of materials! I can
still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words shot through me.

Then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and
joy. Like this: it was "conjectured"--though not established--that Satan
was originally an angel in heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled, and
brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition. Also,
"we have reason to believe" that later he did so-and-so; that "we are
warranted in supposing" that at a subsequent time he travelled
extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries
afterward, "as tradition instructs us," he took up the cruel trade of
tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that
by-and-by, "as the probabilities seem to indicate," he may have done
certain things, he might have done certain other things, he must have
done still other things.

And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves, on
a piece of paper, and numbered it "page 1"; then on fifteen hundred other
pieces of paper we set down the "conjectures," and "suppositions," and
"maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and
"guesses," and "probabilities," and "likelihoods," and "we are permitted
to thinks," and "we are warranted in believings," and "might have beens,"
and "could have beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionablys," and
"without a shadow of doubts"--and behold!

_Materials_? Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare!

Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of
Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he had suspicions; suspicions that my
attitude in this matter was not reverent; and that a person must be
reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who
spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the religious world
and also be brough