ldest 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 whi