habit of inbreeding
royalty. Mona Lisa, I believe, reveals the patience of a great woman who
knows that she will ultimately get what she wants. The Book of
Revelation I deem to be a symbolic anticipation of the Darwinian theory
of man's descent from prehistoric animals.

In "The Book of Gud" there is great symbolism, and in symbolism there
can be nothing degrading, as each mind interprets it according to its
own intellectual and moral plane. Hence there can never be degradation
in symbolic literature, except for degraded minds.

Here then is "The Book of Gud"; and, with the exception of this preface,
I bow to the principle that death should end an author's work and so it
should remain, even as Sodom and Gomorrah, Pompeii and Herculaneum
remained as they were when fire rained down on them from Heaven.

(Signed),

HAROLD HERSEY.

London, England,
April First, 1925.

Chapter II

From out the distant and neglected past,
The "is" or "isn'tness" of things remain
As ever still unsolved. Admitting this,
Outscepting every sceptic, we've indulged
Our wildest fancies ... where unknowables
Go chasing unattainables. We've spared
No god, religion, science, sex or art,
But laid about us with a heavy fist.
There are so many twists of humor
In Euclid's cubes and angles. Laughter hides
With playfulness behind philosophy
Like little monsters in an ancient's beard.
So many gods are out of work--they beg
For bread and sympathy to empty stalls
Where once delighted thousands paid them praise.
Religion simmers in the pot, or boils
Completely over as the housewives nod.
Strange trolls peek out from books of mathematics,
Grimace around cold scientific theories.
Dwarfs and goblins play at hide and seek
In empty attics of the homes of creeds;
While sex is swept with laughter like a gale
When we disturb the surface with an axe.
Have mercy on our hero, Gud the Great.
The clouds of history had cloaked his tomb
Like old Zumbissus, Mord and Red Torswaine,
Until we carefully unearthed the tale
Gud's wild adventures furnish to romance.
We took his crumbling bones and gave them life--
His human frailties and deeds of valor.
No doubt heroically he suffers thus
At our faint hands--but let the subject be.
The future cannot hide its heroes yet
To come beneath a cloud of silence ..