f
a ghost of a ghost--et cetera, ad infinitum, to the Nth expansion--me
for Einstein and his warped light.

Chapter LVII

As Gud strolled along trying to forget the past he stumbled over the
soul of an old blind ghost who was sitting on a petrified memory and
sentimentalizing over her woes.

"Pardon me," said Gud, "but why are you so blind that I could not see
you?"

"I am blind," replied the old soul, "because I strained my eyes out
looking at the moving pictures, and now I am very miserable because I
can not see them."

"Oh, if that is all," answered Gud, "I will restore your sight. It will
cost you nothing but a little praise and gratitude."

When the old soul received her sight she looked around the barren astral
landscape and was sorely disappointed, for there were no moving pictures
there; and she complained bitterly in her disappointment.

"I could make a motion picture for you if you would tell me how,"
offered Gud.

"That I will do gladly," cried the old soul, "but first you must have an
author to write the scenario."

"That is easy," replied Gud. "There--I have created one. Speak to her,
author, for the poor old soul was blind."

"So I see," answered the author, as he extracted a cigarette. "And she
wants a story, I take it; but she has been blind and is probably
illiterate, and can not read, and I never tell my stories as poets
recite their verses--it is bad taste, you know."

"I will restore her literacy," offered Gud, who was in a miraculous
mood, "and then she can read."

"It would be doing me no good," sighed the old soul, "for even if I
could read the directions on patent medicine bottles because they are
printed in so many languages, yet I could never read fiction stories on
account of the quotation marks, and it's the pictures I want anyway."

"Oh, pictures," said the author, as he ignited his cigarette, "now that
is a different matter; I create stories for the love of art, but moving
pictures can not be created for the love of art, for there is no art in
them to love."

"Since we are both creators," said Gud, "I don't like to dictate to you,
so suppose we compromise. You write a poem for art's sake--as there is
no other excuse for writing one--but put it in the form of a scenario."

"Now that is what I call clever!" exclaimed the author, and he whipped
out his Corona and wrote the scenario forthwith.

What it was you shall never know, for movie scenarios could never get by