nd dismal hell and torment you (or have the devil do it)
for ever and ever? Was there such a word?"

I shook my head.

[Illustration: "He reached into his pocket and handed me a little
paper-covered booklet"]

"No, sir," he said vehemently, "there was not."

"But does it say," I asked, "that Adam and Eve had not themselves been
using their best wits in creating a hell? That point has occurred to me.
In my experience I've known both Adams and Eves who were most adroit in
their capacity for making places of torment--and afterwards of getting
into them. Just watch yourself some day after you've sown a crop of
desires and you'll see promising little hells starting up within you
like pigweeds and pusley after a warm rain in your garden. And our
heavens, too, for that matter--they grow to our own planting: and how
sensitive they are too! How soon the hot wind of a passion withers them
away! How surely the fires of selfishness blacken their perfection!"

I'd almost forgotten Mr. Purdy--and when I looked around, his face wore
a peculiar puzzled expression not unmixed with alarm. He held up his
little book eagerly almost in my face.

"If God had intended to create a hell," he said, "I assert without fear
of successful contradiction that when God was there in the Garden of
Eden it was the time for Him to have put Adam and Eve and all their
posterity on notice that there was a place of everlasting torment. It
would have been only a square deal for Him to do so. But did He?"

I shook my head.

"He did not. If He had mentioned hell on that occasion I should not now
dispute its existence. But He did not. This is what He said to Adam--the
very words: 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou
return unto the ground: for out of it thou wast taken: for dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' You see He did not say 'Unto hell
shalt thou return.' He said, 'Unto dust.' That isn't hell, is it?"

"Well," I said, "there are in my experience a great many different kinds
of hells. There are almost as many kinds of hells as there are men and
women upon this earth. Now, your hell wouldn't terrify me in the least.
My own makes me no end of trouble. Talk about burning pitch and
brimstone: how futile were the imaginations of the old fellows who
conjured up such puerile torments. Why, I can tell you of no end of
hells that are worse--and not half try. Once I remember, when I was
younger----"

I happened to glance a