As they drew nearer, I discovered that there was only one dog instead of three; it was the many-headed Cerberus. All went well until Cain pulled the dog’s tail. Then the nearest head snapped at the lad so quickly that he disappeared down its throat. Jonah had now arrived on the scene, and enraged at this infringement on his copyright, he caught the canine by its hind legs and holding it aloft, shook it vigorously. Cain dropped out of the centre cavity in the dog’s delta with a lighted stogie between his teeth. He tossed the nicotine nugget to Jonah and bade him take the canine to the pound of Pluto. “Charge it up to Pa,” the bad boy said airily. Jonah continued to hold out his hand. “No credit is given in Hell,” he sneered. “You’ve got to cash in all your checks.” Cain put his hand in the outstretched palm, but instead of the expected gold, he dropped therein the burning Stygian stogie. Who polluteth his lips with blasphemy? Who imperilleth his parliamentary standing? Who yelleth in Sanskrit and Yiddish? Ask of the boy; he is of age and can speak for himself. And speak for himself he did. “Despite the doubts cast upon my parentage by Darwin, I am Adam’s son,” he said, in response to my question. “But, say, I’m an angel with wings full grown compared with what Pa was when he was a boy.” “Do tell me about the time Adam was a boy,” I implored. In imagination I saw a spilling of red ink over the first page of the New York Universe: “Adam’s Own Story of the Rise and Fall of Man.” “Dad and Darwin do beat creation,” Cain commented. “The delineator of the ‘Descent of Man’ says that the earth grew as naturally as a mushroom on a dung heap. Since hearing of it, Topsy has been giving herself airs under the impression that as she ‘just growed,’ she was the first woman. Adam says he doesn’t mind being called a myth by the higher critics, but when an Afro-American minister proves by logic as indisputable as a proposition in Euclid that the oldest inhabitant was a black man, and when Topsy lays claim to being his wife, he thinks it’s about time to draw the color line. Job tried to comfort Pa by telling him that it is better to be a myth than a martyr, for martyrs are burned that myths may live.” “And Mother Eve?” “Oh, she is an allegory, too. The legend of the lady of the pippins was generated into the genius of Genesis for the sole purpose of stimulating the cerebral cells of the clergymen whose imaginations have become stunted by much raking for Greek roots. Despite the ancient scandal when she listened to the solo of the serpent—and the result proved so disastrous woman has never been inclined to listen to any voice but her own since that distant day—Eve actually asked Adam to buy her one of those serpentine dresses the next time he went to Vanity Valley-on-the-Hudson. Pa replied that because other women were reverting to the original clinging fig-leaf garb, was no reason why she should advertise her shame to the world.