"I shall doubtless need aid," confessed Spain, more cordial, I felt, than he had previously seemed. As I caught the flame of enthusiasm in this man's conviction, my heart warmed to him. I found myself interested in his proposed "Autobiography of God"--interested and critical. "It might amuse you," I said, "to know that somewhere among my own writing notes I have this item jotted down. 'A tale that should begin the day after eternity.'" Dan Spain looked at me, his eyes twinkling, "Not half bad," he said. And so began an exchange of suggestions, a mutual laying on the table of the most guarded treasures of one's over-reaching ambitions to write the impossible. As the night wore on our wits sharpened each on the other, and before dawn broke, Dan Spain and I both realized that we had cast in outline form the skeleton of a most ambitious piece of writing. Then we awoke to the fact, that we, who were acquaintances of a single session had joined our wits to create something that could not be disentangled without its destruction. "And now," I said, "who is going to write this tale of the adventures of the great god Gud?" "We must write it together," replied Spain, "nothing else would be honest." There followed a period of intermittant work that strung out through several seasons. We worked sometimes alone; at other times I spent week-ends at Spain's hermitage, and on a few occasions I dragged the hermit down to my quarters in Greenwich Village. As the manuscript gathered bulk, I arranged for its typing, having always a copy made for each of us. During the summer of 1924, I spent most of the month of July at Spain's hermitage and we got the book completed, though there were still many parts of it on which we had serious differences of opinion. Taking my draft with me, I went back to New York, where I had to attend to some neglected editorial duties. Spain had agreed to come down to my place on the week-end of August thirtieth for a final effort to see if we could reconcile our differences of opinion. The intervening weather in the city was oppressive and I did no further work on the manuscript. When August thirtieth arrived Spain did not show up. I waited for him another week and then drove my car up to his hermitage in the Catskills. I bumped over the stones of the miserable trail and brought my car to a halt in front of where Spain's house had stood. Before me I saw a yawning circle of trees with the inner sides scorched and withered, and the great gaunt stone chimney alone now rearing from a heap of ashes. The combustion had been complete. Not a charred stick remained. All was white ash, and well packed down, for it had rained heavily a few nights before.