One's spirit goes further in dreams than it does by day.
Wandering once by night from a factory city I came to the
edge of Hell.
The place was foul with cinders and cast-off things, and
jagged, half-buried things with shapeless edges, and there
was a huge angel with a hammer building in plaster and
steel. I wondered what he did in that dreadful place. I
hesitated, then asked him what he was building. "We are
adding to Hell," he said, "to keep pace with the times."
"Don't be too hard on them," I said, for I had just come out
of a compromising age and a weakening country. The angel
did not answer. "It won't be as bad as the old hell, will
it?" I said. "Worse," said the angel.
"How can you reconcile it with your conscience as a
Minister of Grace," I said, "to inflict such a punishment?"
(They talked like this in the city whence I had come and I
could not avoid the habit of it.)
"They have invented a new cheap yeast," said the angel.
I looked at the legend on the walls of the hell that the
angel was building, the words were written in flame, every
fifteen seconds they changed their color, "Yeasto, the great
new yeast, it builds up body and brain, and something more."
"They shall look at it for ever," the angel said.
"But they drove a perfectly legitimate trade," I said,
"the law allowed it."
The angel went on hammering into place the huge steel
uprights.
"You are very revengeful," I said. "Do you never rest
from doing this terrible work?"
"I rested one Christmas Day," the angel said, "and looked
and saw little children dying of cancer. I shall go on now
until the fires are lit."
"It is very hard to prove," I said, "that the yeast is as
bad as you think."
"After all," I said, "they must live."
And the angel made no answer but went on building his
hell.