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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, by Twain
+(#11 in our series by Mark Twain)
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
+
+Author: Mark Twain
+
+Release Date: September, 1997  [EBook #1044]
+[This file was first posted on September 26, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: June 25, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a
+little anxious.  Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that
+time, like a comet.  LIKE a comet!  Why, Peters, I laid over the
+lot of them!  Of course there warn't any of them going my way, as a
+steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like
+the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart
+for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that
+was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a
+brush together.  But it was generally pretty one-sided, because I
+sailed by them the same as if they were standing still.  An
+ordinary comet don't make more than about 200,000 miles a minute.
+Of course when I came across one of that sort--like Encke's and
+Halley's comets, for instance--it warn't anything but just a flash
+and a vanish, you see.  You couldn't rightly call it a race.  It
+was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraph
+despatch.  But after I got outside of our astronomical system, I
+used to flush a comet occasionally that was something LIKE.  WE
+haven't got any such comets--ours don't begin.  One night I was
+swinging along at a good round gait, everything taut and trim, and
+the wind in my favor--I judged I was going about a million miles a
+minute--it might have been more, it couldn't have been less--when I
+flushed a most uncommonly big one about three points off my
+starboard bow.  By his stern lights I judged he was bearing about
+northeast-and-by-north-half-east.  Well, it was so near my course
+that I wouldn't throw away the chance; so I fell off a point,
+steadied my helm, and went for him.  You should have heard me whiz,
+and seen the electric fur fly!  In about a minute and a half I was
+fringed out with an electrical nimbus that flamed around for miles
+and miles and lit up all space like broad day.  The comet was
+burning blue in the distance, like a sickly torch, when I first
+sighted him, but he begun to grow bigger and bigger as I crept up
+on him.  I slipped up on him so fast that when I had gone about
+150,000,000 miles I was close enough to be swallowed up in the
+phosphorescent glory of his wake, and I couldn't see anything for
+the glare.  Thinks I, it won't do to run into him, so I shunted to
+one side and tore along.  By and by I closed up abreast of his
+tail.  Do you know what it was like?  It was like a gnat closing up
+on the continent of America.  I forged along.  By and by I had
+sailed along his coast for a little upwards of a hundred and fifty
+million miles, and then I could see by the shape of him that I
+hadn't even got up to his waistband yet.  Why, Peters, WE don't
+know anything about comets, down here.  If you want to see comets
+that ARE comets, you've got to go outside of our solar system--
+where there's room for them, you understand.  My friend, I've seen
+comets out there that couldn't even lay down inside the ORBITS of
+our noblest comets without their tails hanging over.
+
+Well, I boomed along another hundred and fifty million miles, and
+got up abreast his shoulder, as you may say.  I was feeling pretty
+fine, I tell you; but just then I noticed the officer of the deck
+come to the side and hoist his glass in my direction.  Straight off
+I heard him sing out--"Below there, ahoy!  Shake her up, shake her
+up!  Heave on a hundred million billion tons of brimstone!"
+
+"Ay-ay, sir!"
+
+"Pipe the stabboard watch!  All hands on deck!"
+
+"Ay-ay, sir!"
+
+"Send two hundred thousand million men aloft to shake out royals
+and sky-scrapers!"
+
+"Ay-ay, sir!"
+
+"Hand the stuns'ls!  Hang out every rag you've got!  Clothe her
+from stem to rudder-post!"
+
+"Ay-ay, sir!"
+
+In about a second I begun to see I'd woke up a pretty ugly
+customer, Peters.  In less than ten seconds that comet was just a
+blazing cloud of red-hot canvas.  It was piled up into the heavens
+clean out of sight--the old thing seemed to swell out and occupy
+all space; the sulphur smoke from the furnaces--oh, well, nobody
+can describe the way it rolled and tumbled up into the skies, and
+nobody can half describe the way it smelt.  Neither can anybody
+begin to describe the way that monstrous craft begun to crash
+along.  And such another powwow--thousands of bo's'n's whistles
+screaming at once, and a crew like the populations of a hundred
+thousand worlds like ours all swearing at once.  Well, I never
+heard the like of it before.
+
+We roared and thundered along side by side, both doing our level
+best, because I'd never struck a comet before that could lay over
+me, and so I was bound to beat this one or break something.  I
+judged I had some reputation in space, and I calculated to keep it.
+I noticed I wasn't gaining as fast, now, as I was before, but still
+I was gaining.  There was a power of excitement on board the comet.
+Upwards of a hundred billion passengers swarmed up from below and
+rushed to the side and begun to bet on the race.  Of course this
+careened her and damaged her speed.  My, but wasn't the mate mad!
+He jumped at that crowd, with his trumpet in his hand, and sung
+out--
+
+"Amidships! amidships, you! {1} or I'll brain the last idiot of
+you!"
+
+Well, sir, I gained and gained, little by little, till at last I
+went skimming sweetly by the magnificent old conflagration's nose.
+By this time the captain of the comet had been rousted out, and he
+stood there in the red glare for'ard, by the mate, in his shirt-
+sleeves and slippers, his hair all rats' nests and one suspender
+hanging, and how sick those two men did look!  I just simply
+couldn't help putting my thumb to my nose as I glided away and
+singing out:
+
+"Ta-ta! ta-ta!  Any word to send to your family?"
+
+Peters, it was a mistake.  Yes, sir, I've often regretted that--it
+was a mistake.  You see, the captain had given up the race, but
+that remark was too tedious for him--he couldn't stand it.  He
+turned to the mate, and says he--
+
+"Have we got brimstone enough of our own to make the trip?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Sure?"
+
+"Yes, sir--more than enough."
+
+"How much have we got in cargo for Satan?"
+
+"Eighteen hundred thousand billion quintillions of kazarks."
+
+"Very well, then, let his boarders freeze till the next comet
+comes.  Lighten ship!  Lively, now, lively, men!  Heave the whole
+cargo overboard!"
+
+Peters, look me in the eye, and be calm.  I found out, over there,
+that a kazark is exactly the bulk of a HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE
+WORLDS LIKE OURS!  They hove all that load overboard.  When it fell
+it wiped out a considerable raft of stars just as clean as if
+they'd been candles and somebody blowed them out.  As for the race,
+that was at an end.  The minute she was lightened the comet swung
+along by me the same as if I was anchored.  The captain stood on
+the stern, by the after-davits, and put his thumb to his nose and
+sung out--
+
+"Ta-ta! ta-ta!  Maybe YOU'VE got some message to send your friends
+in the Everlasting Tropics!"
+
+Then he hove up his other suspender and started for'ard, and inside
+of three-quarters of an hour his craft was only a pale torch again
+in the distance.  Yes, it was a mistake, Peters--that remark of
+mine.  I don't reckon I'll ever get over being sorry about it.  I'd
+'a' beat the bully of the firmament if I'd kept my mouth shut.
+
+
+But I've wandered a little off the track of my tale; I'll get back
+on my course again.  Now you see what kind of speed I was making.
+So, as I said, when I had been tearing along this way about thirty
+years I begun to get uneasy.  Oh, it was pleasant enough, with a
+good deal to find out, but then it was kind of lonesome, you know.
+Besides, I wanted to get somewhere.  I hadn't shipped with the idea
+of cruising forever.  First off, I liked the delay, because I
+judged I was going to fetch up in pretty warm quarters when I got
+through; but towards the last I begun to feel that I'd rather go
+to--well, most any place, so as to finish up the uncertainty.
+
+Well, one night--it was always night, except when I was rushing by
+some star that was occupying the whole universe with its fire and
+its glare--light enough then, of course, but I necessarily left it
+behind in a minute or two and plunged into a solid week of darkness
+again.  The stars ain't so close together as they look to be.
+Where was I?  Oh yes; one night I was sailing along, when I
+discovered a tremendous long row of blinking lights away on the
+horizon ahead.  As I approached, they begun to tower and swell and
+look like mighty furnaces.  Says I to myself--
+
+"By George, I've arrived at last--and at the wrong place, just as I
+expected!"
+
+Then I fainted.  I don't know how long I was insensible, but it
+must have been a good while, for, when I came to, the darkness was
+all gone and there was the loveliest sunshine and the balmiest,
+fragrantest air in its place.  And there was such a marvellous
+world spread out before me--such a glowing, beautiful, bewitching
+country.  The things I took for furnaces were gates, miles high,
+made all of flashing jewels, and they pierced a wall of solid gold
+that you couldn't see the top of, nor yet the end of, in either
+direction.  I was pointed straight for one of these gates, and a-
+coming like a house afire.  Now I noticed that the skies were black
+with millions of people, pointed for those gates.  What a roar they
+made, rushing through the air!  The ground was as thick as ants
+with people, too--billions of them, I judge.
+
+I lit.  I drifted up to a gate with a swarm of people, and when it
+was my turn the head clerk says, in a business-like way--
+
+"Well, quick!  Where are you from?"
+
+"San Francisco," says I.
+
+"San Fran--WHAT?" says he.
+
+"San Francisco."
+
+He scratched his head and looked puzzled, then he says--
+
+"Is it a planet?"
+
+By George, Peters, think of it!  "PLANET?" says I; "it's a city.
+And moreover, it's one of the biggest and finest and--"
+
+"There, there!" says he, "no time here for conversation.  We don't
+deal in cities here.  Where are you from in a GENERAL way?"
+
+"Oh," I says, "I beg your pardon.  Put me down for California."
+
+I had him AGAIN, Peters!  He puzzled a second, then he says, sharp
+and irritable--
+
+"I don't know any such planet--is it a constellation?"
+
+"Oh, my goodness!" says I.  "Constellation, says you?  No--it's a
+State."
+
+"Man, we don't deal in States here.  WILL you tell me where you are
+from IN GENERAL--AT LARGE, don't you understand?"
+
+"Oh, now I get your idea," I says.  "I'm from America,--the United
+States of America."
+
+Peters, do you know I had him AGAIN?  If I hadn't I'm a clam!  His
+face was as blank as a target after a militia shooting-match.  He
+turned to an under clerk and says--
+
+"Where is America?  WHAT is America?"
+
+The under clerk answered up prompt and says--
+
+"There ain't any such orb."
+
+"ORB?" says I.  "Why, what are you talking about, young man?  It
+ain't an orb; it's a country; it's a continent.  Columbus
+discovered it; I reckon likely you've heard of HIM, anyway.
+America--why, sir, America--"
+
+"Silence!" says the head clerk.  "Once for all, where--are--you--
+FROM?"
+
+"Well," says I, "I don't know anything more to say--unless I lump
+things, and just say I'm from the world."
+
+"Ah," says he, brightening up, "now that's something like!  WHAT
+world?"
+
+Peters, he had ME, that time.  I looked at him, puzzled, he looked
+at me, worried.  Then he burst out--
+
+"Come, come, what world?"
+
+Says I, "Why, THE world, of course."
+
+"THE world!" he says.  "H'm! there's billions of them! . . . Next!"
+
+That meant for me to stand aside.  I done so, and a sky-blue man
+with seven heads and only one leg hopped into my place.  I took a
+walk.  It just occurred to me, then, that all the myriads I had
+seen swarming to that gate, up to this time, were just like that
+creature.  I tried to run across somebody I was acquainted with,
+but they were out of acquaintances of mine just then.  So I thought
+the thing all over and finally sidled back there pretty meek and
+feeling rather stumped, as you may say.
+
+"Well?" said the head clerk.
+
+"Well, sir," I says, pretty humble, "I don't seem to make out which
+world it is I'm from.  But you may know it from this--it's the one
+the Saviour saved."
+
+He bent his head at the Name.  Then he says, gently--
+
+"The worlds He has saved are like to the gates of heaven in number-
+-none can count them.  What astronomical system is your world in?--
+perhaps that may assist."
+
+"It's the one that has the sun in it--and the moon--and Mars"--he
+shook his head at each name--hadn't ever heard of them, you see--
+"and Neptune--and Uranus--and Jupiter--"
+
+"Hold on!" says he--"hold on a minute!  Jupiter . . . Jupiter . . .
+Seems to me we had a man from there eight or nine hundred years
+ago--but people from that system very seldom enter by this gate."
+All of a sudden he begun to look me so straight in the eye that I
+thought he was going to bore through me.  Then he says, very
+deliberate, "Did you come STRAIGHT HERE from your system?"
+
+"Yes, sir," I says--but I blushed the least little bit in the world
+when I said it.
+
+He looked at me very stern, and says--
+
+"That is not true; and this is not the place for prevarication.
+You wandered from your course.  How did that happen?"
+
+Says I, blushing again--
+
+"I'm sorry, and I take back what I said, and confess.  I raced a
+little with a comet one day--only just the least little bit--only
+the tiniest lit--"
+
+"So--so," says he--and without any sugar in his voice to speak of.
+
+I went on, and says--
+
+"But I only fell off just a bare point, and I went right back on my
+course again the minute the race was over."
+
+"No matter--that divergence has made all this trouble.  It has
+brought you to a gate that is billions of leagues from the right
+one.  If you had gone to your own gate they would have known all
+about your world at once and there would have been no delay.  But
+we will try to accommodate you."  He turned to an under clerk and
+says--
+
+"What system is Jupiter in?"
+
+"I don't remember, sir, but I think there is such a planet in one
+of the little new systems away out in one of the thinly worlded
+corners of the universe.  I will see."
+
+He got a balloon and sailed up and up and up, in front of a map
+that was as big as Rhode Island.  He went on up till he was out of
+sight, and by and by he came down and got something to eat and went
+up again.  To cut a long story short, he kept on doing this for a
+day or two, and finally he came down and said he thought he had
+found that solar system, but it might be fly-specks.  So he got a
+microscope and went back.  It turned out better than he feared.  He
+had rousted out our system, sure enough.  He got me to describe our
+planet and its distance from the sun, and then he says to his
+chief--
+
+"Oh, I know the one he means, now, sir.  It is on the map.  It is
+called the Wart."
+
+Says I to myself, "Young man, it wouldn't be wholesome for you to
+go down THERE and call it the Wart."
+
+Well, they let me in, then, and told me I was safe forever and
+wouldn't have any more trouble.
+
+Then they turned from me and went on with their work, the same as
+if they considered my case all complete and shipshape.  I was a
+good deal surprised at this, but I was diffident about speaking up
+and reminding them.  I did so hate to do it, you know; it seemed a
+pity to bother them, they had so much on their hands.  Twice I
+thought I would give up and let the thing go; so twice I started to
+leave, but immediately I thought what a figure I should cut
+stepping out amongst the redeemed in such a rig, and that made me
+hang back and come to anchor again.  People got to eying me--
+clerks, you know--wondering why I didn't get under way.  I couldn't
+stand this long--it was too uncomfortable.  So at last I plucked up
+courage and tipped the head clerk a signal.  He says--
+
+"What! you here yet?  What's wanting?"
+
+Says I, in a low voice and very confidential, making a trumpet with
+my hands at his ear--
+
+"I beg pardon, and you mustn't mind my reminding you, and seeming
+to meddle, but hain't you forgot something?"
+
+He studied a second, and says--
+
+"Forgot something? . . . No, not that I know of."
+
+"Think," says I.
+
+He thought.  Then he says--
+
+"No, I can't seem to have forgot anything.  What is it?"
+
+"Look at me," says I, "look me all over."
+
+He done it.
+
+"Well?" says he.
+
+"Well," says I, "you don't notice anything?  If I branched out
+amongst the elect looking like this, wouldn't I attract
+considerable attention?--wouldn't I be a little conspicuous?"
+
+"Well," he says, "I don't see anything the matter.  What do you
+lack?"
+
+"Lack!  Why, I lack my harp, and my wreath, and my halo, and my
+hymn-book, and my palm branch--I lack everything that a body
+naturally requires up here, my friend."
+
+Puzzled?  Peters, he was the worst puzzled man you ever saw.
+Finally he says--
+
+"Well, you seem to be a curiosity every way a body takes you.  I
+never heard of these things before."
+
+I looked at the man awhile in solid astonishment; then I says--
+
+"Now, I hope you don't take it as an offence, for I don't mean any,
+but really, for a man that has been in the Kingdom as long as I
+reckon you have, you do seem to know powerful little about its
+customs."
+
+"Its customs!" says he.  "Heaven is a large place, good friend.
+Large empires have many and diverse customs.  Even small dominions
+have, as you doubtless know by what you have seen of the matter on
+a small scale in the Wart.  How can you imagine I could ever learn
+the varied customs of the countless kingdoms of heaven?  It makes
+my head ache to think of it.  I know the customs that prevail in
+those portions inhabited by peoples that are appointed to enter by
+my own gate--and hark ye, that is quite enough knowledge for one
+individual to try to pack into his head in the thirty-seven
+millions of years I have devoted night and day to that study.  But
+the idea of learning the customs of the whole appalling expanse of
+heaven--O man, how insanely you talk!  Now I don't doubt that this
+odd costume you talk about is the fashion in that district of
+heaven you belong to, but you won't be conspicuous in this section
+without it."
+
+I felt all right, if that was the case, so I bade him good-day and
+left.  All day I walked towards the far end of a prodigious hall of
+the office, hoping to come out into heaven any moment, but it was a
+mistake.  That hall was built on the general heavenly plan--it
+naturally couldn't be small.  At last I got so tired I couldn't go
+any farther; so I sat down to rest, and begun to tackle the
+queerest sort of strangers and ask for information, but I didn't
+get any; they couldn't understand my language, and I could not
+understand theirs.  I got dreadfully lonesome.  I was so down-
+hearted and homesick I wished a hundred times I never had died.  I
+turned back, of course.  About noon next day, I got back at last
+and was on hand at the booking-office once more.  Says I to the
+head clerk--
+
+"I begin to see that a man's got to be in his own Heaven to be
+happy."
+
+"Perfectly correct," says he.  "Did you imagine the same heaven
+would suit all sorts of men?"
+
+"Well, I had that idea--but I see the foolishness of it.  Which way
+am I to go to get to my district?"
+
+He called the under clerk that had examined the map, and he gave me
+general directions.  I thanked him and started; but he says--
+
+"Wait a minute; it is millions of leagues from here.  Go outside
+and stand on that red wishing-carpet; shut your eyes, hold your
+breath, and wish yourself there."
+
+"I'm much obliged," says I; "why didn't you dart me through when I
+first arrived?"
+
+"We have a good deal to think of here; it was your place to think
+of it and ask for it.  Good-by; we probably sha'n't see you in this
+region for a thousand centuries or so."
+
+"In that case, o revoor," says I.
+
+I hopped onto the carpet and held my breath and shut my eyes and
+wished I was in the booking-office of my own section.  The very
+next instant a voice I knew sung out in a business kind of a way--
+
+"A harp and a hymn-book, pair of wings and a halo, size 13, for
+Cap'n Eli Stormfield, of San Francisco!--make him out a clean bill
+of health, and let him in."
+
+I opened my eyes.  Sure enough, it was a Pi Ute Injun I used to
+know in Tulare County; mighty good fellow--I remembered being at
+his funeral, which consisted of him being burnt and the other
+Injuns gauming their faces with his ashes and howling like
+wildcats.  He was powerful glad to see me, and you may make up your
+mind I was just as glad to see him, and feel that I was in the
+right kind of a heaven at last.
+
+Just as far as your eye could reach, there was swarms of clerks,
+running and bustling around, tricking out thousands of Yanks and
+Mexicans and English and Arabs, and all sorts of people in their
+new outfits; and when they gave me my kit and I put on my halo and
+took a look in the glass, I could have jumped over a house for joy,
+I was so happy.  "Now THIS is something like!" says I.  "Now," says
+I, "I'm all right--show me a cloud."
+
+Inside of fifteen minutes I was a mile on my way towards the cloud-
+banks and about a million people along with me.  Most of us tried
+to fly, but some got crippled and nobody made a success of it.  So
+we concluded to walk, for the present, till we had had some wing
+practice.
+
+We begun to meet swarms of folks who were coming back.  Some had
+harps and nothing else; some had hymn-books and nothing else; some
+had nothing at all; all of them looked meek and uncomfortable; one
+young fellow hadn't anything left but his halo, and he was carrying
+that in his hand; all of a sudden he offered it to me and says--
+
+"Will you hold it for me a minute?"
+
+Then he disappeared in the crowd.  I went on.  A woman asked me to
+hold her palm branch, and then SHE disappeared.  A girl got me to
+hold her harp for her, and by George, SHE disappeared; and so on
+and so on, till I was about loaded down to the guards.  Then comes
+a smiling old gentleman and asked me to hold HIS things.  I swabbed
+off the perspiration and says, pretty tart--
+
+"I'll have to get you to excuse me, my friend,--_I_ ain't no hat-
+rack."
+
+About this time I begun to run across piles of those traps, lying
+in the road.  I just quietly dumped my extra cargo along with them.
+I looked around, and, Peters, that whole nation that was following
+me were loaded down the same as I'd been.  The return crowd had got
+them to hold their things a minute, you see.  They all dumped their
+loads, too, and we went on.
+
+When I found myself perched on a cloud, with a million other
+people, I never felt so good in my life.  Says I, "Now this is
+according to the promises; I've been having my doubts, but now I am
+in heaven, sure enough."  I gave my palm branch a wave or two, for
+luck, and then I tautened up my harp-strings and struck in.  Well,
+Peters, you can't imagine anything like the row we made.  It was
+grand to listen to, and made a body thrill all over, but there was
+considerable many tunes going on at once, and that was a drawback
+to the harmony, you understand; and then there was a lot of Injun
+tribes, and they kept up such another war-whooping that they kind
+of took the tuck out of the music.  By and by I quit performing,
+and judged I'd take a rest.  There was quite a nice mild old
+gentleman sitting next me, and I noticed he didn't take a hand; I
+encouraged him, but he said he was naturally bashful, and was
+afraid to try before so many people.  By and by the old gentleman
+said he never could seem to enjoy music somehow.  The fact was, I
+was beginning to feel the same way; but I didn't say anything.  Him
+and I had a considerable long silence, then, but of course it
+warn't noticeable in that place.  After about sixteen or seventeen
+hours, during which I played and sung a little, now and then--
+always the same tune, because I didn't know any other--I laid down
+my harp and begun to fan myself with my palm branch.  Then we both
+got to sighing pretty regular.  Finally, says he--
+
+"Don't you know any tune but the one you've been pegging at all
+day?"
+
+"Not another blessed one," says I.
+
+"Don't you reckon you could learn another one?" says he.
+
+"Never," says I; "I've tried to, but I couldn't manage it."
+
+"It's a long time to hang to the one--eternity, you know."
+
+"Don't break my heart," says I; "I'm getting low-spirited enough
+already."
+
+After another long silence, says he--
+
+"Are you glad to be here?"
+
+Says I, "Old man, I'll be frank with you.  This AIN'T just as near
+my idea of bliss as I thought it was going to be, when I used to go
+to church."
+
+Says he, "What do you say to knocking off and calling it half a
+day?"
+
+"That's me," says I.  "I never wanted to get off watch so bad in my
+life."
+
+So we started.  Millions were coming to the cloud-bank all the
+time, happy and hosannahing; millions were leaving it all the time,
+looking mighty quiet, I tell you.  We laid for the new-comers, and
+pretty soon I'd got them to hold all my things a minute, and then I
+was a free man again and most outrageously happy.  Just then I ran
+across old Sam Bartlett, who had been dead a long time, and stopped
+to have a talk with him.  Says I--
+
+"Now tell me--is this to go on forever?  Ain't there anything else
+for a change?"
+
+Says he--
+
+"I'll set you right on that point very quick.  People take the
+figurative language of the Bible and the allegories for literal,
+and the first thing they ask for when they get here is a halo and a
+harp, and so on.  Nothing that's harmless and reasonable is refused
+a body here, if he asks it in the right spirit.  So they are
+outfitted with these things without a word.  They go and sing and
+play just about one day, and that's the last you'll ever see them
+in the choir.  They don't need anybody to tell them that that sort
+of thing wouldn't make a heaven--at least not a heaven that a sane
+man could stand a week and remain sane.  That cloud-bank is placed
+where the noise can't disturb the old inhabitants, and so there
+ain't any harm in letting everybody get up there and cure himself
+as soon as he comes.
+
+"Now you just remember this--heaven is as blissful and lovely as it
+can be; but it's just the busiest place you ever heard of.  There
+ain't any idle people here after the first day.  Singing hymns and
+waving palm branches through all eternity is pretty when you hear
+about it in the pulpit, but it's as poor a way to put in valuable
+time as a body could contrive.  It would just make a heaven of
+warbling ignoramuses, don't you see?  Eternal Rest sounds
+comforting in the pulpit, too.  Well, you try it once, and see how
+heavy time will hang on your hands.  Why, Stormfield, a man like
+you, that had been active and stirring all his life, would go mad
+in six months in a heaven where he hadn't anything to do.  Heaven
+is the very last place to come to REST in,--and don't you be afraid
+to bet on that!"
+
+Says I--
+
+"Sam, I'm as glad to hear it as I thought I'd be sorry.  I'm glad I
+come, now."
+
+Says he--
+
+"Cap'n, ain't you pretty physically tired?"
+
+Says I--
+
+"Sam, it ain't any name for it!  I'm dog-tired."
+
+"Just so--just so.  You've earned a good sleep, and you'll get it.
+You've earned a good appetite, and you'll enjoy your dinner.  It's
+the same here as it is on earth--you've got to earn a thing, square
+and honest, before you enjoy it.  You can't enjoy first and earn
+afterwards.  But there's this difference, here:  you can choose
+your own occupation, and all the powers of heaven will be put forth
+to help you make a success of it, if you do your level best.  The
+shoe-maker on earth that had the soul of a poet in him won't have
+to make shoes here."
+
+"Now that's all reasonable and right," says I.  "Plenty of work,
+and the kind you hanker after; no more pain, no more suffering--"
+
+"Oh, hold on; there's plenty of pain here--but it don't kill.
+There's plenty of suffering here, but it don't last.  You see,
+happiness ain't a THING IN ITSELF--it's only a CONTRAST with
+something that ain't pleasant.  That's all it is.  There ain't a
+thing you can mention that is happiness in its own self--it's only
+so by contrast with the other thing.  And so, as soon as the
+novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't
+happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.  Well,
+there's plenty of pain and suffering in heaven--consequently
+there's plenty of contrasts, and just no end of happiness."
+
+Says I, "It's the sensiblest heaven I've heard of yet, Sam, though
+it's about as different from the one I was brought up on as a live
+princess is different from her own wax figger."
+
+
+Along in the first months I knocked around about the Kingdom,
+making friends and looking at the country, and finally settled down
+in a pretty likely region, to have a rest before taking another
+start.  I went on making acquaintances and gathering up
+information.  I had a good deal of talk with an old bald-headed
+angel by the name of Sandy McWilliams.  He was from somewhere in
+New Jersey.  I went about with him, considerable.  We used to lay
+around, warm afternoons, in the shade of a rock, on some meadow-
+ground that was pretty high and out of the marshy slush of his
+cranberry-farm, and there we used to talk about all kinds of
+things, and smoke pipes.  One day, says I--
+
+"About how old might you be, Sandy?"
+
+"Seventy-two."
+
+"I judged so.  How long you been in heaven?"
+
+"Twenty-seven years, come Christmas."
+
+"How old was you when you come up?"
+
+"Why, seventy-two, of course."
+
+"You can't mean it!"
+
+"Why can't I mean it?"
+
+"Because, if you was seventy-two then, you are naturally ninety-
+nine now."
+
+"No, but I ain't.  I stay the same age I was when I come."
+
+"Well," says I, "come to think, there's something just here that I
+want to ask about.  Down below, I always had an idea that in heaven
+we would all be young, and bright, and spry."
+
+"Well, you can be young if you want to.  You've only got to wish."
+
+"Well, then, why didn't you wish?"
+
+"I did.  They all do.  You'll try it, some day, like enough; but
+you'll get tired of the change pretty soon."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you.  Now you've always been a sailor; did you
+ever try some other business?"
+
+"Yes, I tried keeping grocery, once, up in the mines; but I
+couldn't stand it; it was too dull--no stir, no storm, no life
+about it; it was like being part dead and part alive, both at the
+same time.  I wanted to be one thing or t'other.  I shut up shop
+pretty quick and went to sea."
+
+"That's it.  Grocery people like it, but you couldn't.  You see you
+wasn't used to it.  Well, I wasn't used to being young, and I
+couldn't seem to take any interest in it.  I was strong, and
+handsome, and had curly hair,--yes, and wings, too!--gay wings like
+a butterfly.  I went to picnics and dances and parties with the
+fellows, and tried to carry on and talk nonsense with the girls,
+but it wasn't any use; I couldn't take to it--fact is, it was an
+awful bore.  What I wanted was early to bed and early to rise, and
+something to DO; and when my work was done, I wanted to sit quiet,
+and smoke and think--not tear around with a parcel of giddy young
+kids.  You can't think what I suffered whilst I was young."
+
+"How long was you young?"
+
+"Only two weeks.  That was plenty for me.  Laws, I was so lonesome!
+You see, I was full of the knowledge and experience of seventy-two
+years; the deepest subject those young folks could strike was only
+a-b-c to me.  And to hear them argue--oh, my! it would have been
+funny, if it hadn't been so pitiful.  Well, I was so hungry for the
+ways and the sober talk I was used to, that I tried to ring in with
+the old people, but they wouldn't have it.  They considered me a
+conceited young upstart, and gave me the cold shoulder.  Two weeks
+was a-plenty for me.  I was glad to get back my bald head again,
+and my pipe, and my old drowsy reflections in the shade of a rock
+or a tree."
+
+"Well," says I, "do you mean to say you're going to stand still at
+seventy-two, forever?"
+
+"I don't know, and I ain't particular.  But I ain't going to drop
+back to twenty-five any more--I know that, mighty well.  I know a
+sight more than I did twenty-seven years ago, and I enjoy learning,
+all the time, but I don't seem to get any older.  That is, bodily--
+my mind gets older, and stronger, and better seasoned, and more
+satisfactory."
+
+Says I, "If a man comes here at ninety, don't he ever set himself
+back?"
+
+"Of course he does.  He sets himself back to fourteen; tries it a
+couple of hours, and feels like a fool; sets himself forward to
+twenty; it ain't much improvement; tries thirty, fifty, eighty, and
+finally ninety--finds he is more at home and comfortable at the
+same old figure he is used to than any other way.  Or, if his mind
+begun to fail him on earth at eighty, that's where he finally
+sticks up here.  He sticks at the place where his mind was last at
+its best, for there's where his enjoyment is best, and his ways
+most set and established."
+
+"Does a chap of twenty-five stay always twenty-five, and look it?"
+
+"If he is a fool, yes.  But if he is bright, and ambitious and
+industrious, the knowledge he gains and the experiences he has,
+change his ways and thoughts and likings, and make him find his
+best pleasure in the company of people above that age; so he allows
+his body to take on that look of as many added years as he needs to
+make him comfortable and proper in that sort of society; he lets
+his body go on taking the look of age, according as he progresses,
+and by and by he will be bald and wrinkled outside, and wise and
+deep within."
+
+"Babies the same?"
+
+"Babies the same.  Laws, what asses we used to be, on earth, about
+these things!  We said we'd be always young in heaven.  We didn't
+say HOW young--we didn't think of that, perhaps--that is, we didn't
+all think alike, anyway.  When I was a boy of seven, I suppose I
+thought we'd all be twelve, in heaven; when I was twelve, I suppose
+I thought we'd all be eighteen or twenty in heaven; when I was
+forty, I begun to go back; I remember I hoped we'd all be about
+THIRTY years old in heaven.  Neither a man nor a boy ever thinks
+the age he HAS is exactly the best one--he puts the right age a few
+years older or a few years younger than he is.  Then he makes that
+ideal age the general age of the heavenly people.  And he expects
+everybody TO STICK at that age--stand stock-still--and expects them
+to enjoy it!--Now just think of the idea of standing still in
+heaven!  Think of a heaven made up entirely of hoop-rolling,
+marble-playing cubs of seven years!--or of awkward, diffident,
+sentimental immaturities of nineteen!--or of vigorous people of
+thirty, healthy-minded, brimming with ambition, but chained hand
+and foot to that one age and its limitations like so many helpless
+galley-slaves!  Think of the dull sameness of a society made up of
+people all of one age and one set of looks, habits, tastes and
+feelings.  Think how superior to it earth would be, with its
+variety of types and faces and ages, and the enlivening attrition
+of the myriad interests that come into pleasant collision in such a
+variegated society."
+
+"Look here," says I, "do you know what you're doing?"
+
+"Well, what am I doing?"
+
+"You are making heaven pretty comfortable in one way, but you are
+playing the mischief with it in another."
+
+"How d'you mean?"
+
+"Well," I says, "take a young mother that's lost her child, and--"
+
+"Sh!" he says.  "Look!"
+
+It was a woman.  Middle-aged, and had grizzled hair.  She was
+walking slow, and her head was bent down, and her wings hanging
+limp and droopy; and she looked ever so tired, and was crying, poor
+thing!  She passed along by, with her head down, that way, and the
+tears running down her face, and didn't see us.  Then Sandy said,
+low and gentle, and full of pity:
+
+"SHE'S hunting for her child!  No, FOUND it, I reckon.  Lord, how
+she's changed!  But I recognized her in a minute, though it's
+twenty-seven years since I saw her.  A young mother she was, about
+twenty two or four, or along there; and blooming and lovely and
+sweet? oh, just a flower!  And all her heart and all her soul was
+wrapped up in her child, her little girl, two years old.  And it
+died, and she went wild with grief, just wild!  Well, the only
+comfort she had was that she'd see her child again, in heaven--
+'never more to part,' she said, and kept on saying it over and
+over, 'never more to part.'  And the words made her happy; yes,
+they did; they made her joyful, and when I was dying, twenty-seven
+years ago, she told me to find her child the first thing, and say
+she was coming--'soon, soon, VERY soon, she hoped and believed!'"
+
+"Why, it's pitiful, Sandy."
+
+He didn't say anything for a while, but sat looking at the ground,
+thinking.  Then he says, kind of mournful:
+
+"And now she's come!"
+
+"Well?  Go on."
+
+"Stormfield, maybe she hasn't found the child, but _I_ think she
+has.  Looks so to me.  I've seen cases before.  You see, she's kept
+that child in her head just the same as it was when she jounced it
+in her arms a little chubby thing.  But here it didn't elect to
+STAY a child.  No, it elected to grow up, which it did.  And in
+these twenty-seven years it has learned all the deep scientific
+learning there is to learn, and is studying and studying and
+learning and learning more and more, all the time, and don't give a
+damn for anything BUT learning; just learning, and discussing
+gigantic problems with people like herself."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Stormfield, don't you see?  Her mother knows CRANBERRIES, and how
+to tend them, and pick them, and put them up, and market them; and
+not another blamed thing!  Her and her daughter can't be any more
+company for each other NOW than mud turtle and bird o' paradise.
+Poor thing, she was looking for a baby to jounce; _I_ think she's
+struck a disapp'intment."
+
+"Sandy, what will they do--stay unhappy forever in heaven?"
+
+"No, they'll come together and get adjusted by and by.  But not
+this year, and not next.  By and by."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+I had been having considerable trouble with my wings.  The day
+after I helped the choir I made a dash or two with them, but was
+not lucky.  First off, I flew thirty yards, and then fouled an
+Irishman and brought him down--brought us both down, in fact.
+Next, I had a collision with a Bishop--and bowled him down, of
+course.  We had some sharp words, and I felt pretty cheap, to come
+banging into a grave old person like that, with a million strangers
+looking on and smiling to themselves.
+
+I saw I hadn't got the hang of the steering, and so couldn't
+rightly tell where I was going to bring up when I started.  I went
+afoot the rest of the day, and let my wings hang.  Early next
+morning I went to a private place to have some practice.  I got up
+on a pretty high rock, and got a good start, and went swooping
+down, aiming for a bush a little over three hundred yards off; but
+I couldn't seem to calculate for the wind, which was about two
+points abaft my beam.  I could see I was going considerable to
+looard of the bush, so I worked my starboard wing slow and went
+ahead strong on the port one, but it wouldn't answer; I could see I
+was going to broach to, so I slowed down on both, and lit.  I went
+back to the rock and took another chance at it.  I aimed two or
+three points to starboard of the bush--yes, more than that--enough
+so as to make it nearly a head-wind.  I done well enough, but made
+pretty poor time.  I could see, plain enough, that on a head-wind,
+wings was a mistake.  I could see that a body could sail pretty
+close to the wind, but he couldn't go in the wind's eye.  I could
+see that if I wanted to go a-visiting any distance from home, and
+the wind was ahead, I might have to wait days, maybe, for a change;
+and I could see, too, that these things could not be any use at all
+in a gale; if you tried to run before the wind, you would make a
+mess of it, for there isn't anyway to shorten sail--like reefing,
+you know--you have to take it ALL in--shut your feathers down flat
+to your sides.  That would LAND you, of course.  You could lay to,
+with your head to the wind--that is the best you could do, and
+right hard work you'd find it, too.  If you tried any other game,
+you would founder, sure.
+
+I judge it was about a couple of weeks or so after this that I
+dropped old Sandy McWilliams a note one day--it was a Tuesday--and
+asked him to come over and take his manna and quails with me next
+day; and the first thing he did when he stepped in was to twinkle
+his eye in a sly way, and say,--
+
+"Well, Cap, what you done with your wings?"
+
+I saw in a minute that there was some sarcasm done up in that rag
+somewheres, but I never let on.  I only says,--
+
+"Gone to the wash."
+
+"Yes," he says, in a dry sort of way, "they mostly go to the wash--
+about this time--I've often noticed it.  Fresh angels are powerful
+neat.  When do you look for 'em back?"
+
+"Day after to-morrow," says I.
+
+He winked at me, and smiled.
+
+Says I,--
+
+"Sandy, out with it.  Come--no secrets among friends.  I notice you
+don't ever wear wings--and plenty others don't.  I've been making
+an ass of myself--is that it?"
+
+"That is about the size of it.  But it is no harm.  We all do it at
+first.  It's perfectly natural.  You see, on earth we jump to such
+foolish conclusions as to things up here.  In the pictures we
+always saw the angels with wings on--and that was all right; but we
+jumped to the conclusion that that was their way of getting around-
+-and that was all wrong.  The wings ain't anything but a uniform,
+that's all.  When they are in the field--so to speak,--they always
+wear them; you never see an angel going with a message anywhere
+without his wings, any more than you would see a military officer
+presiding at a court-martial without his uniform, or a postman
+delivering letters, or a policeman walking his beat, in plain
+clothes.  But they ain't to FLY with!  The wings are for show, not
+for use.  Old experienced angels are like officers of the regular
+army--they dress plain, when they are off duty.  New angels are
+like the militia--never shed the uniform--always fluttering and
+floundering around in their wings, butting people down, flapping
+here, and there, and everywhere, always imagining they are
+attracting the admiring eye--well, they just think they are the
+very most important people in heaven.  And when you see one of them
+come sailing around with one wing tipped up and t'other down, you
+make up your mind he is saying to himself:  'I wish Mary Ann in
+Arkansaw could see me now.  I reckon she'd wish she hadn't shook
+me.'  No, they're just for show, that's all--only just for show."
+
+"I judge you've got it about right, Sandy," says I.
+
+"Why, look at it yourself," says he.  "YOU ain't built for wings--
+no man is.  You know what a grist of years it took you to come here
+from the earth--and yet you were booming along faster than any
+cannon-ball could go.  Suppose you had to fly that distance with
+your wings--wouldn't eternity have been over before you got here?
+Certainly.  Well, angels have to go to the earth every day--
+millions of them--to appear in visions to dying children and good
+people, you know--it's the heft of their business.  They appear
+with their wings, of course, because they are on official service,
+and because the dying persons wouldn't know they were angels if
+they hadn't wings--but do you reckon they fly with them?  It stands
+to reason they don't.  The wings would wear out before they got
+half-way; even the pin-feathers would be gone; the wing frames
+would be as bare as kite sticks before the paper is pasted on.  The
+distances in heaven are billions of times greater; angels have to
+go all over heaven every day; could they do it with their wings
+alone?  No, indeed; they wear the wings for style, but they travel
+any distance in an instant by WISHING.  The wishing-carpet of the
+Arabian Nights was a sensible idea--but our earthly idea of angels
+flying these awful distances with their clumsy wings was foolish.
+
+"Our young saints, of both sexes, wear wings all the time--blazing
+red ones, and blue and green, and gold, and variegated, and
+rainbowed, and ring-streaked-and-striped ones--and nobody finds
+fault.  It is suitable to their time of life.  The things are
+beautiful, and they set the young people off.  They are the most
+striking and lovely part of their outfit--a halo don't BEGIN."
+
+"Well," says I, "I've tucked mine away in the cupboard, and I allow
+to let them lay there till there's mud."
+
+"Yes--or a reception."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Well, you can see one to-night if you want to.  There's a
+barkeeper from Jersey City going to be received."
+
+"Go on--tell me about it."
+
+"This barkeeper got converted at a Moody and Sankey meeting, in New
+York, and started home on the ferry-boat, and there was a collision
+and he got drowned.  He is of a class that think all heaven goes
+wild with joy when a particularly hard lot like him is saved; they
+think all heaven turns out hosannahing to welcome them; they think
+there isn't anything talked about in the realms of the blest but
+their case, for that day.  This barkeeper thinks there hasn't been
+such another stir here in years, as his coming is going to raise.--
+And I've always noticed this peculiarity about a dead barkeeper--he
+not only expects all hands to turn out when he arrives, but he
+expects to be received with a torchlight procession."
+
+"I reckon he is disappointed, then."
+
+"No, he isn't.  No man is allowed to be disappointed here.
+Whatever he wants, when he comes--that is, any reasonable and
+unsacrilegious thing--he can have.  There's always a few millions
+or billions of young folks around who don't want any better
+entertainment than to fill up their lungs and swarm out with their
+torches and have a high time over a barkeeper.  It tickles the
+barkeeper till he can't rest, it makes a charming lark for the
+young folks, it don't do anybody any harm, it don't cost a rap, and
+it keeps up the place's reputation for making all comers happy and
+content."
+
+"Very good.  I'll be on hand and see them land the barkeeper."
+
+"It is manners to go in full dress.  You want to wear your wings,
+you know, and your other things."
+
+"Which ones?"
+
+"Halo, and harp, and palm branch, and all that."
+
+"Well," says I, "I reckon I ought to be ashamed of myself, but the
+fact is I left them laying around that day I resigned from the
+choir.  I haven't got a rag to wear but this robe and the wings."
+
+"That's all right.  You'll find they've been raked up and saved for
+you.  Send for them."
+
+"I'll do it, Sandy.  But what was it you was saying about
+unsacrilegious things, which people expect to get, and will be
+disappointed about?"
+
+"Oh, there are a lot of such things that people expect and don't
+get.  For instance, there's a Brooklyn preacher by the name of
+Talmage, who is laying up a considerable disappointment for
+himself.  He says, every now and then in his sermons, that the
+first thing he does when he gets to heaven, will be to fling his
+arms around Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and kiss them and weep on
+them.  There's millions of people down there on earth that are
+promising themselves the same thing.  As many as sixty thousand
+people arrive here every single day, that want to run straight to
+Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and hug them and weep on them.  Now mind
+you, sixty thousand a day is a pretty heavy contract for those old
+people.  If they were a mind to allow it, they wouldn't ever have
+anything to do, year in and year out, but stand up and be hugged
+and wept on thirty-two hours in the twenty-four.  They would be
+tired out and as wet as muskrats all the time.  What would heaven
+be, to THEM?  It would be a mighty good place to get out of--you
+know that, yourself.  Those are kind and gentle old Jews, but they
+ain't any fonder of kissing the emotional highlights of Brooklyn
+than you be.  You mark my words, Mr. T.'s endearments are going to
+be declined, with thanks.  There are limits to the privileges of
+the elect, even in heaven.  Why, if Adam was to show himself to
+every new comer that wants to call and gaze at him and strike him
+for his autograph, he would never have time to do anything else but
+just that.  Talmage has said he is going to give Adam some of his
+attentions, as well as A., I. and J.  But he will have to change
+his mind about that."
+
+"Do you think Talmage will really come here?"
+
+"Why, certainly, he will; but don't you be alarmed; he will run
+with his own kind, and there's plenty of them.  That is the main
+charm of heaven--there's all kinds here--which wouldn't be the case
+if you let the preachers tell it.  Anybody can find the sort he
+prefers, here, and he just lets the others alone, and they let him
+alone.  When the Deity builds a heaven, it is built right, and on a
+liberal plan."
+
+Sandy sent home for his things, and I sent for mine, and about nine
+in the evening we begun to dress.  Sandy says,--
+
+"This is going to be a grand time for you, Stormy.  Like as not
+some of the patriarchs will turn out."
+
+"No, but will they?"
+
+"Like as not.  Of course they are pretty exclusive.  They hardly
+ever show themselves to the common public.  I believe they never
+turn out except for an eleventh-hour convert.  They wouldn't do it
+then, only earthly tradition makes a grand show pretty necessary on
+that kind of an occasion."
+
+"Do they an turn out, Sandy?"
+
+"Who?--all the patriarchs?  Oh, no--hardly ever more than a couple.
+You will be here fifty thousand years--maybe more--before you get a
+glimpse of all the patriarchs and prophets.  Since I have been
+here, Job has been to the front once, and once Ham and Jeremiah
+both at the same time.  But the finest thing that has happened in
+my day was a year or so ago; that was Charles Peace's reception--
+him they called 'the Bannercross Murderer'--an Englishman.  There
+were four patriarchs and two prophets on the Grand Stand that time-
+-there hasn't been anything like it since Captain Kidd came; Abel
+was there--the first time in twelve hundred years.  A report got
+around that Adam was coming; well, of course, Abel was enough to
+bring a crowd, all by himself, but there is nobody that can draw
+like Adam.  It was a false report, but it got around, anyway, as I
+say, and it will be a long day before I see the like of it again.
+The reception was in the English department, of course, which is
+eight hundred and eleven million miles from the New Jersey line.  I
+went, along with a good many of my neighbors, and it was a sight to
+see, I can tell you.  Flocks came from all the departments.  I saw
+Esquimaux there, and Tartars, Negroes, Chinamen--people from
+everywhere.  You see a mixture like that in the Grand Choir, the
+first day you land here, but you hardly ever see it again.  There
+were billions of people; when they were singing or hosannahing, the
+noise was wonderful; and even when their tongues were still the
+drumming of the wings was nearly enough to burst your head, for all
+the sky was as thick as if it was snowing angels.  Although Adam
+was not there, it was a great time anyway, because we had three
+archangels on the Grand Stand--it is a seldom thing that even one
+comes out."
+
+"What did they look like, Sandy?"
+
+"Well, they had shining faces, and shining robes, and wonderful
+rainbow wings, and they stood eighteen feet high, and wore swords,
+and held their heads up in a noble way, and looked like soldiers."
+
+"Did they have halos?"
+
+"No--anyway, not the hoop kind.  The archangels and the upper-class
+patriarchs wear a finer thing than that.  It is a round, solid,
+splendid glory of gold, that is blinding to look at.  You have
+often seen a patriarch in a picture, on earth, with that thing on--
+you remember it?--he looks as if he had his head in a brass
+platter.  That don't give you the right idea of it at all--it is
+much more shining and beautiful."
+
+"Did you talk with those archangels and patriarchs, Sandy?"
+
+"Who--_I_?  Why, what can you be thinking about, Stormy?  I ain't
+worthy to speak to such as they."
+
+"Is Talmage?"
+
+"Of course not.  You have got the same mixed-up idea about these
+things that everybody has down there.  I had it once, but I got
+over it.  Down there they talk of the heavenly King--and that is
+right--but then they go right on speaking as if this was a republic
+and everybody was on a dead level with everybody else, and
+privileged to fling his arms around anybody he comes across, and be
+hail-fellow-well-met with all the elect, from the highest down.
+How tangled up and absurd that is!  How are you going to have a
+republic under a king?  How are you going to have a republic at
+all, where the head of the government is absolute, holds his place
+forever, and has no parliament, no council to meddle or make in his
+affairs, nobody voted for, nobody elected, nobody in the whole
+universe with a voice in the government, nobody asked to take a
+hand in its matters, and nobody ALLOWED to do it?  Fine republic,
+ain't it?"
+
+"Well, yes--it IS a little different from the idea I had--but I
+thought I might go around and get acquainted with the grandees,
+anyway--not exactly splice the main-brace with them, you know, but
+shake hands and pass the time of day."
+
+"Could Tom, Dick and Harry call on the Cabinet of Russia and do
+that?--on Prince Gortschakoff, for instance?"
+
+"I reckon not, Sandy."
+
+"Well, this is Russia--only more so.  There's not the shadow of a
+republic about it anywhere.  There are ranks, here.  There are
+viceroys, princes, governors, sub-governors, sub-sub-governors, and
+a hundred orders of nobility, grading along down from grand-ducal
+archangels, stage by stage, till the general level is struck, where
+there ain't any titles.  Do you know what a prince of the blood is,
+on earth?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, a prince of the blood don't belong to the royal family
+exactly, and he don't belong to the mere nobility of the kingdom;
+he is lower than the one, and higher than t'other.  That's about
+the position of the patriarchs and prophets here.  There's some
+mighty high nobility here--people that you and I ain't worthy to
+polish sandals for--and THEY ain't worthy to polish sandals for the
+patriarchs and prophets.  That gives you a kind of an idea of their
+rank, don't it?  You begin to see how high up they are, don't you?
+just to get a two-minute glimpse of one of them is a thing for a
+body to remember and tell about for a thousand years.  Why,
+Captain, just think of this:  if Abraham was to set his foot down
+here by this door, there would be a railing set up around that
+foot-track right away, and a shelter put over it, and people would
+flock here from all over heaven, for hundreds and hundreds of
+years, to look at it.  Abraham is one of the parties that Mr.
+Talmage, of Brooklyn, is going to embrace, and kiss, and weep on,
+when he comes.  He wants to lay in a good stock of tears, you know,
+or five to one he will go dry before he gets a chance to do it."
+
+"Sandy," says I, "I had an idea that _I_ was going to be equals
+with everybody here, too, but I will let that drop.  It don't
+matter, and I am plenty happy enough anyway."
+
+"Captain, you are happier than you would be, the other way.  These
+old patriarchs and prophets have got ages the start of you; they
+know more in two minutes than you know in a year.  Did you ever try
+to have a sociable improving-time discussing winds, and currents
+and variations of compass with an undertaker?"
+
+"I get your idea, Sandy.  He couldn't interest me.  He would be an
+ignoramus in such things--he would bore me, and I would bore him."
+
+"You have got it.  You would bore the patriarchs when you talked,
+and when they talked they would shoot over your head.  By and by
+you would say, 'Good morning, your Eminence, I will call again'--
+but you wouldn't.  Did you ever ask the slush-boy to come up in the
+cabin and take dinner with you?"
+
+"I get your drift again, Sandy.  I wouldn't be used to such grand
+people as the patriarchs and prophets, and I would be sheepish and
+tongue-tied in their company, and mighty glad to get out of it.
+Sandy, which is the highest rank, patriarch or prophet?"
+
+"Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs.  The newest prophet,
+even, is of a sight more consequence than the oldest patriarch.
+Yes, sir, Adam himself has to walk behind Shakespeare."
+
+"Was Shakespeare a prophet?"
+
+"Of course he was; and so was Homer, and heaps more.  But
+Shakespeare and the rest have to walk behind a common tailor from
+Tennessee, by the name of Billings; and behind a horse-doctor named
+Sakka, from Afghanistan.  Jeremiah, and Billings and Buddha walk
+together, side by side, right behind a crowd from planets not in
+our astronomy; next come a dozen or two from Jupiter and other
+worlds; next come Daniel, and Sakka and Confucius; next a lot from
+systems outside of ours; next come Ezekiel, and Mahomet, Zoroaster,
+and a knife-grinder from ancient Egypt; then there is a long
+string, and after them, away down toward the bottom, come
+Shakespeare and Homer, and a shoemaker named Marais, from the back
+settlements of France."
+
+"Have they really rung in Mahomet and all those other heathens?"
+
+"Yes--they all had their message, and they all get their reward.
+The man who don't get his reward on earth, needn't bother--he will
+get it here, sure."
+
+"But why did they throw off on Shakespeare, that way, and put him
+away down there below those shoe-makers and horse-doctors and
+knife-grinders--a lot of people nobody ever heard of?"
+
+"That is the heavenly justice of it--they warn't rewarded according
+to their deserts, on earth, but here they get their rightful rank.
+That tailor Billings, from Tennessee, wrote poetry that Homer and
+Shakespeare couldn't begin to come up to; but nobody would print
+it, nobody read it but his neighbors, an ignorant lot, and they
+laughed at it.  Whenever the village had a drunken frolic and a
+dance, they would drag him in and crown him with cabbage leaves,
+and pretend to bow down to him; and one night when he was sick and
+nearly starved to death, they had him out and crowned him, and then
+they rode him on a rail about the village, and everybody followed
+along, beating tin pans and yelling.  Well, he died before morning.
+He wasn't ever expecting to go to heaven, much less that there was
+going to be any fuss made over him, so I reckon he was a good deal
+surprised when the reception broke on him."
+
+"Was you there, Sandy?"
+
+"Bless you, no!"
+
+"Why?  Didn't you know it was going to come off?"
+
+"Well, I judge I did.  It was the talk of these realms--not for a
+day, like this barkeeper business, but for twenty years before the
+man died."
+
+"Why the mischief didn't you go, then?"
+
+"Now how you talk!  The like of me go meddling around at the
+reception of a prophet?  A mudsill like me trying to push in and
+help receive an awful grandee like Edward J. Billings?  Why, I
+should have been laughed at for a billion miles around.  I
+shouldn't ever heard the last of it."
+
+"Well, who did go, then?"
+
+"Mighty few people that you and I will ever get a chance to see,
+Captain.  Not a solitary commoner ever has the luck to see a
+reception of a prophet, I can tell you.  All the nobility, and all
+the patriarchs and prophets--every last one of them--and all the
+archangels, and all the princes and governors and viceroys, were
+there,--and NO small fry--not a single one.  And mind you, I'm not
+talking about only the grandees from OUR world, but the princes and
+patriarchs and so on from ALL the worlds that shine in our sky, and
+from billions more that belong in systems upon systems away outside
+of the one our sun is in.  There were some prophets and patriarchs
+there that ours ain't a circumstance to, for rank and
+illustriousness and all that.  Some were from Jupiter and other
+worlds in our own system, but the most celebrated were three poets,
+Saa, Bo and Soof, from great planets in three different and very
+remote systems.  These three names are common and familiar in every
+nook and corner of heaven, clear from one end of it to the other--
+fully as well known as the eighty Supreme Archangels, in fact--
+where as our Moses, and Adam, and the rest, have not been heard of
+outside of our world's little corner of heaven, except by a few
+very learned men scattered here and there--and they always spell
+their names wrong, and get the performances of one mixed up with
+the doings of another, and they almost always locate them simply IN
+OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, and think that is enough without going into
+little details such as naming the particular world they are from.
+It is like a learned Hindoo showing off how much he knows by saying
+Longfellow lives in the United States--as if he lived all over the
+United States, and as if the country was so small you couldn't
+throw a brick there without hitting him.  Between you and me, it
+does gravel me, the cool way people from those monster worlds
+outside our system snub our little world, and even our system.  Of
+course we think a good deal of Jupiter, because our world is only a
+potato to it, for size; but then there are worlds in other systems
+that Jupiter isn't even a mustard-seed to--like the planet Goobra,
+for instance, which you couldn't squeeze inside the orbit of
+Halley's comet without straining the rivets.  Tourists from Goobra
+(I mean parties that lived and died there--natives) come here, now
+and then, and inquire about our world, and when they find out it is
+so little that a streak of lightning can flash clear around it in
+the eighth of a second, they have to lean up against something to
+laugh.  Then they screw a glass into their eye and go to examining
+us, as if we were a curious kind of foreign bug, or something of
+that sort.  One of them asked me how long our day was; and when I
+told him it was twelve hours long, as a general thing, he asked me
+if people where I was from considered it worth while to get up and
+wash for such a day as that.  That is the way with those Goobra
+people--they can't seem to let a chance go by to throw it in your
+face that their day is three hundred and twenty-two of our years
+long.  This young snob was just of age--he was six or seven
+thousand of his days old--say two million of our years--and he had
+all the puppy airs that belong to that time of life--that turning-
+point when a person has got over being a boy and yet ain't quite a
+man exactly.  If it had been anywhere else but in heaven, I would
+have given him a piece of my mind.  Well, anyway, Billings had the
+grandest reception that has been seen in thousands of centuries,
+and I think it will have a good effect.  His name will be carried
+pretty far, and it will make our system talked about, and maybe our
+world, too, and raise us in the respect of the general public of
+heaven.  Why, look here--Shakespeare walked backwards before that
+tailor from Tennessee, and scattered flowers for him to walk on,
+and Homer stood behind his chair and waited on him at the banquet.
+Of course that didn't go for much THERE, amongst all those big
+foreigners from other systems, as they hadn't heard of Shakespeare
+or Homer either, but it would amount to considerable down there on
+our little earth if they could know about it.  I wish there was
+something in that miserable spiritualism, so we could send them
+word.  That Tennessee village would set up a monument to Billings,
+then, and his autograph would outsell Satan's.  Well, they had
+grand times at that reception--a small-fry noble from Hoboken told
+me all about it--Sir Richard Duffer, Baronet."
+
+"What, Sandy, a nobleman from Hoboken?  How is that?"
+
+"Easy enough.  Duffer kept a sausage-shop and never saved a cent in
+his life because he used to give all his spare meat to the poor, in
+a quiet way.  Not tramps,--no, the other sort--the sort that will
+starve before they will beg--honest square people out of work.
+Dick used to watch hungry-looking men and women and children, and
+track them home, and find out all about them from the neighbors,
+and then feed them and find them work.  As nobody ever saw him give
+anything to anybody, he had the reputation of being mean; he died
+with it, too, and everybody said it was a good riddance; but the
+minute he landed here, they made him a baronet, and the very first
+words Dick the sausage-maker of Hoboken heard when he stepped upon
+the heavenly shore were, 'Welcome, Sir Richard Duffer!'  It
+surprised him some, because he thought he had reasons to believe he
+was pointed for a warmer climate than this one."
+
+
+All of a sudden the whole region fairly rocked under the crash of
+eleven hundred and one thunder blasts, all let off at once, and
+Sandy says,--
+
+"There, that's for the barkeep."
+
+I jumped up and says,--
+
+"Then let's be moving along, Sandy; we don't want to miss any of
+this thing, you know."
+
+"Keep your seat," he says; "he is only just telegraphed, that is
+all."
+
+"How?"
+
+"That blast only means that he has been sighted from the signal-
+station.  He is off Sandy Hook.  The committees will go down to
+meet him, now, and escort him in.  There will be ceremonies and
+delays; they won't he coming up the Bay for a considerable time,
+yet.  It is several billion miles away, anyway."
+
+"_I_ could have been a barkeeper and a hard lot just as well as
+not," says I, remembering the lonesome way I arrived, and how there
+wasn't any committee nor anything.
+
+"I notice some regret in your voice," says Sandy, "and it is
+natural enough; but let bygones be bygones; you went according to
+your lights, and it is too late now to mend the thing."
+
+"No, let it slide, Sandy, I don't mind.  But you've got a Sandy
+Hook HERE, too, have you?"
+
+"We've got everything here, just as it is below.  All the States
+and Territories of the Union, and all the kingdoms of the earth and
+the islands of the sea are laid out here just as they are on the
+globe--all the same shape they are down there, and all graded to
+the relative size, only each State and realm and island is a good
+many billion times bigger here than it is below.  There goes
+another blast."
+
+"What is that one for?"
+
+"That is only another fort answering the first one.  They each fire
+eleven hundred and one thunder blasts at a single dash--it is the
+usual salute for an eleventh-hour guest; a hundred for each hour
+and an extra one for the guest's sex; if it was a woman we would
+know it by their leaving off the extra gun."
+
+"How do we know there's eleven hundred and one, Sandy, when they
+all go off at once?--and yet we certainly do know."
+
+"Our intellects are a good deal sharpened up, here, in some ways,
+and that is one of them.  Numbers and sizes and distances are so
+great, here, that we have to be made so we can FEEL them--our old
+ways of counting and measuring and ciphering wouldn't ever give us
+an idea of them, but would only confuse us and oppress us and make
+our heads ache."
+
+After some more talk about this, I says:  "Sandy, I notice that I
+hardly ever see a white angel; where I run across one white angel,
+I strike as many as a hundred million copper-colored ones--people
+that can't speak English.  How is that?"
+
+"Well, you will find it the same in any State or Territory of the
+American corner of heaven you choose to go to.  I have shot along,
+a whole week on a stretch, and gone millions and millions of miles,
+through perfect swarms of angels, without ever seeing a single
+white one, or hearing a word I could understand.  You see, America
+was occupied a billion years and more, by Injuns and Aztecs, and
+that sort of folks, before a white man ever set his foot in it.
+During the first three hundred years after Columbus's discovery,
+there wasn't ever more than one good lecture audience of white
+people, all put together, in America--I mean the whole thing,
+British Possessions and all; in the beginning of our century there
+were only 6,000,000 or 7,000,000--say seven; 12,000,000 or
+14,000,000 in 1825; say 23,000,000 in 1850; 40,000,000 in 1875.
+Our death-rate has always been 20 in 1000 per annum.  Well, 140,000
+died the first year of the century; 280,000 the twenty-fifth year;
+500,000 the fiftieth year; about a million the seventy-fifth year.
+Now I am going to be liberal about this thing, and consider that
+fifty million whites have died in America from the beginning up to
+to-day--make it sixty, if you want to; make it a hundred million--
+it's no difference about a few millions one way or t'other.  Well,
+now, you can see, yourself, that when you come to spread a little
+dab of people like that over these hundreds of billions of miles of
+American territory here in heaven, it is like scattering a ten-cent
+box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and expecting to
+find them again.  You can't expect us to amount to anything in
+heaven, and we DON'T--now that is the simple fact, and we have got
+to do the best we can with it.  The learned men from other planets
+and other systems come here and hang around a while, when they are
+touring around the Kingdom, and then go back to their own section
+of heaven and write a book of travels, and they give America about
+five lines in it.  And what do they say about us?  They say this
+wilderness is populated with a scattering few hundred thousand
+billions of red angels, with now and then a curiously complected
+DISEASED one.  You see, they think we whites and the occasional
+nigger are Injuns that have been bleached out or blackened by some
+leprous disease or other--for some peculiarly rascally SIN, mind
+you.  It is a mighty sour pill for us all, my friend--even the
+modestest of us, let alone the other kind, that think they are
+going to be received like a long-lost government bond, and hug
+Abraham into the bargain.  I haven't asked you any of the
+particulars, Captain, but I judge it goes without saying--if my
+experience is worth anything--that there wasn't much of a hooraw
+made over you when you arrived--now was there?"
+
+"Don't mention it, Sandy," says I, coloring up a little; "I
+wouldn't have had the family see it for any amount you are a mind
+to name.  Change the subject, Sandy, change the subject."
+
+"Well, do you think of settling in the California department of
+bliss?"
+
+"I don't know.  I wasn't calculating on doing anything really
+definite in that direction till the family come.  I thought I would
+just look around, meantime, in a quiet way, and make up my mind.
+Besides, I know a good many dead people, and I was calculating to
+hunt them up and swap a little gossip with them about friends, and
+old times, and one thing or another, and ask them how they like it
+here, as far as they have got.  I reckon my wife will want to camp
+in the California range, though, because most all her departed will
+be there, and she likes to be with folks she knows."
+
+"Don't you let her.  You see what the Jersey district of heaven is,
+for whites; well, the Californian district is a thousand times
+worse.  It swarms with a mean kind of leather-headed mud-colored
+angels--and your nearest white neighbor is likely to be a million
+miles away.  WHAT A MAN MOSTLY MISSES, IN HEAVEN, IS COMPANY--
+company of his own sort and color and language.  I have come near
+settling in the European part of heaven once or twice on that
+account."
+
+"Well, why didn't you, Sandy?"
+
+"Oh, various reasons.  For one thing, although you SEE plenty of
+whites there, you can't understand any of them, hardly, and so you
+go about as hungry for talk as you do here.  I like to look at a
+Russian or a German or an Italian--I even like to look at a
+Frenchman if I ever have the luck to catch him engaged in anything
+that ain't indelicate--but LOOKING don't cure the hunger--what you
+want is talk."
+
+"Well, there's England, Sandy--the English district of heaven."
+
+"Yes, but it is not so very much better than this end of the
+heavenly domain.  As long as you run across Englishmen born this
+side of three hundred years ago, you are all right; but the minute
+you get back of Elizabeth's time the language begins to fog up, and
+the further back you go the foggier it gets.  I had some talk with
+one Langland and a man by the name of Chaucer--old-time poets--but
+it was no use, I couldn't quite understand them, and they couldn't
+quite understand me.  I have had letters from them since, but it is
+such broken English I can't make it out.  Back of those men's time
+the English are just simply foreigners, nothing more, nothing less;
+they talk Danish, German, Norman French, and sometimes a mixture of
+all three; back of THEM, they talk Latin, and ancient British,
+Irish, and Gaelic; and then back of these come billions and
+billions of pure savages that talk a gibberish that Satan himself
+couldn't understand.  The fact is, where you strike one man in the
+English settlements that you can understand, you wade through awful
+swarms that talk something you can't make head nor tail of.  You
+see, every country on earth has been overlaid so often, in the
+course of a billion years, with different kinds of people and
+different sorts of languages, that this sort of mongrel business
+was bound to be the result in heaven."
+
+"Sandy," says I, "did you see a good many of the great people
+history tells about?"
+
+"Yes--plenty.  I saw kings and all sorts of distinguished people."
+
+"Do the kings rank just as they did below?"
+
+"No; a body can't bring his rank up here with him.  Divine right is
+a good-enough earthly romance, but it don't go, here.  Kings drop
+down to the general level as soon as they reach the realms of
+grace.  I knew Charles the Second very well--one of the most
+popular comedians in the English section--draws first rate.  There
+are better, of course--people that were never heard of on earth--
+but Charles is making a very good reputation indeed, and is
+considered a rising man.  Richard the Lion-hearted is in the prize-
+ring, and coming into considerable favor.  Henry the Eighth is a
+tragedian, and the scenes where he kills people are done to the
+very life.  Henry the Sixth keeps a religious-book stand."
+
+"Did you ever see Napoleon, Sandy?"
+
+"Often--sometimes in the Corsican range, sometimes in the French.
+He always hunts up a conspicuous place, and goes frowning around
+with his arms folded and his field-glass under his arm, looking as
+grand, gloomy and peculiar as his reputation calls for, and very
+much bothered because he don't stand as high, here, for a soldier,
+as he expected to."
+
+"Why, who stands higher?"
+
+"Oh, a LOT of people WE never heard of before--the shoemaker and
+horse-doctor and knife-grinder kind, you know--clodhoppers from
+goodness knows where that never handled a sword or fired a shot in
+their lives--but the soldiership was in them, though they never had
+a chance to show it.  But here they take their right place, and
+Caesar and Napoleon and Alexander have to take a back seat.  The
+greatest military genius our world ever produced was a brick-layer
+from somewhere back of Boston--died during the Revolution--by the
+name of Absalom Jones.  Wherever he goes, crowds flock to see him.
+You see, everybody knows that if he had had a chance he would have
+shown the world some generalship that would have made all
+generalship before look like child's play and 'prentice work.  But
+he never got a chance; he tried heaps of times to enlist as a
+private, but he had lost both thumbs and a couple of front teeth,
+and the recruiting sergeant wouldn't pass him.  However, as I say,
+everybody knows, now, what he WOULD have been,--and so they flock
+by the million to get a glimpse of him whenever they hear he is
+going to be anywhere.  Caesar, and Hannibal, and Alexander, and
+Napoleon are all on his staff, and ever so many more great
+generals; but the public hardly care to look at THEM when HE is
+around.  Boom!  There goes another salute.  The barkeeper's off
+quarantine now."
+
+
+Sandy and I put on our things.  Then we made a wish, and in a
+second we were at the reception-place.  We stood on the edge of the
+ocean of space, and looked out over the dimness, but couldn't make
+out anything.  Close by us was the Grand Stand--tier on tier of dim
+thrones rising up toward the zenith.  From each side of it spread
+away the tiers of seats for the general public.  They spread away
+for leagues and leagues--you couldn't see the ends.  They were
+empty and still, and hadn't a cheerful look, but looked dreary,
+like a theatre before anybody comes--gas turned down.  Sandy says,-
+-
+
+"We'll sit down here and wait.  We'll see the head of the
+procession come in sight away off yonder pretty soon, now."
+
+Says I,--
+
+"It's pretty lonesome, Sandy; I reckon there's a hitch somewheres.
+Nobody but just you and me--it ain't much of a display for the
+barkeeper."
+
+"Don't you fret, it's all right.  There'll be one more gun-fire--
+then you'll see.
+
+In a little while we noticed a sort of a lightish flush, away off
+on the horizon.
+
+"Head of the torchlight procession," says Sandy.
+
+It spread, and got lighter and brighter:  soon it had a strong
+glare like a locomotive headlight; it kept on getting brighter and
+brighter till it was like the sun peeping above the horizon-line at
+sea--the big red rays shot high up into the sky.
+
+"Keep your eyes on the Grand Stand and the miles of seats--sharp!"
+says Sandy, "and listen for the gun-fire."
+
+Just then it burst out, "Boom-boom-boom!" like a million
+thunderstorms in one, and made the whole heavens rock.  Then there
+was a sudden and awful glare of light all about us, and in that
+very instant every one of the millions of seats was occupied, and
+as far as you could see, in both directions, was just a solid pack
+of people, and the place was all splendidly lit up!  It was enough
+to take a body's breath away.  Sandy says,--
+
+"That is the way we do it here.  No time fooled away; nobody
+straggling in after the curtain's up.  Wishing is quicker work than
+travelling.  A quarter of a second ago these folks were millions of
+miles from here.  When they heard the last signal, all they had to
+do was to wish, and here they are."
+
+The prodigious choir struck up,--
+
+
+We long to hear thy voice,
+To see thee face to face.
+
+
+It was noble music, but the uneducated chipped in and spoilt it,
+just as the congregations used to do on earth.
+
+The head of the procession began to pass, now, and it was a
+wonderful sight.  It swept along, thick and solid, five hundred
+thousand angels abreast, and every angel carrying a torch and
+singing--the whirring thunder of the wings made a body's head ache.
+You could follow the line of the procession back, and slanting
+upward into the sky, far away in a glittering snaky rope, till it
+was only a faint streak in the distance.  The rush went on and on,
+for a long time, and at last, sure enough, along comes the
+barkeeper, and then everybody rose, and a cheer went up that made
+the heavens shake, I tell you!  He was all smiles, and had his halo
+tilted over one ear in a cocky way, and was the most satisfied-
+looking saint I ever saw.  While he marched up the steps of the
+Grand Stand, the choir struck up,--
+
+
+The whole wide heaven groans,
+And waits to hear that voice."
+
+
+There were four gorgeous tents standing side by side in the place
+of honor, on a broad railed platform in the centre of the Grand
+Stand, with a shining guard of honor round about them.  The tents
+had been shut up all this time.  As the barkeeper climbed along up,
+bowing and smiling to everybody, and at last got to the platform,
+these tents were jerked up aloft all of a sudden, and we saw four
+noble thrones of gold, all caked with jewels, and in the two middle
+ones sat old white-whiskered men, and in the two others a couple of
+the most glorious and gaudy giants, with platter halos and
+beautiful armor.  All the millions went down on their knees, and
+stared, and looked glad, and burst out into a joyful kind of
+murmurs.  They said,--
+
+"Two archangels!--that is splendid.  Who can the others be?"
+
+The archangels gave the barkeeper a stiff little military bow; the
+two old men rose; one of them said, "Moses and Esau welcome thee!"
+and then all the four vanished, and the thrones were empty.
+
+The barkeeper looked a little disappointed, for he was calculating
+to hug those old people, I judge; but it was the gladdest and
+proudest multitude you ever saw--because they had seen Moses and
+Esau.  Everybody was saying, "Did you see them?--I did--Esau's side
+face was to me, but I saw Moses full in the face, just as plain as
+I see you this minute!"
+
+The procession took up the barkeeper and moved on with him again,
+and the crowd broke up and scattered.  As we went along home, Sandy
+said it was a great success, and the barkeeper would have a right
+to be proud of it forever.  And he said we were in luck, too; said
+we might attend receptions for forty thousand years to come, and
+not have a chance to see a brace of such grand moguls as Moses and
+Esau.  We found afterwards that we had come near seeing another
+patriarch, and likewise a genuine prophet besides, but at the last
+moment they sent regrets.  Sandy said there would be a monument put
+up there, where Moses and Esau had stood, with the date and
+circumstances, and all about the whole business, and travellers
+would come for thousands of years and gawk at it, and climb over
+it, and scribble their names on it.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  The captain could not remember what this word was.  He said it
+was in a foreign tongue.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN ***
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+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, by Mark Twain</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, by Twain
+(#11 in our series by Mark Twain)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
+
+Author: Mark Twain
+
+Release Date: September, 1997  [EBook #1044]
+[This file was first posted on September 26, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: June 25, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<p>Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h1>Extract from Captain Stormfield&rsquo;s Visit to Heaven</h1>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little
+anxious.&nbsp; Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time,
+like a comet.&nbsp; <i>Like</i> a comet!&nbsp; Why, Peters, I laid over
+the lot of them!&nbsp; Of course there warn&rsquo;t any of them going
+my way, as a steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle
+like the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart
+for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that was
+going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a brush together.&nbsp;
+But it was generally pretty one-sided, because I sailed by them the
+same as if they were standing still.&nbsp; An ordinary comet don&rsquo;t
+make more than about 200,000 miles a minute.&nbsp; Of course when I
+came across one of that sort&mdash;like Encke&rsquo;s and Halley&rsquo;s
+comets, for instance&mdash;it warn&rsquo;t anything but just a flash
+and a vanish, you see.&nbsp; You couldn&rsquo;t rightly call it a race.&nbsp;
+It was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraph despatch.&nbsp;
+But after I got outside of our astronomical system, I used to flush
+a comet occasionally that was something <i>like</i>.&nbsp; <i>We</i>
+haven&rsquo;t got any such comets&mdash;ours don&rsquo;t begin.&nbsp;
+One night I was swinging along at a good round gait, everything taut
+and trim, and the wind in my favor&mdash;I judged I was going about
+a million miles a minute&mdash;it might have been more, it couldn&rsquo;t
+have been less&mdash;when I flushed a most uncommonly big one about
+three points off my starboard bow.&nbsp; By his stern lights I judged
+he was bearing about northeast-and-by-north-half-east.&nbsp; Well, it
+was so near my course that I wouldn&rsquo;t throw away the chance; so
+I fell off a point, steadied my helm, and went for him.&nbsp; You should
+have heard me whiz, and seen the electric fur fly!&nbsp; In about a
+minute and a half I was fringed out with an electrical nimbus that flamed
+around for miles and miles and lit up all space like broad day.&nbsp;
+The comet was burning blue in the distance, like a sickly torch, when
+I first sighted him, but he begun to grow bigger and bigger as I crept
+up on him.&nbsp; I slipped up on him so fast that when I had gone about
+150,000,000 miles I was close enough to be swallowed up in the phosphorescent
+glory of his wake, and I couldn&rsquo;t see anything for the glare.&nbsp;
+Thinks I, it won&rsquo;t do to run into him, so I shunted to one side
+and tore along.&nbsp; By and by I closed up abreast of his tail.&nbsp;
+Do you know what it was like?&nbsp; It was like a gnat closing up on
+the continent of America.&nbsp; I forged along.&nbsp; By and by I had
+sailed along his coast for a little upwards of a hundred and fifty million
+miles, and then I could see by the shape of him that I hadn&rsquo;t
+even got up to his waistband yet.&nbsp; Why, Peters, <i>we</i> don&rsquo;t
+know anything about comets, down here.&nbsp; If you want to see comets
+that <i>are</i> comets, you&rsquo;ve got to go outside of our solar
+system&mdash;where there&rsquo;s room for them, you understand.&nbsp;
+My friend, I&rsquo;ve seen comets out there that couldn&rsquo;t even
+lay down inside the <i>orbits</i> of our noblest comets without their
+tails hanging over.</p>
+<p>Well, I boomed along another hundred and fifty million miles, and
+got up abreast his shoulder, as you may say.&nbsp; I was feeling pretty
+fine, I tell you; but just then I noticed the officer of the deck come
+to the side and hoist his glass in my direction.&nbsp; Straight off
+I heard him sing out&mdash;&ldquo;Below there, ahoy!&nbsp; Shake her
+up, shake her up!&nbsp; Heave on a hundred million billion tons of brimstone!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay-ay, sir!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pipe the stabboard watch!&nbsp; All hands on deck!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay-ay, sir!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Send two hundred thousand million men aloft to shake out royals
+and sky-scrapers!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay-ay, sir!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hand the stuns&rsquo;ls!&nbsp; Hang out every rag you&rsquo;ve
+got!&nbsp; Clothe her from stem to rudder-post!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay-ay, sir!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In about a second I begun to see I&rsquo;d woke up a pretty ugly
+customer, Peters.&nbsp; In less than ten seconds that comet was just
+a blazing cloud of red-hot canvas.&nbsp; It was piled up into the heavens
+clean out of sight&mdash;the old thing seemed to swell out and occupy
+all space; the sulphur smoke from the furnaces&mdash;oh, well, nobody
+can describe the way it rolled and tumbled up into the skies, and nobody
+can half describe the way it smelt.&nbsp; Neither can anybody begin
+to describe the way that monstrous craft begun to crash along.&nbsp;
+And such another powwow&mdash;thousands of bo&rsquo;s&rsquo;n&rsquo;s
+whistles screaming at once, and a crew like the populations of a hundred
+thousand worlds like ours all swearing at once.&nbsp; Well, I never
+heard the like of it before.</p>
+<p>We roared and thundered along side by side, both doing our level
+best, because I&rsquo;d never struck a comet before that could lay over
+me, and so I was bound to beat this one or break something.&nbsp; I
+judged I had some reputation in space, and I calculated to keep it.&nbsp;
+I noticed I wasn&rsquo;t gaining as fast, now, as I was before, but
+still I was gaining.&nbsp; There was a power of excitement on board
+the comet.&nbsp; Upwards of a hundred billion passengers swarmed up
+from below and rushed to the side and begun to bet on the race.&nbsp;
+Of course this careened her and damaged her speed.&nbsp; My, but wasn&rsquo;t
+the mate mad!&nbsp; He jumped at that crowd, with his trumpet in his
+hand, and sung out&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Amidships! amidships, you! <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a>
+or I&rsquo;ll brain the last idiot of you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Well, sir, I gained and gained, little by little, till at last I
+went skimming sweetly by the magnificent old conflagration&rsquo;s nose.&nbsp;
+By this time the captain of the comet had been rousted out, and he stood
+there in the red glare for&rsquo;ard, by the mate, in his shirt-sleeves
+and slippers, his hair all rats&rsquo; nests and one suspender hanging,
+and how sick those two men did look!&nbsp; I just simply couldn&rsquo;t
+help putting my thumb to my nose as I glided away and singing out:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ta-ta! ta-ta!&nbsp; Any word to send to your family?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Peters, it was a mistake.&nbsp; Yes, sir, I&rsquo;ve often regretted
+that&mdash;it was a mistake.&nbsp; You see, the captain had given up
+the race, but that remark was too tedious for him&mdash;he couldn&rsquo;t
+stand it.&nbsp; He turned to the mate, and says he&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have we got brimstone enough of our own to make the trip?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir&mdash;more than enough.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How much have we got in cargo for Satan?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Eighteen hundred thousand billion quintillions of kazarks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very well, then, let his boarders freeze till the next comet
+comes.&nbsp; Lighten ship!&nbsp; Lively, now, lively, men!&nbsp; Heave
+the whole cargo overboard!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Peters, look me in the eye, and be calm.&nbsp; I found out, over
+there, that a kazark is exactly the bulk of a <i>hundred and sixty-nine
+worlds like</i> <i>ours</i>!&nbsp; They hove all that load overboard.&nbsp;
+When it fell it wiped out a considerable raft of stars just as clean
+as if they&rsquo;d been candles and somebody blowed them out.&nbsp;
+As for the race, that was at an end.&nbsp; The minute she was lightened
+the comet swung along by me the same as if I was anchored.&nbsp; The
+captain stood on the stern, by the after-davits, and put his thumb to
+his nose and sung out&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ta-ta! ta-ta!&nbsp; Maybe <i>you&rsquo;ve</i> got some message
+to send your friends in the Everlasting Tropics!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then he hove up his other suspender and started for&rsquo;ard, and
+inside of three-quarters of an hour his craft was only a pale torch
+again in the distance.&nbsp; Yes, it was a mistake, Peters&mdash;that
+remark of mine.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t reckon I&rsquo;ll ever get over
+being sorry about it.&nbsp; I&rsquo;d &rsquo;a&rsquo; beat the bully
+of the firmament if I&rsquo;d kept my mouth shut.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>But I&rsquo;ve wandered a little off the track of my tale; I&rsquo;ll
+get back on my course again.&nbsp; Now you see what kind of speed I
+was making.&nbsp; So, as I said, when I had been tearing along this
+way about thirty years I begun to get uneasy.&nbsp; Oh, it was pleasant
+enough, with a good deal to find out, but then it was kind of lonesome,
+you know.&nbsp; Besides, I wanted to get somewhere.&nbsp; I hadn&rsquo;t
+shipped with the idea of cruising forever.&nbsp; First off, I liked
+the delay, because I judged I was going to fetch up in pretty warm quarters
+when I got through; but towards the last I begun to feel that I&rsquo;d
+rather go to&mdash;well, most any place, so as to finish up the uncertainty.</p>
+<p>Well, one night&mdash;it was always night, except when I was rushing
+by some star that was occupying the whole universe with its fire and
+its glare&mdash;light enough then, of course, but I necessarily left
+it behind in a minute or two and plunged into a solid week of darkness
+again.&nbsp; The stars ain&rsquo;t so close together as they look to
+be.&nbsp; Where was I?&nbsp; Oh yes; one night I was sailing along,
+when I discovered a tremendous long row of blinking lights away on the
+horizon ahead.&nbsp; As I approached, they begun to tower and swell
+and look like mighty furnaces.&nbsp; Says I to myself&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By George, I&rsquo;ve arrived at last&mdash;and at the wrong
+place, just as I expected!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then I fainted.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know how long I was insensible,
+but it must have been a good while, for, when I came to, the darkness
+was all gone and there was the loveliest sunshine and the balmiest,
+fragrantest air in its place.&nbsp; And there was such a marvellous
+world spread out before me&mdash;such a glowing, beautiful, bewitching
+country.&nbsp; The things I took for furnaces were gates, miles high,
+made all of flashing jewels, and they pierced a wall of solid gold that
+you couldn&rsquo;t see the top of, nor yet the end of, in either direction.&nbsp;
+I was pointed straight for one of these gates, and a-coming like a house
+afire.&nbsp; Now I noticed that the skies were black with millions of
+people, pointed for those gates.&nbsp; What a roar they made, rushing
+through the air!&nbsp; The ground was as thick as ants with people,
+too&mdash;billions of them, I judge.</p>
+<p>I lit.&nbsp; I drifted up to a gate with a swarm of people, and when
+it was my turn the head clerk says, in a business-like way&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, quick!&nbsp; Where are you from?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;San Francisco,&rdquo; says I.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;San Fran&mdash;<i>what</i>?&rdquo; says he.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;San Francisco.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He scratched his head and looked puzzled, then he says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is it a planet?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By George, Peters, think of it!&nbsp; &ldquo;<i>Planet</i>?&rdquo;
+says I; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a city.&nbsp; And moreover, it&rsquo;s one
+of the biggest and finest and&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There, there!&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;no time here for conversation.&nbsp;
+We don&rsquo;t deal in cities here.&nbsp; Where are you from in a <i>general</i>
+way?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; I says, &ldquo;I beg your pardon.&nbsp; Put me
+down for California.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I had him <i>again</i>, Peters!&nbsp; He puzzled a second, then he
+says, sharp and irritable&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know any such planet&mdash;is it a constellation?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, my goodness!&rdquo; says I.&nbsp; &ldquo;Constellation,
+says you?&nbsp; No&mdash;it&rsquo;s a State.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Man, we don&rsquo;t deal in States here.&nbsp; <i>Will</i>
+you tell me where you are from <i>in general&mdash;at large</i>, don&rsquo;t
+you understand?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, now I get your idea,&rdquo; I says.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+from America,&mdash;the United States of America.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Peters, do you know I had him <i>again</i>?&nbsp; If I hadn&rsquo;t
+I&rsquo;m a clam!&nbsp; His face was as blank as a target after a militia
+shooting-match.&nbsp; He turned to an under clerk and says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where is America?&nbsp; <i>What</i> is America?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The under clerk answered up prompt and says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There ain&rsquo;t any such orb.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Orb</i>?&rdquo; says I.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why, what are you
+talking about, young man?&nbsp; It ain&rsquo;t an orb; it&rsquo;s a
+country; it&rsquo;s a continent.&nbsp; Columbus discovered it; I reckon
+likely you&rsquo;ve heard of <i>him</i>, anyway.&nbsp; America&mdash;why,
+sir, America&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Silence!&rdquo; says the head clerk.&nbsp; &ldquo;Once for
+all, where&mdash;are&mdash;you&mdash;<i>from</i>?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything more
+to say&mdash;unless I lump things, and just say I&rsquo;m from the world.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; says he, brightening up, &ldquo;now that&rsquo;s
+something like!&nbsp; <i>What</i> world?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Peters, he had <i>me</i>, that time.&nbsp; I looked at him, puzzled,
+he looked at me, worried.&nbsp; Then he burst out&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come, come, what world?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says I, &ldquo;Why, <i>the</i> world, of course.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>The</i> world!&rdquo; he says.&nbsp; &ldquo;H&rsquo;m!
+there&rsquo;s billions of them! . . . Next!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That meant for me to stand aside.&nbsp; I done so, and a sky-blue
+man with seven heads and only one leg hopped into my place.&nbsp; I
+took a walk.&nbsp; It just occurred to me, then, that all the myriads
+I had seen swarming to that gate, up to this time, were just like that
+creature.&nbsp; I tried to run across somebody I was acquainted with,
+but they were out of acquaintances of mine just then.&nbsp; So I thought
+the thing all over and finally sidled back there pretty meek and feeling
+rather stumped, as you may say.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said the head clerk.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; I says, pretty humble, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+seem to make out which world it is I&rsquo;m from.&nbsp; But you may
+know it from this&mdash;it&rsquo;s the one the Saviour saved.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He bent his head at the Name.&nbsp; Then he says, gently&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The worlds He has saved are like to the gates of heaven in
+number&mdash;none can count them.&nbsp; What astronomical system is
+your world in?&mdash;perhaps that may assist.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the one that has the sun in it&mdash;and the moon&mdash;and
+Mars&rdquo;&mdash;he shook his head at each name&mdash;hadn&rsquo;t
+ever heard of them, you see&mdash;&ldquo;and Neptune&mdash;and Uranus&mdash;and
+Jupiter&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hold on!&rdquo; says he&mdash;&ldquo;hold on a minute!&nbsp;
+Jupiter . . . Jupiter . . . Seems to me we had a man from there eight
+or nine hundred years ago&mdash;but people from that system very seldom
+enter by this gate.&rdquo;&nbsp; All of a sudden he begun to look me
+so straight in the eye that I thought he was going to bore through me.&nbsp;
+Then he says, very deliberate, &ldquo;Did you come <i>straight</i> <i>here</i>
+from your system?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; I says&mdash;but I blushed the least little
+bit in the world when I said it.</p>
+<p>He looked at me very stern, and says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is not true; and this is not the place for prevarication.&nbsp;
+You wandered from your course.&nbsp; How did that happen?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says I, blushing again&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry, and I take back what I said, and confess.&nbsp;
+I raced a little with a comet one day&mdash;only just the least little
+bit&mdash;only the tiniest lit&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So&mdash;so,&rdquo; says he&mdash;and without any sugar in
+his voice to speak of.</p>
+<p>I went on, and says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I only fell off just a bare point, and I went right back
+on my course again the minute the race was over.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No matter&mdash;that divergence has made all this trouble.&nbsp;
+It has brought you to a gate that is billions of leagues from the right
+one.&nbsp; If you had gone to your own gate they would have known all
+about your world at once and there would have been no delay.&nbsp; But
+we will try to accommodate you.&rdquo;&nbsp; He turned to an under clerk
+and says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What system is Jupiter in?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t remember, sir, but I think there is such a planet
+in one of the little new systems away out in one of the thinly worlded
+corners of the universe.&nbsp; I will see.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He got a balloon and sailed up and up and up, in front of a map that
+was as big as Rhode Island.&nbsp; He went on up till he was out of sight,
+and by and by he came down and got something to eat and went up again.&nbsp;
+To cut a long story short, he kept on doing this for a day or two, and
+finally he came down and said he thought he had found that solar system,
+but it might be fly-specks.&nbsp; So he got a microscope and went back.&nbsp;
+It turned out better than he feared.&nbsp; He had rousted out our system,
+sure enough.&nbsp; He got me to describe our planet and its distance
+from the sun, and then he says to his chief&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I know the one he means, now, sir.&nbsp; It is on the
+map.&nbsp; It is called the Wart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says I to myself, &ldquo;Young man, it wouldn&rsquo;t be wholesome
+for you to go down <i>there</i> and call it the Wart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Well, they let me in, then, and told me I was safe forever and wouldn&rsquo;t
+have any more trouble.</p>
+<p>Then they turned from me and went on with their work, the same as
+if they considered my case all complete and shipshape.&nbsp; I was a
+good deal surprised at this, but I was diffident about speaking up and
+reminding them.&nbsp; I did so hate to do it, you know; it seemed a
+pity to bother them, they had so much on their hands.&nbsp; Twice I
+thought I would give up and let the thing go; so twice I started to
+leave, but immediately I thought what a figure I should cut stepping
+out amongst the redeemed in such a rig, and that made me hang back and
+come to anchor again.&nbsp; People got to eying me&mdash;clerks, you
+know&mdash;wondering why I didn&rsquo;t get under way.&nbsp; I couldn&rsquo;t
+stand this long&mdash;it was too uncomfortable.&nbsp; So at last I plucked
+up courage and tipped the head clerk a signal.&nbsp; He says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What! you here yet?&nbsp; What&rsquo;s wanting?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says I, in a low voice and very confidential, making a trumpet with
+my hands at his ear&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I beg pardon, and you mustn&rsquo;t mind my reminding you,
+and seeming to meddle, but hain&rsquo;t you forgot something?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He studied a second, and says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Forgot something? . . . No, not that I know of.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Think,&rdquo; says I.</p>
+<p>He thought.&nbsp; Then he says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, I can&rsquo;t seem to have forgot anything.&nbsp; What
+is it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look at me,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;look me all over.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He done it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; says he.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t notice anything?&nbsp;
+If I branched out amongst the elect looking like this, wouldn&rsquo;t
+I attract considerable attention?&mdash;wouldn&rsquo;t I be a little
+conspicuous?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see anything the
+matter.&nbsp; What do you lack?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lack!&nbsp; Why, I lack my harp, and my wreath, and my halo,
+and my hymn-book, and my palm branch&mdash;I lack everything that a
+body naturally requires up here, my friend.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Puzzled?&nbsp; Peters, he was the worst puzzled man you ever saw.&nbsp;
+Finally he says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you seem to be a curiosity every way a body takes you.&nbsp;
+I never heard of these things before.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I looked at the man awhile in solid astonishment; then I says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, I hope you don&rsquo;t take it as an offence, for I don&rsquo;t
+mean any, but really, for a man that has been in the Kingdom as long
+as I reckon you have, you do seem to know powerful little about its
+customs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Its customs!&rdquo; says he.&nbsp; &ldquo;Heaven is a large
+place, good friend.&nbsp; Large empires have many and diverse customs.&nbsp;
+Even small dominions have, as you doubtless know by what you have seen
+of the matter on a small scale in the Wart.&nbsp; How can you imagine
+I could ever learn the varied customs of the countless kingdoms of heaven?&nbsp;
+It makes my head ache to think of it.&nbsp; I know the customs that
+prevail in those portions inhabited by peoples that are appointed to
+enter by my own gate&mdash;and hark ye, that is quite enough knowledge
+for one individual to try to pack into his head in the thirty-seven
+millions of years I have devoted night and day to that study.&nbsp;
+But the idea of learning the customs of the whole appalling expanse
+of heaven&mdash;O man, how insanely you talk!&nbsp; Now I don&rsquo;t
+doubt that this odd costume you talk about is the fashion in that district
+of heaven you belong to, but you won&rsquo;t be conspicuous in this
+section without it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I felt all right, if that was the case, so I bade him good-day and
+left.&nbsp; All day I walked towards the far end of a prodigious hall
+of the office, hoping to come out into heaven any moment, but it was
+a mistake.&nbsp; That hall was built on the general heavenly plan&mdash;it
+naturally couldn&rsquo;t be small.&nbsp; At last I got so tired I couldn&rsquo;t
+go any farther; so I sat down to rest, and begun to tackle the queerest
+sort of strangers and ask for information, but I didn&rsquo;t get any;
+they couldn&rsquo;t understand my language, and I could not understand
+theirs.&nbsp; I got dreadfully lonesome.&nbsp; I was so down-hearted
+and homesick I wished a hundred times I never had died.&nbsp; I turned
+back, of course.&nbsp; About noon next day, I got back at last and was
+on hand at the booking-office once more.&nbsp; Says I to the head clerk&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I begin to see that a man&rsquo;s got to be in his own Heaven
+to be happy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perfectly correct,&rdquo; says he.&nbsp; &ldquo;Did you imagine
+the same heaven would suit all sorts of men?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I had that idea&mdash;but I see the foolishness of it.&nbsp;
+Which way am I to go to get to my district?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He called the under clerk that had examined the map, and he gave
+me general directions.&nbsp; I thanked him and started; but he says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait a minute; it is millions of leagues from here.&nbsp;
+Go outside and stand on that red wishing-carpet; shut your eyes, hold
+your breath, and wish yourself there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m much obliged,&rdquo; says I; &ldquo;why didn&rsquo;t
+you dart me through when I first arrived?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We have a good deal to think of here; it was your place to
+think of it and ask for it.&nbsp; Good-by; we probably sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t
+see you in this region for a thousand centuries or so.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In that case, <i>o revoor</i>,&rdquo; says I.</p>
+<p>I hopped onto the carpet and held my breath and shut my eyes and
+wished I was in the booking-office of my own section.&nbsp; The very
+next instant a voice I knew sung out in a business kind of a way&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A harp and a hymn-book, pair of wings and a halo, size 13,
+for Cap&rsquo;n Eli Stormfield, of San Francisco!&mdash;make him out
+a clean bill of health, and let him in.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I opened my eyes.&nbsp; Sure enough, it was a Pi Ute Injun I used
+to know in Tulare County; mighty good fellow&mdash;I remembered being
+at his funeral, which consisted of him being burnt and the other Injuns
+gauming their faces with his ashes and howling like wildcats.&nbsp;
+He was powerful glad to see me, and you may make up your mind I was
+just as glad to see him, and feel that I was in the right kind of a
+heaven at last.</p>
+<p>Just as far as your eye could reach, there was swarms of clerks,
+running and bustling around, tricking out thousands of Yanks and Mexicans
+and English and Arabs, and all sorts of people in their new outfits;
+and when they gave me my kit and I put on my halo and took a look in
+the glass, I could have jumped over a house for joy, I was so happy.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Now<i> this</i> is something like!&rdquo; says I.&nbsp; &ldquo;Now,&rdquo;
+says I, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m all right&mdash;show me a cloud.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Inside of fifteen minutes I was a mile on my way towards the cloud-banks
+and about a million people along with me.&nbsp; Most of us tried to
+fly, but some got crippled and nobody made a success of it.&nbsp; So
+we concluded to walk, for the present, till we had had some wing practice.</p>
+<p>We begun to meet swarms of folks who were coming back.&nbsp; Some
+had harps and nothing else; some had hymn-books and nothing else; some
+had nothing at all; all of them looked meek and uncomfortable; one young
+fellow hadn&rsquo;t anything left but his halo, and he was carrying
+that in his hand; all of a sudden he offered it to me and says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will you hold it for me a minute?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then he disappeared in the crowd.&nbsp; I went on.&nbsp; A woman
+asked me to hold her palm branch, and then <i>she</i> disappeared.&nbsp;
+A girl got me to hold her harp for her, and by George, <i>she</i> disappeared;
+and so on and so on, till I was about loaded down to the guards.&nbsp;
+Then comes a smiling old gentleman and asked me to hold <i>his</i> things.&nbsp;
+I swabbed off the perspiration and says, pretty tart&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have to get you to excuse me, my friend,&mdash;<i>I</i>
+ain&rsquo;t no hat-rack.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>About this time I begun to run across piles of those traps, lying
+in the road.&nbsp; I just quietly dumped my extra cargo along with them.&nbsp;
+I looked around, and, Peters, that whole nation that was following me
+were loaded down the same as I&rsquo;d been.&nbsp; The return crowd
+had got them to hold their things a minute, you see.&nbsp; They all
+dumped their loads, too, and we went on.</p>
+<p>When I found myself perched on a cloud, with a million other people,
+I never felt so good in my life.&nbsp; Says I, &ldquo;Now this is according
+to the promises; I&rsquo;ve been having my doubts, but now I am in heaven,
+sure enough.&rdquo;&nbsp; I gave my palm branch a wave or two, for luck,
+and then I tautened up my harp-strings and struck in.&nbsp; Well, Peters,
+you can&rsquo;t imagine anything like the row we made.&nbsp; It was
+grand to listen to, and made a body thrill all over, but there was considerable
+many tunes going on at once, and that was a drawback to the harmony,
+you understand; and then there was a lot of Injun tribes, and they kept
+up such another war-whooping that they kind of took the tuck out of
+the music.&nbsp; By and by I quit performing, and judged I&rsquo;d take
+a rest.&nbsp; There was quite a nice mild old gentleman sitting next
+me, and I noticed he didn&rsquo;t take a hand; I encouraged him, but
+he said he was naturally bashful, and was afraid to try before so many
+people.&nbsp; By and by the old gentleman said he never could seem to
+enjoy music somehow.&nbsp; The fact was, I was beginning to feel the
+same way; but I didn&rsquo;t say anything.&nbsp; Him and I had a considerable
+long silence, then, but of course it warn&rsquo;t noticeable in that
+place.&nbsp; After about sixteen or seventeen hours, during which I
+played and sung a little, now and then&mdash;always the same tune, because
+I didn&rsquo;t know any other&mdash;I laid down my harp and begun to
+fan myself with my palm branch.&nbsp; Then we both got to sighing pretty
+regular.&nbsp; Finally, says he&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know any tune but the one you&rsquo;ve been
+pegging at all day?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not another blessed one,&rdquo; says I.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you reckon you could learn another one?&rdquo;
+says he.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never,&rdquo; says I; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve tried to, but I couldn&rsquo;t
+manage it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a long time to hang to the one&mdash;eternity,
+you know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t break my heart,&rdquo; says I; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+getting low-spirited enough already.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After another long silence, says he&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are you glad to be here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says I, &ldquo;Old man, I&rsquo;ll be frank with you.&nbsp; This
+<i>ain&rsquo;t</i> just as near my idea of bliss as I thought it was
+going to be, when I used to go to church.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says he, &ldquo;What do you say to knocking off and calling it half
+a day?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s me,&rdquo; says I.&nbsp; &ldquo;I never wanted
+to get off watch so bad in my life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So we started.&nbsp; Millions were coming to the cloud-bank all the
+time, happy and hosannahing; millions were leaving it all the time,
+looking mighty quiet, I tell you.&nbsp; We laid for the new-comers,
+and pretty soon I&rsquo;d got them to hold all my things a minute, and
+then I was a free man again and most outrageously happy.&nbsp; Just
+then I ran across old Sam Bartlett, who had been dead a long time, and
+stopped to have a talk with him.&nbsp; Says I&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now tell me&mdash;is this to go on forever?&nbsp; Ain&rsquo;t
+there anything else for a change?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says he&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll set you right on that point very quick.&nbsp; People
+take the figurative language of the Bible and the allegories for literal,
+and the first thing they ask for when they get here is a halo and a
+harp, and so on.&nbsp; Nothing that&rsquo;s harmless and reasonable
+is refused a body here, if he asks it in the right spirit.&nbsp; So
+they are outfitted with these things without a word.&nbsp; They go and
+sing and play just about one day, and that&rsquo;s the last you&rsquo;ll
+ever see them in the choir.&nbsp; They don&rsquo;t need anybody to tell
+them that that sort of thing wouldn&rsquo;t make a heaven&mdash;at least
+not a heaven that a sane man could stand a week and remain sane.&nbsp;
+That cloud-bank is placed where the noise can&rsquo;t disturb the old
+inhabitants, and so there ain&rsquo;t any harm in letting everybody
+get up there and cure himself as soon as he comes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now you just remember this&mdash;heaven is as blissful and
+lovely as it can be; but it&rsquo;s just the busiest place you ever
+heard of.&nbsp; There ain&rsquo;t any idle people here after the first
+day.&nbsp; Singing hymns and waving palm branches through all eternity
+is pretty when you hear about it in the pulpit, but it&rsquo;s as poor
+a way to put in valuable time as a body could contrive.&nbsp; It would
+just make a heaven of warbling ignoramuses, don&rsquo;t you see?&nbsp;
+Eternal Rest sounds comforting in the pulpit, too.&nbsp; Well, you try
+it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands.&nbsp; Why,
+Stormfield, a man like you, that had been active and stirring all his
+life, would go mad in six months in a heaven where he hadn&rsquo;t anything
+to do.&nbsp; Heaven is the very last place to come to <i>rest</i> in,&mdash;and
+don&rsquo;t you be afraid to bet on that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says I&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sam, I&rsquo;m as glad to hear it as I thought I&rsquo;d be
+sorry.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m glad I come, now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says he&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cap&rsquo;n, ain&rsquo;t you pretty physically tired?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says I&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sam, it ain&rsquo;t any name for it!&nbsp; I&rsquo;m dog-tired.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just so&mdash;just so.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ve earned a good sleep,
+and you&rsquo;ll get it.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ve earned a good appetite,
+and you&rsquo;ll enjoy your dinner.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s the same here as
+it is on earth&mdash;you&rsquo;ve got to earn a thing, square and honest,
+before you enjoy it.&nbsp; You can&rsquo;t enjoy first and earn afterwards.&nbsp;
+But there&rsquo;s this difference, here: you can choose your own occupation,
+and all the powers of heaven will be put forth to help you make a success
+of it, if you do your level best.&nbsp; The shoe-maker on earth that
+had the soul of a poet in him won&rsquo;t have to make shoes here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now that&rsquo;s all reasonable and right,&rdquo; says I.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Plenty of work, and the kind you hanker after; no more pain,
+no more suffering&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, hold on; there&rsquo;s plenty of pain here&mdash;but it
+don&rsquo;t kill.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s plenty of suffering here, but
+it don&rsquo;t last.&nbsp; You see, happiness ain&rsquo;t a <i>thing
+in itself&mdash;</i>it&rsquo;s only a <i>contrast</i> with something
+that ain&rsquo;t pleasant.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s all it is.&nbsp; There
+ain&rsquo;t a thing you can mention that is happiness in its own self&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+only so by contrast with the other thing.&nbsp; And so, as soon as the
+novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain&rsquo;t
+happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.&nbsp; Well,
+there&rsquo;s plenty of pain and suffering in heaven&mdash;consequently
+there&rsquo;s plenty of contrasts, and just no end of happiness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says I, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the sensiblest heaven I&rsquo;ve heard
+of yet, Sam, though it&rsquo;s about as different from the one I was
+brought up on as a live princess is different from her own wax figger.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Along in the first months I knocked around about the Kingdom, making
+friends and looking at the country, and finally settled down in a pretty
+likely region, to have a rest before taking another start.&nbsp; I went
+on making acquaintances and gathering up information.&nbsp; I had a
+good deal of talk with an old bald-headed angel by the name of Sandy
+McWilliams.&nbsp; He was from somewhere in New Jersey.&nbsp; I went
+about with him, considerable.&nbsp; We used to lay around, warm afternoons,
+in the shade of a rock, on some meadow-ground that was pretty high and
+out of the marshy slush of his cranberry-farm, and there we used to
+talk about all kinds of things, and smoke pipes.&nbsp; One day, says
+I&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;About how old might you be, Sandy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seventy-two.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I judged so.&nbsp; How long you been in heaven?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Twenty-seven years, come Christmas.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How old was you when you come up?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, seventy-two, of course.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t mean it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t I mean it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Because, if you was seventy-two then, you are naturally ninety-nine
+now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, but I ain&rsquo;t.&nbsp; I stay the same age I was when
+I come.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;come to think, there&rsquo;s something
+just here that I want to ask about.&nbsp; Down below, I always had an
+idea that in heaven we would all be young, and bright, and spry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you can be young if you want to.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ve
+only got to wish.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then, why didn&rsquo;t you wish?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I did.&nbsp; They all do.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ll try it, some
+day, like enough; but you&rsquo;ll get tired of the change pretty soon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll tell you.&nbsp; Now you&rsquo;ve always been
+a sailor; did you ever try some other business?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I tried keeping grocery, once, up in the mines; but I
+couldn&rsquo;t stand it; it was too dull&mdash;no stir, no storm, no
+life about it; it was like being part dead and part alive, both at the
+same time.&nbsp; I wanted to be one thing or t&rsquo;other.&nbsp; I
+shut up shop pretty quick and went to sea.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s it.&nbsp; Grocery people like it, but you couldn&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+You see you wasn&rsquo;t used to it.&nbsp; Well, I wasn&rsquo;t used
+to being young, and I couldn&rsquo;t seem to take any interest in it.&nbsp;
+I was strong, and handsome, and had curly hair,&mdash;yes, and wings,
+too!&mdash;gay wings like a butterfly.&nbsp; I went to picnics and dances
+and parties with the fellows, and tried to carry on and talk nonsense
+with the girls, but it wasn&rsquo;t any use; I couldn&rsquo;t take to
+it&mdash;fact is, it was an awful bore.&nbsp; What I wanted was early
+to bed and early to rise, and something to <i>do</i>; and when my work
+was done, I wanted to sit quiet, and smoke and think&mdash;not tear
+around with a parcel of giddy young kids.&nbsp; You can&rsquo;t think
+what I suffered whilst I was young.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How long was you young?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only two weeks.&nbsp; That was plenty for me.&nbsp; Laws,
+I was so lonesome!&nbsp; You see, I was full of the knowledge and experience
+of seventy-two years; the deepest subject those young folks could strike
+was only <i>a-b-c</i> to me.&nbsp; And to hear them argue&mdash;oh,
+my! it would have been funny, if it hadn&rsquo;t been so pitiful.&nbsp;
+Well, I was so hungry for the ways and the sober talk I was used to,
+that I tried to ring in with the old people, but they wouldn&rsquo;t
+have it.&nbsp; They considered me a conceited young upstart, and gave
+me the cold shoulder.&nbsp; Two weeks was a-plenty for me.&nbsp; I was
+glad to get back my bald head again, and my pipe, and my old drowsy
+reflections in the shade of a rock or a tree.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;do you mean to say you&rsquo;re
+going to stand still at seventy-two, forever?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, and I ain&rsquo;t particular.&nbsp; But
+I ain&rsquo;t going to drop back to twenty-five any more&mdash;I know
+that, mighty well.&nbsp; I know a sight more than I did twenty-seven
+years ago, and I enjoy learning, all the time, but I don&rsquo;t seem
+to get any older.&nbsp; That is, bodily&mdash;my mind gets older, and
+stronger, and better seasoned, and more satisfactory.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says I, &ldquo;If a man comes here at ninety, don&rsquo;t he ever
+set himself back?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course he does.&nbsp; He sets himself back to fourteen;
+tries it a couple of hours, and feels like a fool; sets himself forward
+to twenty; it ain&rsquo;t much improvement; tries thirty, fifty, eighty,
+and finally ninety&mdash;finds he is more at home and comfortable at
+the same old figure he is used to than any other way.&nbsp; Or, if his
+mind begun to fail him on earth at eighty, that&rsquo;s where he finally
+sticks up here.&nbsp; He sticks at the place where his mind was last
+at its best, for there&rsquo;s where his enjoyment is best, and his
+ways most set and established.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Does a chap of twenty-five stay always twenty-five, and look
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If he is a fool, yes.&nbsp; But if he is bright, and ambitious
+and industrious, the knowledge he gains and the experiences he has,
+change his ways and thoughts and likings, and make him find his best
+pleasure in the company of people above that age; so he allows his body
+to take on that look of as many added years as he needs to make him
+comfortable and proper in that sort of society; he lets his body go
+on taking the look of age, according as he progresses, and by and by
+he will be bald and wrinkled outside, and wise and deep within.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Babies the same?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Babies the same.&nbsp; Laws, what asses we used to be, on
+earth, about these things!&nbsp; We said we&rsquo;d be always young
+in heaven.&nbsp; We didn&rsquo;t say <i>how</i> young&mdash;we didn&rsquo;t
+think of that, perhaps&mdash;that is, we didn&rsquo;t all think alike,
+anyway.&nbsp; When I was a boy of seven, I suppose I thought we&rsquo;d
+all be twelve, in heaven; when I was twelve, I suppose I thought we&rsquo;d
+all be eighteen or twenty in heaven; when I was forty, I begun to go
+back; I remember I hoped we&rsquo;d all be about <i>thirty</i> years
+old in heaven.&nbsp; Neither a man nor a boy ever thinks the age he
+<i>has</i> is exactly the best one&mdash;he puts the right age a few
+years older or a few years younger than he is.&nbsp; Then he makes that
+ideal age the general age of the heavenly people.&nbsp; And he expects
+everybody <i>to stick</i> at that age&mdash;stand stock-still&mdash;and
+expects them to enjoy it!&mdash;Now just think of the idea of standing
+still in heaven!&nbsp; Think of a heaven made up entirely of hoop-rolling,
+marble-playing cubs of seven years!&mdash;or of awkward, diffident,
+sentimental immaturities of nineteen!&mdash;or of vigorous people of
+thirty, healthy-minded, brimming with ambition, but chained hand and
+foot to that one age and its limitations like so many helpless galley-slaves!&nbsp;
+Think of the dull sameness of a society made up of people all of one
+age and one set of looks, habits, tastes and feelings.&nbsp; Think how
+superior to it earth would be, with its variety of types and faces and
+ages, and the enlivening attrition of the myriad interests that come
+into pleasant collision in such a variegated society.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;do you know what you&rsquo;re
+doing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what am I doing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are making heaven pretty comfortable in one way, but you
+are playing the mischief with it in another.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How d&rsquo;you mean?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I says, &ldquo;take a young mother that&rsquo;s
+lost her child, and&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sh!&rdquo; he says.&nbsp; &ldquo;Look!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was a woman.&nbsp; Middle-aged, and had grizzled hair.&nbsp; She
+was walking slow, and her head was bent down, and her wings hanging
+limp and droopy; and she looked ever so tired, and was crying, poor
+thing!&nbsp; She passed along by, with her head down, that way, and
+the tears running down her face, and didn&rsquo;t see us.&nbsp; Then
+Sandy said, low and gentle, and full of pity:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>She&rsquo;s</i> hunting for her child!&nbsp; No, <i>found</i>
+it, I reckon.&nbsp; Lord, how she&rsquo;s changed!&nbsp; But I recognized
+her in a minute, though it&rsquo;s twenty-seven years since I saw her.&nbsp;
+A young mother she was, about twenty two or four, or along there; and
+blooming and lovely and sweet? oh, just a flower!&nbsp; And all her
+heart and all her soul was wrapped up in her child, her little girl,
+two years old.&nbsp; And it died, and she went wild with grief, just
+wild!&nbsp; Well, the only comfort she had was that she&rsquo;d see
+her child again, in heaven&mdash;&lsquo;never more to part,&rsquo; she
+said, and kept on saying it over and over, &lsquo;never more to part.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And the words made her happy; yes, they did; they made her joyful, and
+when I was dying, twenty-seven years ago, she told me to find her child
+the first thing, and say she was coming&mdash;&lsquo;soon, soon, <i>very</i>
+soon, she hoped and believed!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s pitiful, Sandy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He didn&rsquo;t say anything for a while, but sat looking at the
+ground, thinking.&nbsp; Then he says, kind of mournful:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And now she&rsquo;s come!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&nbsp; Go on.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stormfield, maybe she hasn&rsquo;t found the child, but <i>I</i>
+think she has.&nbsp; Looks so to me.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve seen cases before.&nbsp;
+You see, she&rsquo;s kept that child in her head just the same as it
+was when she jounced it in her arms a little chubby thing.&nbsp; But
+here it didn&rsquo;t elect to <i>stay</i> a child.&nbsp; No, it elected
+to grow up, which it did.&nbsp; And in these twenty-seven years it has
+learned all the deep scientific learning there is to learn, and is studying
+and studying and learning and learning more and more, all the time,
+and don&rsquo;t give a damn for anything <i>but</i> learning; just learning,
+and discussing gigantic problems with people like herself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stormfield, don&rsquo;t you see?&nbsp; Her mother knows <i>cranberries</i>,
+and how to tend them, and pick them, and put them up, and market them;
+and not another blamed thing!&nbsp; Her and her daughter can&rsquo;t
+be any more company for each other <i>now</i> than mud turtle and bird
+o&rsquo; paradise.&nbsp; Poor thing, she was looking for a baby to jounce;
+<i>I</i> think she&rsquo;s struck a disapp&rsquo;intment.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sandy, what will they do&mdash;stay unhappy forever in heaven?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, they&rsquo;ll come together and get adjusted by and by.&nbsp;
+But not this year, and not next.&nbsp; By and by.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>I had been having considerable trouble with my wings.&nbsp; The day
+after I helped the choir I made a dash or two with them, but was not
+lucky.&nbsp; First off, I flew thirty yards, and then fouled an Irishman
+and brought him down&mdash;brought us both down, in fact.&nbsp; Next,
+I had a collision with a Bishop&mdash;and bowled him down, of course.&nbsp;
+We had some sharp words, and I felt pretty cheap, to come banging into
+a grave old person like that, with a million strangers looking on and
+smiling to themselves.</p>
+<p>I saw I hadn&rsquo;t got the hang of the steering, and so couldn&rsquo;t
+rightly tell where I was going to bring up when I started.&nbsp; I went
+afoot the rest of the day, and let my wings hang.&nbsp; Early next morning
+I went to a private place to have some practice.&nbsp; I got up on a
+pretty high rock, and got a good start, and went swooping down, aiming
+for a bush a little over three hundred yards off; but I couldn&rsquo;t
+seem to calculate for the wind, which was about two points abaft my
+beam.&nbsp; I could see I was going considerable to looard of the bush,
+so I worked my starboard wing slow and went ahead strong on the port
+one, but it wouldn&rsquo;t answer; I could see I was going to broach
+to, so I slowed down on both, and lit.&nbsp; I went back to the rock
+and took another chance at it.&nbsp; I aimed two or three points to
+starboard of the bush&mdash;yes, more than that&mdash;enough so as to
+make it nearly a head-wind.&nbsp; I done well enough, but made pretty
+poor time.&nbsp; I could see, plain enough, that on a head-wind, wings
+was a mistake.&nbsp; I could see that a body could sail pretty close
+to the wind, but he couldn&rsquo;t go in the wind&rsquo;s eye.&nbsp;
+I could see that if I wanted to go a-visiting any distance from home,
+and the wind was ahead, I might have to wait days, maybe, for a change;
+and I could see, too, that these things could not be any use at all
+in a gale; if you tried to run before the wind, you would make a mess
+of it, for there isn&rsquo;t anyway to shorten sail&mdash;like reefing,
+you know&mdash;you have to take it <i>all</i> in&mdash;shut your feathers
+down flat to your sides.&nbsp; That would <i>land</i> you, of course.&nbsp;
+You could lay to, with your head to the wind&mdash;that is the best
+you could do, and right hard work you&rsquo;d find it, too.&nbsp; If
+you tried any other game, you would founder, sure.</p>
+<p>I judge it was about a couple of weeks or so after this that I dropped
+old Sandy McWilliams a note one day&mdash;it was a Tuesday&mdash;and
+asked him to come over and take his manna and quails with me next day;
+and the first thing he did when he stepped in was to twinkle his eye
+in a sly way, and say,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Cap, what you done with your wings?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I saw in a minute that there was some sarcasm done up in that rag
+somewheres, but I never let on.&nbsp; I only says,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gone to the wash.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he says, in a dry sort of way, &ldquo;they mostly
+go to the wash&mdash;about this time&mdash;I&rsquo;ve often noticed
+it.&nbsp; Fresh angels are powerful neat.&nbsp; When do you look for
+&rsquo;em back?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Day after to-morrow,&rdquo; says I.</p>
+<p>He winked at me, and smiled.</p>
+<p>Says I,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sandy, out with it.&nbsp; Come&mdash;no secrets among friends.&nbsp;
+I notice you don&rsquo;t ever wear wings&mdash;and plenty others don&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;ve been making an ass of myself&mdash;is that it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is about the size of it.&nbsp; But it is no harm.&nbsp;
+We all do it at first.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s perfectly natural.&nbsp; You
+see, on earth we jump to such foolish conclusions as to things up here.&nbsp;
+In the pictures we always saw the angels with wings on&mdash;and that
+was all right; but we jumped to the conclusion that that was their way
+of getting around&mdash;and that was all wrong.&nbsp; The wings ain&rsquo;t
+anything but a uniform, that&rsquo;s all.&nbsp; When they are in the
+field&mdash;so to speak,&mdash;they always wear them; you never see
+an angel going with a message anywhere without his wings, any more than
+you would see a military officer presiding at a court-martial without
+his uniform, or a postman delivering letters, or a policeman walking
+his beat, in plain clothes.&nbsp; But they ain&rsquo;t to <i>fly</i>
+with!&nbsp; The wings are for show, not for use.&nbsp; Old experienced
+angels are like officers of the regular army&mdash;they dress plain,
+when they are off duty.&nbsp; New angels are like the militia&mdash;never
+shed the uniform&mdash;always fluttering and floundering around in their
+wings, butting people down, flapping here, and there, and everywhere,
+always imagining they are attracting the admiring eye&mdash;well, they
+just think they are the very most important people in heaven.&nbsp;
+And when you see one of them come sailing around with one wing tipped
+up and t&rsquo;other down, you make up your mind he is saying to himself:
+&lsquo;I wish Mary Ann in Arkansaw could see me now.&nbsp; I reckon
+she&rsquo;d wish she hadn&rsquo;t shook me.&rsquo;&nbsp; No, they&rsquo;re
+just for show, that&rsquo;s all&mdash;only just for show.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I judge you&rsquo;ve got it about right, Sandy,&rdquo; says
+I.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, look at it yourself,&rdquo; says he.&nbsp; &ldquo;<i>You</i>
+ain&rsquo;t built for wings&mdash;no man is.&nbsp; You know what a grist
+of years it took you to come here from the earth&mdash;and yet you were
+booming along faster than any cannon-ball could go.&nbsp; Suppose you
+had to fly that distance with your wings&mdash;wouldn&rsquo;t eternity
+have been over before you got here?&nbsp; Certainly.&nbsp; Well, angels
+have to go to the earth every day&mdash;millions of them&mdash;to appear
+in visions to dying children and good people, you know&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+the heft of their business.&nbsp; They appear with their wings, of course,
+because they are on official service, and because the dying persons
+wouldn&rsquo;t know they were angels if they hadn&rsquo;t wings&mdash;but
+do you reckon they fly with them?&nbsp; It stands to reason they don&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+The wings would wear out before they got half-way; even the pin-feathers
+would be gone; the wing frames would be as bare as kite sticks before
+the paper is pasted on.&nbsp; The distances in heaven are billions of
+times greater; angels have to go all over heaven every day; could they
+do it with their wings alone?&nbsp; No, indeed; they wear the wings
+for style, but they travel any distance in an instant by <i>wishing</i>.&nbsp;
+The wishing-carpet of the Arabian Nights was a sensible idea&mdash;but
+our earthly idea of angels flying these awful distances with their clumsy
+wings was foolish.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Our young saints, of both sexes, wear wings all the time&mdash;blazing
+red ones, and blue and green, and gold, and variegated, and rainbowed,
+and ring-streaked-and-striped ones&mdash;and nobody finds fault.&nbsp;
+It is suitable to their time of life.&nbsp; The things are beautiful,
+and they set the young people off.&nbsp; They are the most striking
+and lovely part of their outfit&mdash;a halo don&rsquo;t <i>begin</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve tucked mine away in
+the cupboard, and I allow to let them lay there till there&rsquo;s mud.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes&mdash;or a reception.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you can see one to-night if you want to.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s
+a barkeeper from Jersey City going to be received.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go on&mdash;tell me about it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This barkeeper got converted at a Moody and Sankey meeting,
+in New York, and started home on the ferry-boat, and there was a collision
+and he got drowned.&nbsp; He is of a class that think all heaven goes
+wild with joy when a particularly hard lot like him is saved; they think
+all heaven turns out hosannahing to welcome them; they think there isn&rsquo;t
+anything talked about in the realms of the blest but their case, for
+that day.&nbsp; This barkeeper thinks there hasn&rsquo;t been such another
+stir here in years, as his coming is going to raise.&mdash;And I&rsquo;ve
+always noticed this peculiarity about a dead barkeeper&mdash;he not
+only expects all hands to turn out when he arrives, but he expects to
+be received with a torchlight procession.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I reckon he is disappointed, then.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, he isn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; No man is allowed to be disappointed
+here.&nbsp; Whatever he wants, when he comes&mdash;that is, any reasonable
+and unsacrilegious thing&mdash;he can have.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s always
+a few millions or billions of young folks around who don&rsquo;t want
+any better entertainment than to fill up their lungs and swarm out with
+their torches and have a high time over a barkeeper.&nbsp; It tickles
+the barkeeper till he can&rsquo;t rest, it makes a charming lark for
+the young folks, it don&rsquo;t do anybody any harm, it don&rsquo;t
+cost a rap, and it keeps up the place&rsquo;s reputation for making
+all comers happy and content.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very good.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll be on hand and see them land the
+barkeeper.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is manners to go in full dress.&nbsp; You want to wear
+your wings, you know, and your other things.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Which ones?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Halo, and harp, and palm branch, and all that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;I reckon I ought to be ashamed
+of myself, but the fact is I left them laying around that day I resigned
+from the choir.&nbsp; I haven&rsquo;t got a rag to wear but this robe
+and the wings.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ll find they&rsquo;ve
+been raked up and saved for you.&nbsp; Send for them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do it, Sandy.&nbsp; But what was it you was saying
+about unsacrilegious things, which people expect to get, and will be
+disappointed about?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, there are a lot of such things that people expect and
+don&rsquo;t get.&nbsp; For instance, there&rsquo;s a Brooklyn preacher
+by the name of Talmage, who is laying up a considerable disappointment
+for himself.&nbsp; He says, every now and then in his sermons, that
+the first thing he does when he gets to heaven, will be to fling his
+arms around Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and kiss them and weep on them.&nbsp;
+There&rsquo;s millions of people down there on earth that are promising
+themselves the same thing.&nbsp; As many as sixty thousand people arrive
+here every single day, that want to run straight to Abraham, Isaac and
+Jacob, and hug them and weep on them.&nbsp; Now mind you, sixty thousand
+a day is a pretty heavy contract for those old people.&nbsp; If they
+were a mind to allow it, they wouldn&rsquo;t ever have anything to do,
+year in and year out, but stand up and be hugged and wept on thirty-two
+hours in the twenty-four.&nbsp; They would be tired out and as wet as
+muskrats all the time.&nbsp; What would heaven be, to <i>them</i>?&nbsp;
+It would be a mighty good place to get out of&mdash;you know that, yourself.&nbsp;
+Those are kind and gentle old Jews, but they ain&rsquo;t any fonder
+of kissing the emotional highlights of Brooklyn than you be.&nbsp; You
+mark my words, Mr. T.&rsquo;s endearments are going to be declined,
+with thanks.&nbsp; There are limits to the privileges of the elect,
+even in heaven.&nbsp; Why, if Adam was to show himself to every new
+comer that wants to call and gaze at him and strike him for his autograph,
+he would never have time to do anything else but just that.&nbsp; Talmage
+has said he is going to give Adam some of his attentions, as well as
+A., I. and J.&nbsp; But he will have to change his mind about that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think Talmage will really come here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, certainly, he will; but don&rsquo;t you be alarmed; he
+will run with his own kind, and there&rsquo;s plenty of them.&nbsp;
+That is the main charm of heaven&mdash;there&rsquo;s all kinds here&mdash;which
+wouldn&rsquo;t be the case if you let the preachers tell it.&nbsp; Anybody
+can find the sort he prefers, here, and he just lets the others alone,
+and they let him alone.&nbsp; When the Deity builds a heaven, it is
+built right, and on a liberal plan.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sandy sent home for his things, and I sent for mine, and about nine
+in the evening we begun to dress.&nbsp; Sandy says,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is going to be a grand time for you, Stormy.&nbsp; Like
+as not some of the patriarchs will turn out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, but will they?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Like as not.&nbsp; Of course they are pretty exclusive.&nbsp;
+They hardly ever show themselves to the common public.&nbsp; I believe
+they never turn out except for an eleventh-hour convert.&nbsp; They
+wouldn&rsquo;t do it then, only earthly tradition makes a grand show
+pretty necessary on that kind of an occasion.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do they an turn out, Sandy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who?&mdash;all the patriarchs?&nbsp; Oh, no&mdash;hardly ever
+more than a couple.&nbsp; You will be here fifty thousand years&mdash;maybe
+more&mdash;before you get a glimpse of all the patriarchs and prophets.&nbsp;
+Since I have been here, Job has been to the front once, and once Ham
+and Jeremiah both at the same time.&nbsp; But the finest thing that
+has happened in my day was a year or so ago; that was Charles Peace&rsquo;s
+reception&mdash;him they called &lsquo;the Bannercross Murderer&rsquo;&mdash;an
+Englishman.&nbsp; There were four patriarchs and two prophets on the
+Grand Stand that time&mdash;there hasn&rsquo;t been anything like it
+since Captain Kidd came; Abel was there&mdash;the first time in twelve
+hundred years.&nbsp; A report got around that Adam was coming; well,
+of course, Abel was enough to bring a crowd, all by himself, but there
+is nobody that can draw like Adam.&nbsp; It was a false report, but
+it got around, anyway, as I say, and it will be a long day before I
+see the like of it again.&nbsp; The reception was in the English department,
+of course, which is eight hundred and eleven million miles from the
+New Jersey line.&nbsp; I went, along with a good many of my neighbors,
+and it was a sight to see, I can tell you.&nbsp; Flocks came from all
+the departments.&nbsp; I saw Esquimaux there, and Tartars, Negroes,
+Chinamen&mdash;people from everywhere.&nbsp; You see a mixture like
+that in the Grand Choir, the first day you land here, but you hardly
+ever see it again.&nbsp; There were billions of people; when they were
+singing or hosannahing, the noise was wonderful; and even when their
+tongues were still the drumming of the wings was nearly enough to burst
+your head, for all the sky was as thick as if it was snowing angels.&nbsp;
+Although Adam was not there, it was a great time anyway, because we
+had three archangels on the Grand Stand&mdash;it is a seldom thing that
+even one comes out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did they look like, Sandy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, they had shining faces, and shining robes, and wonderful
+rainbow wings, and they stood eighteen feet high, and wore swords, and
+held their heads up in a noble way, and looked like soldiers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did they have halos?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No&mdash;anyway, not the hoop kind.&nbsp; The archangels and
+the upper-class patriarchs wear a finer thing than that.&nbsp; It is
+a round, solid, splendid glory of gold, that is blinding to look at.&nbsp;
+You have often seen a patriarch in a picture, on earth, with that thing
+on&mdash;you remember it?&mdash;he looks as if he had his head in a
+brass platter.&nbsp; That don&rsquo;t give you the right idea of it
+at all&mdash;it is much more shining and beautiful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you talk with those archangels and patriarchs, Sandy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who&mdash;<i>I</i>?&nbsp; Why, what can you be thinking about,
+Stormy?&nbsp; I ain&rsquo;t worthy to speak to such as they.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is Talmage?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course not.&nbsp; You have got the same mixed-up idea about
+these things that everybody has down there.&nbsp; I had it once, but
+I got over it.&nbsp; Down there they talk of the heavenly King&mdash;and
+that is right&mdash;but then they go right on speaking as if this was
+a republic and everybody was on a dead level with everybody else, and
+privileged to fling his arms around anybody he comes across, and be
+hail-fellow-well-met with all the elect, from the highest down.&nbsp;
+How tangled up and absurd that is!&nbsp; How are you going to have a
+republic under a king?&nbsp; How are you going to have a republic at
+all, where the head of the government is absolute, holds his place forever,
+and has no parliament, no council to meddle or make in his affairs,
+nobody voted for, nobody elected, nobody in the whole universe with
+a voice in the government, nobody asked to take a hand in its matters,
+and nobody <i>allowed</i> to do it?&nbsp; Fine republic, ain&rsquo;t
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, yes&mdash;it <i>is</i> a little different from the idea
+I had&mdash;but I thought I might go around and get acquainted with
+the grandees, anyway&mdash;not exactly splice the main-brace with them,
+you know, but shake hands and pass the time of day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Could Tom, Dick and Harry call on the Cabinet of Russia and
+do that?&mdash;on Prince Gortschakoff, for instance?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I reckon not, Sandy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, this is Russia&mdash;only more so.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s
+not the shadow of a republic about it anywhere.&nbsp; There are ranks,
+here.&nbsp; There are viceroys, princes, governors, sub-governors, sub-sub-governors,
+and a hundred orders of nobility, grading along down from grand-ducal
+archangels, stage by stage, till the general level is struck, where
+there ain&rsquo;t any titles.&nbsp; Do you know what a prince of the
+blood is, on earth?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, a prince of the blood don&rsquo;t belong to the royal
+family exactly, and he don&rsquo;t belong to the mere nobility of the
+kingdom; he is lower than the one, and higher than t&rsquo;other.&nbsp;
+That&rsquo;s about the position of the patriarchs and prophets here.&nbsp;
+There&rsquo;s some mighty high nobility here&mdash;people that you and
+I ain&rsquo;t worthy to polish sandals for&mdash;and <i>they</i> ain&rsquo;t
+worthy to polish sandals for the patriarchs and prophets.&nbsp; That
+gives you a kind of an idea of their rank, don&rsquo;t it?&nbsp; You
+begin to see how high up they are, don&rsquo;t you? just to get a two-minute
+glimpse of one of them is a thing for a body to remember and tell about
+for a thousand years.&nbsp; Why, Captain, just think of this: if Abraham
+was to set his foot down here by this door, there would be a railing
+set up around that foot-track right away, and a shelter put over it,
+and people would flock here from all over heaven, for hundreds and hundreds
+of years, to look at it.&nbsp; Abraham is one of the parties that Mr.
+Talmage, of Brooklyn, is going to embrace, and kiss, and weep on, when
+he comes.&nbsp; He wants to lay in a good stock of tears, you know,
+or five to one he will go dry before he gets a chance to do it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sandy,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;I had an idea that <i>I</i> was
+going to be equals with everybody here, too, but I will let that drop.&nbsp;
+It don&rsquo;t matter, and I am plenty happy enough anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Captain, you are happier than you would be, the other way.&nbsp;
+These old patriarchs and prophets have got ages the start of you; they
+know more in two minutes than you know in a year.&nbsp; Did you ever
+try to have a sociable improving-time discussing winds, and currents
+and variations of compass with an undertaker?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I get your idea, Sandy.&nbsp; He couldn&rsquo;t interest me.&nbsp;
+He would be an ignoramus in such things&mdash;he would bore me, and
+I would bore him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have got it.&nbsp; You would bore the patriarchs when
+you talked, and when they talked they would shoot over your head.&nbsp;
+By and by you would say, &lsquo;Good morning, your Eminence, I will
+call again&rsquo;&mdash;but you wouldn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; Did you ever ask
+the slush-boy to come up in the cabin and take dinner with you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I get your drift again, Sandy.&nbsp; I wouldn&rsquo;t be used
+to such grand people as the patriarchs and prophets, and I would be
+sheepish and tongue-tied in their company, and mighty glad to get out
+of it.&nbsp; Sandy, which is the highest rank, patriarch or prophet?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs.&nbsp; The newest
+prophet, even, is of a sight more consequence than the oldest patriarch.&nbsp;
+Yes, sir, Adam himself has to walk behind Shakespeare.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was Shakespeare a prophet?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course he was; and so was Homer, and heaps more.&nbsp;
+But Shakespeare and the rest have to walk behind a common tailor from
+Tennessee, by the name of Billings; and behind a horse-doctor named
+Sakka, from Afghanistan.&nbsp; Jeremiah, and Billings and Buddha walk
+together, side by side, right behind a crowd from planets not in our
+astronomy; next come a dozen or two from Jupiter and other worlds; next
+come Daniel, and Sakka and Confucius; next a lot from systems outside
+of ours; next come Ezekiel, and Mahomet, Zoroaster, and a knife-grinder
+from ancient Egypt; then there is a long string, and after them, away
+down toward the bottom, come Shakespeare and Homer, and a shoemaker
+named Marais, from the back settlements of France.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have they really rung in Mahomet and all those other heathens?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes&mdash;they all had their message, and they all get their
+reward.&nbsp; The man who don&rsquo;t get his reward on earth, needn&rsquo;t
+bother&mdash;he will get it here, sure.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why did they throw off on Shakespeare, that way, and put
+him away down there below those shoe-makers and horse-doctors and knife-grinders&mdash;a
+lot of people nobody ever heard of?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is the heavenly justice of it&mdash;they warn&rsquo;t
+rewarded according to their deserts, on earth, but here they get their
+rightful rank.&nbsp; That tailor Billings, from Tennessee, wrote poetry
+that Homer and Shakespeare couldn&rsquo;t begin to come up to; but nobody
+would print it, nobody read it but his neighbors, an ignorant lot, and
+they laughed at it.&nbsp; Whenever the village had a drunken frolic
+and a dance, they would drag him in and crown him with cabbage leaves,
+and pretend to bow down to him; and one night when he was sick and nearly
+starved to death, they had him out and crowned him, and then they rode
+him on a rail about the village, and everybody followed along, beating
+tin pans and yelling.&nbsp; Well, he died before morning.&nbsp; He wasn&rsquo;t
+ever expecting to go to heaven, much less that there was going to be
+any fuss made over him, so I reckon he was a good deal surprised when
+the reception broke on him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was you there, Sandy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bless you, no!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&nbsp; Didn&rsquo;t you know it was going to come off?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I judge I did.&nbsp; It was the talk of these realms&mdash;not
+for a day, like this barkeeper business, but for twenty years before
+the man died.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why the mischief didn&rsquo;t you go, then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now how you talk!&nbsp; The like of me go meddling around
+at the reception of a prophet?&nbsp; A mudsill like me trying to push
+in and help receive an awful grandee like Edward J. Billings?&nbsp;
+Why, I should have been laughed at for a billion miles around.&nbsp;
+I shouldn&rsquo;t ever heard the last of it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, who did go, then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mighty few people that you and I will ever get a chance to
+see, Captain.&nbsp; Not a solitary commoner ever has the luck to see
+a reception of a prophet, I can tell you.&nbsp; All the nobility, and
+all the patriarchs and prophets&mdash;every last one of them&mdash;and
+all the archangels, and all the princes and governors and viceroys,
+were there,&mdash;and <i>no</i> small fry&mdash;not a single one.&nbsp;
+And mind you, I&rsquo;m not talking about only the grandees from <i>our</i>
+world, but the princes and patriarchs and so on from <i>all</i> the
+worlds that shine in our sky, and from billions more that belong in
+systems upon systems away outside of the one our sun is in.&nbsp; There
+were some prophets and patriarchs there that ours ain&rsquo;t a circumstance
+to, for rank and illustriousness and all that.&nbsp; Some were from
+Jupiter and other worlds in our own system, but the most celebrated
+were three poets, Saa, Bo and Soof, from great planets in three different
+and very remote systems.&nbsp; These three names are common and familiar
+in every nook and corner of heaven, clear from one end of it to the
+other&mdash;fully as well known as the eighty Supreme Archangels, in
+fact&mdash;where as our Moses, and Adam, and the rest, have not been
+heard of outside of our world&rsquo;s little corner of heaven, except
+by a few very learned men scattered here and there&mdash;and they always
+spell their names wrong, and get the performances of one mixed up with
+the doings of another, and they almost always locate them simply <i>in
+our solar</i> <i>system</i>, and think that is enough without going
+into little details such as naming the particular world they are from.&nbsp;
+It is like a learned Hindoo showing off how much he knows by saying
+Longfellow lives in the United States&mdash;as if he lived all over
+the United States, and as if the country was so small you couldn&rsquo;t
+throw a brick there without hitting him.&nbsp; Between you and me, it
+does gravel me, the cool way people from those monster worlds outside
+our system snub our little world, and even our system.&nbsp; Of course
+we think a good deal of Jupiter, because our world is only a potato
+to it, for size; but then there are worlds in other systems that Jupiter
+isn&rsquo;t even a mustard-seed to&mdash;like the planet Goobra, for
+instance, which you couldn&rsquo;t squeeze inside the orbit of Halley&rsquo;s
+comet without straining the rivets.&nbsp; Tourists from Goobra (I mean
+parties that lived and died there&mdash;natives) come here, now and
+then, and inquire about our world, and when they find out it is so little
+that a streak of lightning can flash clear around it in the eighth of
+a second, they have to lean up against something to laugh.&nbsp; Then
+they screw a glass into their eye and go to examining us, as if we were
+a curious kind of foreign bug, or something of that sort.&nbsp; One
+of them asked me how long our day was; and when I told him it was twelve
+hours long, as a general thing, he asked me if people where I was from
+considered it worth while to get up and wash for such a day as that.&nbsp;
+That is the way with those Goobra people&mdash;they can&rsquo;t seem
+to let a chance go by to throw it in your face that their day is three
+hundred and twenty-two of our years long.&nbsp; This young snob was
+just of age&mdash;he was six or seven thousand of his days old&mdash;say
+two million of our years&mdash;and he had all the puppy airs that belong
+to that time of life&mdash;that turning-point when a person has got
+over being a boy and yet ain&rsquo;t quite a man exactly.&nbsp; If it
+had been anywhere else but in heaven, I would have given him a piece
+of my mind.&nbsp; Well, anyway, Billings had the grandest reception
+that has been seen in thousands of centuries, and I think it will have
+a good effect.&nbsp; His name will be carried pretty far, and it will
+make our system talked about, and maybe our world, too, and raise us
+in the respect of the general public of heaven.&nbsp; Why, look here&mdash;Shakespeare
+walked backwards before that tailor from Tennessee, and scattered flowers
+for him to walk on, and Homer stood behind his chair and waited on him
+at the banquet.&nbsp; Of course that didn&rsquo;t go for much <i>there</i>,
+amongst all those big foreigners from other systems, as they hadn&rsquo;t
+heard of Shakespeare or Homer either, but it would amount to considerable
+down there on our little earth if they could know about it.&nbsp; I
+wish there was something in that miserable spiritualism, so we could
+send them word.&nbsp; That Tennessee village would set up a monument
+to Billings, then, and his autograph would outsell Satan&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+Well, they had grand times at that reception&mdash;a small-fry noble
+from Hoboken told me all about it&mdash;Sir Richard Duffer, Baronet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What, Sandy, a nobleman from Hoboken?&nbsp; How is that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Easy enough.&nbsp; Duffer kept a sausage-shop and never saved
+a cent in his life because he used to give all his spare meat to the
+poor, in a quiet way.&nbsp; Not tramps,&mdash;no, the other sort&mdash;the
+sort that will starve before they will beg&mdash;honest square people
+out of work.&nbsp; Dick used to watch hungry-looking men and women and
+children, and track them home, and find out all about them from the
+neighbors, and then feed them and find them work.&nbsp; As nobody ever
+saw him give anything to anybody, he had the reputation of being mean;
+he died with it, too, and everybody said it was a good riddance; but
+the minute he landed here, they made him a baronet, and the very first
+words Dick the sausage-maker of Hoboken heard when he stepped upon the
+heavenly shore were, &lsquo;Welcome, Sir Richard Duffer!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+It surprised him some, because he thought he had reasons to believe
+he was pointed for a warmer climate than this one.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>All of a sudden the whole region fairly rocked under the crash of
+eleven hundred and one thunder blasts, all let off at once, and Sandy
+says,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There, that&rsquo;s for the barkeep.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I jumped up and says,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then let&rsquo;s be moving along, Sandy; we don&rsquo;t want
+to miss any of this thing, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Keep your seat,&rdquo; he says; &ldquo;he is only just telegraphed,
+that is all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That blast only means that he has been sighted from the signal-station.&nbsp;
+He is off Sandy Hook.&nbsp; The committees will go down to meet him,
+now, and escort him in.&nbsp; There will be ceremonies and delays; they
+won&rsquo;t he coming up the Bay for a considerable time, yet.&nbsp;
+It is several billion miles away, anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>I</i> could have been a barkeeper and a hard lot just as
+well as not,&rdquo; says I, remembering the lonesome way I arrived,
+and how there wasn&rsquo;t any committee nor anything.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I notice some regret in your voice,&rdquo; says Sandy, &ldquo;and
+it is natural enough; but let bygones be bygones; you went according
+to your lights, and it is too late now to mend the thing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, let it slide, Sandy, I don&rsquo;t mind.&nbsp; But you&rsquo;ve
+got a Sandy Hook <i>here</i>, too, have you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got everything here, just as it is below.&nbsp;
+All the States and Territories of the Union, and all the kingdoms of
+the earth and the islands of the sea are laid out here just as they
+are on the globe&mdash;all the same shape they are down there, and all
+graded to the relative size, only each State and realm and island is
+a good many billion times bigger here than it is below.&nbsp; There
+goes another blast.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is that one for?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is only another fort answering the first one.&nbsp; They
+each fire eleven hundred and one thunder blasts at a single dash&mdash;it
+is the usual salute for an eleventh-hour guest; a hundred for each hour
+and an extra one for the guest&rsquo;s sex; if it was a woman we would
+know it by their leaving off the extra gun.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How do we know there&rsquo;s eleven hundred and one, Sandy,
+when they all go off at once?&mdash;and yet we certainly do know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Our intellects are a good deal sharpened up, here, in some
+ways, and that is one of them.&nbsp; Numbers and sizes and distances
+are so great, here, that we have to be made so we can <i>feel</i> them&mdash;our
+old ways of counting and measuring and ciphering wouldn&rsquo;t ever
+give us an idea of them, but would only confuse us and oppress us and
+make our heads ache.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After some more talk about this, I says: &ldquo;Sandy, I notice that
+I hardly ever see a white angel; where I run across one white angel,
+I strike as many as a hundred million copper-colored ones&mdash;people
+that can&rsquo;t speak English.&nbsp; How is that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you will find it the same in any State or Territory
+of the American corner of heaven you choose to go to.&nbsp; I have shot
+along, a whole week on a stretch, and gone millions and millions of
+miles, through perfect swarms of angels, without ever seeing a single
+white one, or hearing a word I could understand.&nbsp; You see, America
+was occupied a billion years and more, by Injuns and Aztecs, and that
+sort of folks, before a white man ever set his foot in it.&nbsp; During
+the first three hundred years after Columbus&rsquo;s discovery, there
+wasn&rsquo;t ever more than one good lecture audience of white people,
+all put together, in America&mdash;I mean the whole thing, British Possessions
+and all; in the beginning of our century there were only 6,000,000 or
+7,000,000&mdash;say seven; 12,000,000 or 14,000,000 in 1825; say 23,000,000
+in 1850; 40,000,000 in 1875.&nbsp; Our death-rate has always been 20
+in 1000 per annum.&nbsp; Well, 140,000 died the first year of the century;
+280,000 the twenty-fifth year; 500,000 the fiftieth year; about a million
+the seventy-fifth year.&nbsp; Now I am going to be liberal about this
+thing, and consider that fifty million whites have died in America from
+the beginning up to to-day&mdash;make it sixty, if you want to; make
+it a hundred million&mdash;it&rsquo;s no difference about a few millions
+one way or t&rsquo;other.&nbsp; Well, now, you can see, yourself, that
+when you come to spread a little dab of people like that over these
+hundreds of billions of miles of American territory here in heaven,
+it is like scattering a ten-cent box of homoeopathic pills over the
+Great Sahara and expecting to find them again.&nbsp; You can&rsquo;t
+expect us to amount to anything in heaven, and we <i>don&rsquo;t</i>&mdash;now
+that is the simple fact, and we have got to do the best we can with
+it.&nbsp; The learned men from other planets and other systems come
+here and hang around a while, when they are touring around the Kingdom,
+and then go back to their own section of heaven and write a book of
+travels, and they give America about five lines in it.&nbsp; And what
+do they say about us?&nbsp; They say this wilderness is populated with
+a scattering few hundred thousand billions of red angels, with now and
+then a curiously complected <i>diseased</i> one.&nbsp; You see, they
+think we whites and the occasional nigger are Injuns that have been
+bleached out or blackened by some leprous disease or other&mdash;for
+some peculiarly rascally <i>sin</i>, mind you.&nbsp; It is a mighty
+sour pill for us all, my friend&mdash;even the modestest of us, let
+alone the other kind, that think they are going to be received like
+a long-lost government bond, and hug Abraham into the bargain.&nbsp;
+I haven&rsquo;t asked you any of the particulars, Captain, but I judge
+it goes without saying&mdash;if my experience is worth anything&mdash;that
+there wasn&rsquo;t much of a hooraw made over you when you arrived&mdash;now
+was there?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mention it, Sandy,&rdquo; says I, coloring up
+a little; &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t have had the family see it for any
+amount you are a mind to name.&nbsp; Change the subject, Sandy, change
+the subject.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, do you think of settling in the California department
+of bliss?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know.&nbsp; I wasn&rsquo;t calculating on doing
+anything really definite in that direction till the family come.&nbsp;
+I thought I would just look around, meantime, in a quiet way, and make
+up my mind.&nbsp; Besides, I know a good many dead people, and I was
+calculating to hunt them up and swap a little gossip with them about
+friends, and old times, and one thing or another, and ask them how they
+like it here, as far as they have got.&nbsp; I reckon my wife will want
+to camp in the California range, though, because most all her departed
+will be there, and she likes to be with folks she knows.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you let her.&nbsp; You see what the Jersey district
+of heaven is, for whites; well, the Californian district is a thousand
+times worse.&nbsp; It swarms with a mean kind of leather-headed mud-colored
+angels&mdash;and your nearest white neighbor is likely to be a million
+miles away.&nbsp; <i>What a man</i> <i>mostly misses, in heaven, is
+company</i>&mdash;company of his own sort and color and language.&nbsp;
+I have come near settling in the European part of heaven once or twice
+on that account.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, why didn&rsquo;t you, Sandy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, various reasons.&nbsp; For one thing, although you <i>see</i>
+plenty of whites there, you can&rsquo;t understand any of them, hardly,
+and so you go about as hungry for talk as you do here.&nbsp; I like
+to look at a Russian or a German or an Italian&mdash;I even like to
+look at a Frenchman if I ever have the luck to catch him engaged in
+anything that ain&rsquo;t indelicate&mdash;but <i>looking</i> don&rsquo;t
+cure the hunger&mdash;what you want is talk.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s England, Sandy&mdash;the English district
+of heaven.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but it is not so very much better than this end of the
+heavenly domain.&nbsp; As long as you run across Englishmen born this
+side of three hundred years ago, you are all right; but the minute you
+get back of Elizabeth&rsquo;s time the language begins to fog up, and
+the further back you go the foggier it gets.&nbsp; I had some talk with
+one Langland and a man by the name of Chaucer&mdash;old-time poets&mdash;but
+it was no use, I couldn&rsquo;t quite understand them, and they couldn&rsquo;t
+quite understand me.&nbsp; I have had letters from them since, but it
+is such broken English I can&rsquo;t make it out.&nbsp; Back of those
+men&rsquo;s time the English are just simply foreigners, nothing more,
+nothing less; they talk Danish, German, Norman French, and sometimes
+a mixture of all three; back of <i>them</i>, they talk Latin, and ancient
+British, Irish, and Gaelic; and then back of these come billions and
+billions of pure savages that talk a gibberish that Satan himself couldn&rsquo;t
+understand.&nbsp; The fact is, where you strike one man in the English
+settlements that you can understand, you wade through awful swarms that
+talk something you can&rsquo;t make head nor tail of.&nbsp; You see,
+every country on earth has been overlaid so often, in the course of
+a billion years, with different kinds of people and different sorts
+of languages, that this sort of mongrel business was bound to be the
+result in heaven.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sandy,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;did you see a good many of the
+great people history tells about?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes&mdash;plenty.&nbsp; I saw kings and all sorts of distinguished
+people.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do the kings rank just as they did below?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No; a body can&rsquo;t bring his rank up here with him.&nbsp;
+Divine right is a good-enough earthly romance, but it don&rsquo;t go,
+here.&nbsp; Kings drop down to the general level as soon as they reach
+the realms of grace.&nbsp; I knew Charles the Second very well&mdash;one
+of the most popular comedians in the English section&mdash;draws first
+rate.&nbsp; There are better, of course&mdash;people that were never
+heard of on earth&mdash;but Charles is making a very good reputation
+indeed, and is considered a rising man.&nbsp; Richard the Lion-hearted
+is in the prize-ring, and coming into considerable favor.&nbsp; Henry
+the Eighth is a tragedian, and the scenes where he kills people are
+done to the very life.&nbsp; Henry the Sixth keeps a religious-book
+stand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you ever see Napoleon, Sandy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Often&mdash;sometimes in the Corsican range, sometimes in
+the French.&nbsp; He always hunts up a conspicuous place, and goes frowning
+around with his arms folded and his field-glass under his arm, looking
+as grand, gloomy and peculiar as his reputation calls for, and very
+much bothered because he don&rsquo;t stand as high, here, for a soldier,
+as he expected to.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, who stands higher?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, a <i>lot</i> of people <i>we</i> never heard of before&mdash;the
+shoemaker and horse-doctor and knife-grinder kind, you know&mdash;clodhoppers
+from goodness knows where that never handled a sword or fired a shot
+in their lives&mdash;but the soldiership was in them, though they never
+had a chance to show it.&nbsp; But here they take their right place,
+and Caesar and Napoleon and Alexander have to take a back seat.&nbsp;
+The greatest military genius our world ever produced was a brick-layer
+from somewhere back of Boston&mdash;died during the Revolution&mdash;by
+the name of Absalom Jones.&nbsp; Wherever he goes, crowds flock to see
+him.&nbsp; You see, everybody knows that if he had had a chance he would
+have shown the world some generalship that would have made all generalship
+before look like child&rsquo;s play and &rsquo;prentice work.&nbsp;
+But he never got a chance; he tried heaps of times to enlist as a private,
+but he had lost both thumbs and a couple of front teeth, and the recruiting
+sergeant wouldn&rsquo;t pass him.&nbsp; However, as I say, everybody
+knows, now, what he <i>would</i> have been,&mdash;and so they flock
+by the million to get a glimpse of him whenever they hear he is going
+to be anywhere.&nbsp; Caesar, and Hannibal, and Alexander, and Napoleon
+are all on his staff, and ever so many more great generals; but the
+public hardly care to look at <i>them</i> when <i>he</i> is around.&nbsp;
+Boom!&nbsp; There goes another salute.&nbsp; The barkeeper&rsquo;s off
+quarantine now.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Sandy and I put on our things.&nbsp; Then we made a wish, and in
+a second we were at the reception-place.&nbsp; We stood on the edge
+of the ocean of space, and looked out over the dimness, but couldn&rsquo;t
+make out anything.&nbsp; Close by us was the Grand Stand&mdash;tier
+on tier of dim thrones rising up toward the zenith.&nbsp; From each
+side of it spread away the tiers of seats for the general public.&nbsp;
+They spread away for leagues and leagues&mdash;you couldn&rsquo;t see
+the ends.&nbsp; They were empty and still, and hadn&rsquo;t a cheerful
+look, but looked dreary, like a theatre before anybody comes&mdash;gas
+turned down.&nbsp; Sandy says,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll sit down here and wait.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ll see
+the head of the procession come in sight away off yonder pretty soon,
+now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Says I,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s pretty lonesome, Sandy; I reckon there&rsquo;s
+a hitch somewheres.&nbsp; Nobody but just you and me&mdash;it ain&rsquo;t
+much of a display for the barkeeper.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you fret, it&rsquo;s all right.&nbsp; There&rsquo;ll
+be one more gun-fire&mdash;then you&rsquo;ll see.</p>
+<p>In a little while we noticed a sort of a lightish flush, away off
+on the horizon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Head of the torchlight procession,&rdquo; says Sandy.</p>
+<p>It spread, and got lighter and brighter: soon it had a strong glare
+like a locomotive headlight; it kept on getting brighter and brighter
+till it was like the sun peeping above the horizon-line at sea&mdash;the
+big red rays shot high up into the sky.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Keep your eyes on the Grand Stand and the miles of seats&mdash;sharp!&rdquo;
+says Sandy, &ldquo;and listen for the gun-fire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Just then it burst out, &ldquo;Boom-boom-boom!&rdquo; like a million
+thunderstorms in one, and made the whole heavens rock.&nbsp; Then there
+was a sudden and awful glare of light all about us, and in that very
+instant every one of the millions of seats was occupied, and as far
+as you could see, in both directions, was just a solid pack of people,
+and the place was all splendidly lit up!&nbsp; It was enough to take
+a body&rsquo;s breath away.&nbsp; Sandy says,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is the way we do it here.&nbsp; No time fooled away;
+nobody straggling in after the curtain&rsquo;s up.&nbsp; Wishing is
+quicker work than travelling.&nbsp; A quarter of a second ago these
+folks were millions of miles from here.&nbsp; When they heard the last
+signal, all they had to do was to wish, and here they are.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The prodigious choir struck up,&mdash;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>We long to hear thy voice,<br />To see thee face to face.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>It was noble music, but the uneducated chipped in and spoilt it,
+just as the congregations used to do on earth.</p>
+<p>The head of the procession began to pass, now, and it was a wonderful
+sight.&nbsp; It swept along, thick and solid, five hundred thousand
+angels abreast, and every angel carrying a torch and singing&mdash;the
+whirring thunder of the wings made a body&rsquo;s head ache.&nbsp; You
+could follow the line of the procession back, and slanting upward into
+the sky, far away in a glittering snaky rope, till it was only a faint
+streak in the distance.&nbsp; The rush went on and on, for a long time,
+and at last, sure enough, along comes the barkeeper, and then everybody
+rose, and a cheer went up that made the heavens shake, I tell you!&nbsp;
+He was all smiles, and had his halo tilted over one ear in a cocky way,
+and was the most satisfied-looking saint I ever saw.&nbsp; While he
+marched up the steps of the Grand Stand, the choir struck up,&mdash;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The whole wide heaven groans,<br />And waits to hear that voice.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>There were four gorgeous tents standing side by side in the place
+of honor, on a broad railed platform in the centre of the Grand Stand,
+with a shining guard of honor round about them.&nbsp; The tents had
+been shut up all this time.&nbsp; As the barkeeper climbed along up,
+bowing and smiling to everybody, and at last got to the platform, these
+tents were jerked up aloft all of a sudden, and we saw four noble thrones
+of gold, all caked with jewels, and in the two middle ones sat old white-whiskered
+men, and in the two others a couple of the most glorious and gaudy giants,
+with platter halos and beautiful armor.&nbsp; All the millions went
+down on their knees, and stared, and looked glad, and burst out into
+a joyful kind of murmurs.&nbsp; They said,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Two archangels!&mdash;that is splendid.&nbsp; Who can the
+others be?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The archangels gave the barkeeper a stiff little military bow; the
+two old men rose; one of them said, &ldquo;Moses and Esau welcome thee!&rdquo;
+and then all the four vanished, and the thrones were empty.</p>
+<p>The barkeeper looked a little disappointed, for he was calculating
+to hug those old people, I judge; but it was the gladdest and proudest
+multitude you ever saw&mdash;because they had seen Moses and Esau.&nbsp;
+Everybody was saying, &ldquo;Did you see them?&mdash;I did&mdash;Esau&rsquo;s
+side face was to me, but I saw Moses full in the face, just as plain
+as I see you this minute!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The procession took up the barkeeper and moved on with him again,
+and the crowd broke up and scattered.&nbsp; As we went along home, Sandy
+said it was a great success, and the barkeeper would have a right to
+be proud of it forever.&nbsp; And he said we were in luck, too; said
+we might attend receptions for forty thousand years to come, and not
+have a chance to see a brace of such grand moguls as Moses and Esau.&nbsp;
+We found afterwards that we had come near seeing another patriarch,
+and likewise a genuine prophet besides, but at the last moment they
+sent regrets.&nbsp; Sandy said there would be a monument put up there,
+where Moses and Esau had stood, with the date and circumstances, and
+all about the whole business, and travellers would come for thousands
+of years and gawk at it, and climb over it, and scribble their names
+on it.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Footnotes:</p>
+<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a>&nbsp; The captain
+could not remember what this word was.&nbsp; He said it was in a foreign
+tongue.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN ***</p>
+<pre>
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