Mark Twain ..............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I .............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER II ..........................................................................................................................................13

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 onesided, 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 graveltrain 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

northeastandbynorthhalfeast. 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

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

"Send two hundred thousand million men aloft to shake out royals and skyscrapers!"

"Hand the stuns'ls! Hang out every rag you've got! Clothe her from stem to rudderpost!"

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 redhot 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

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

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

"Very well, then, let his boarders freeze till the next comet comes. Lighten ship! Lively, now, lively, men!

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 SIXTYNINE 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 afterdavits, and put his thumb to his nose and sung

"Tata! tata! 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 threequarters 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

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

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

By George, Peters, think of it! "PLANET?" says I; "it's a city. And moreover, it's one of the biggest and finest

"There, there!" says he, "no time here for conversation. We don't deal in cities here. Where are you from in a

"Man, we don't deal in States here. WILL you tell me where you are from IN GENERAL AT LARGE,

"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

"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 "

"Well," says I, "I don't know anything more to say unless I lump things, and just say I'm from the world."

Peters, he had ME, that time. I looked at him, puzzled, he looked at me, worried. Then he burst out

That meant for me to stand aside. I done so, and a skyblue 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

"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

"The worlds He has saved are like to the gates of heaven in number none can count them. What

"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

"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

"Yes, sir," I says but I blushed the least little bit in the world when I said it.

"That is not true; and this is not the place for prevarication. You wandered from your course. How did that

"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

"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

"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

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 flyspecks. 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

"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.

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

"Well," says I, "you don't notice anything? If I branched out amongst the elect looking like this, wouldn't I

"Lack! Why, I lack my harp, and my wreath, and my halo, and my hymnbook, and my palm branch I lack

"Well, you seem to be a curiosity every way a body takes you. I never heard of these things before."

"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 thirtyseven 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

I felt all right, if that was the case, so I bade him goodday 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 bookingoffice once more. Says I to

"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

"Wait a minute; it is millions of leagues from here. Go outside and stand on that red wishingcarpet; shut

"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. Goodby; we probably

I hopped onto the carpet and held my breath and shut my eyes and wished I was in the bookingoffice 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 hymnbook, pair of wings and a halo, size 13, for Cap'n Eli Stormfield, of San Francisco!

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

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

We begun to meet swarms of folks who were coming back. Some had harps and nothing else; some had

hymnbooks 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

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

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

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 harpstrings 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 warwhooping 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

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

So we started. Millions were coming to the cloudbank all the time, happy and hosannahing; millions were

leaving it all the time, looking mighty quiet, I tell you. We laid for the newcomers, 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

"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 cloudbank 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

"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

"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 shoemaker 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

"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

Says I, "It's the sensiblest heaven I've heard of yet, Sam, though it's about as different from the one I was

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 baldheaded 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 cranberryfarm, and there we used to talk about all kinds of things,

"Well," says I, "come to think, there's something just here that I want to ask about. Down below, I always had

"I did. They all do. You'll try it, some day, like enough; but you'll get tired of the change pretty soon."

"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

"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

"Only two weeks. That was plenty for me. Laws, I was so lonesome! You see, I was full of the knowledge

and experience of seventytwo years; the deepest subject those young folks could strike was only ABC 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 aplenty for me. I was glad to get back my bald head again, and my pipe, and my old drowsy reflections

"Well," says I, "do you mean to say you're going to stand still at seventytwo, forever?"

"I don't know, and I ain't particular. But I ain't going to drop back to twentyfive any more I know that,

mighty well. I know a sight more than I did twentyseven 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

"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."

"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

"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 stockstill 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, marbleplaying cubs of seven years! or of

awkward, diffident, sentimental immaturities of nineteen! or of vigorous people of thirty, healthyminded,

brimming with ambition, but chained hand and foot to that one age and its limitations like so many helpless

galleyslaves! 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

"You are making heaven pretty comfortable in one way, but you are playing the mischief with it in another."

It was a woman. Middleaged, 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

"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 twentyseven 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, twentyseven years ago, she told me to find her child the first thing,

He didn't say anything for a while, but sat looking at the ground, thinking. Then he says, kind of mournful:

"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

twentyseven 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."

"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

"No, they'll come together and get adjusted by and by. But not this year, and not next. By and by."

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,

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

headwind. I done well enough, but made pretty poor time. I could see, plain enough, that on a headwind,

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 avisiting 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

I saw in a minute that there was some sarcasm done up in that rag somewheres, but I never let on. I only says,

"Yes," he says, in a dry sort of way, "they mostly go to the wash about this time I've often noticed it.

"Sandy, out with it. Come no secrets among friends. I notice you don't ever wear wings and plenty others

"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 courtmartial 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."

"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 cannonball 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 halfway; even the pinfeathers 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 wishingcarpet of the Arabian Nights was

a sensible idea but our earthly idea of angels flying these awful distances with their clumsy wings was

"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 ringstreakedandstriped 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

"Well," says I, "I've tucked mine away in the cupboard, and I allow to let them lay there till there's mud."

"Well, you can see one tonight if you want to. There's a barkeeper from Jersey City going to be received."

"This barkeeper got converted at a Moody and Sankey meeting, in New York, and started home on the

ferryboat, 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

"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

"It is manners to go in full dress. You want to wear your wings, you know, and your other things."

"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,

"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 thirtytwo hours in

the twentyfour. 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

"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.

Sandy sent home for his things, and I sent for mine, and about nine in the evening we begun to dress. Sandy

"This is going to be a grand time for you, Stormy. Like as not some of the patriarchs will turn out."

"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 eleventhhour convert. They wouldn't do it then, only earthly

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Who I? Why, what can you be thinking about, Stormy? I ain't worthy to speak to such as they."

"Of course not. You have got the same mixedup 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 hailfellowwellmet 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

"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 mainbrace with them, you know, but shake hands and

"Could Tom, Dick and Harry call on the Cabinet of Russia and do that? on Prince Gortschakoff, for

"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, subgovernors, subsubgovernors, and a hundred orders of

nobility, grading along down from grandducal 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?"

"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 twominute

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 foottrack 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.

"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

improvingtime 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

"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 slushboy 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 tonguetied in their company, and mighty glad to get out of it. Sandy, which is the

"Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs. The newest prophet, even, is of a sight more consequence than the

"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 horsedoctor 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 knifegrinder 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

"Yes they all had their message, and they all get their reward. The man who don't get his reward on earth,

"But why did they throw off on Shakespeare, that way, and put him away down there below those

shoemakers and horsedoctors and knifegrinders 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

"Well, I judge I did. It was the talk of these realms not for a day, like this barkeeper business, but for

"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

"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 mustardseed 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 twentytwo 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 turningpoint 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

"Easy enough. Duffer kept a sausageshop 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 hungrylooking 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 sausagemaker of Hoboken heard when he stepped upon the

heavenly shore were, 'Welcome, Sir Richard Duffer!' It surprised him some, because he thought he had

All of a sudden the whole region fairly rocked under the crash of eleven hundred and one thunder blasts, all

"Then let's be moving along, Sandy; we don't want to miss any of this thing, you know."

"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

"I notice some regret in your voice," says Sandy, "and it is natural enough; but let bygones be bygones; you

"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

"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 eleventhhour 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

"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

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 coppercolored ones people that can't speak

"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 deathrate has

always been 20 in 1000 per annum. Well, 140,000 died the first year of the century; 280,000 the twentyfifth

year; 500,000 the fiftieth year; about a million the seventyfifth 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 today 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 tencent 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 longlost 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

"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

"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 leatherheaded mudcolored 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

"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

"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 oldtime 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

"Sandy," says I, "did you see a good many of the great people history tells about?"

"No; a body can't bring his rank up here with him. Divine right is a goodenough 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 Lionhearted 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

"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 fieldglass 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

"Oh, a LOT of people WE never heard of before the shoemaker and horsedoctor and knifegrinder 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 bricklayer 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

Sandy and I put on our things. Then we made a wish, and in a second we were at the receptionplace. 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

"We'll sit down here and wait. We'll see the head of the procession come in sight away off yonder pretty

"It's pretty lonesome, Sandy; I reckon there's a hitch somewheres. Nobody but just you and me it ain't much

In a little while we noticed a sort of a lightish flush, away off on the horizon.

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 horizonline at sea the big red rays

"Keep your eyes on the Grand Stand and the miles of seats sharp!" says Sandy, "and listen for the

Just then it burst out, "Boomboomboom!" 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

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

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 whitewhiskered 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,

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

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.

(1) The captain could not remember what this word was. He said it was in a foreign tongue.