________________________________________________
_ 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.
THE END.
Captain Stormfield, by Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] _
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