the office, hoping to come out into heaven any moment, but it was a
mistake. That hall was built on the general heavenly plan – it
naturally couldn’t be small. At last I got so tired I couldn’t go
any farther; so I sat down to rest, and begun to tackle the
queerest sort of strangers and ask for information, but I didn’t
get any; they couldn’t understand my language, and I could not
understand theirs. I got dreadfully lonesome. I was so down-
hearted and homesick I wished a hundred times I never had died. I
turned back, of course. About noon next day, I got back at last
and was on hand at the booking-office once more. Says I to the
head clerk –
“I begin to see that a man’s got to be in his own Heaven to be
happy.”
“Perfectly correct,” says he. “Did you imagine the same heaven
would suit all sorts of men?”
“Well, I had that idea – but I see the foolishness of it. Which
way am I to go to get to my district?”
He called the under clerk that had examined the map, and he gave me
general directions. I thanked him and started; but he says –
“Wait a minute; it is millions of leagues from here. Go outside
and stand on that red wishing-carpet; shut your eyes, hold your
breath, and wish yourself there.”
“I’m much obliged,” says I; “why didn’t you dart me through when I
first arrived?”
“We have a good deal to think of here; it was your place to think
of it and ask for it. Good-by; we probably sha’n’t see you in this
region for a thousand centuries or so.”
“In that case, O REVOOR,” says I.
I hopped onto the carpet and held my breath and shut my eyes and
wished I was in the booking-office of my own section. The very
next instant a voice I knew sung out in a business kind of a way –
“A harp and a hymn-book, pair of wings and a halo, size 13, for
Cap’n Eli Stormfield, of San Francisco! – make him out a clean bill
of health, and let him in.”
I opened my eyes. Sure enough, it was a Pi Ute Injun I used to
know in Tulare County; mighty good fellow – I remembered being at
his funeral, which consisted of him being burnt and the other
Injuns gauming their faces with his ashes and howling like
wildcats. He was powerful glad to see me, and you may make up your
mind I was just as glad to see him, and feel that I was in the
right kind of a heaven at last.
Just as far as your eye could reach, there was swarms of clerks,
running and bustling around, tricking out thousands of Yanks and
Mexicans and English and Arabs, and all sorts of people in their
new outfits; and when they gave me my kit and I put on my halo and
took a look in the glass, I could have jumped over a house for joy,
I was so happy. “Now THIS is something like!” says I. “Now,” says
I, “I’m all right – show me a cloud.”
Inside of fifteen minutes I was a mile on my way towards the cloud-
banks and about a million people along with me. Most of us tried
to fly, but some got crippled and nobody made a success of it. So
we concluded to walk, for the present, till we had had some wing
practice.
We begun to meet swarms of folks who were coming back. Some had
harps and nothing else; some had hymn-books and nothing else; some
had nothing at all; all of them looked meek and uncomfortable; one
young fellow hadn’t anything left but his halo, and he was carrying
that in his hand; all of a sudden he offered it to me and says –
“Will you hold it for me a minute?”
Then he disappeared in the crowd. I went on. A woman asked me to
hold her palm branch, and then SHE disappeared. A girl got me to
hold her harp for her, and by George, SHE disappeared; and so on