“Are you glad to be here?”
Says I, “Old man, I’ll be frank with you. This _ain’t_ just as near my
idea of bliss as I thought it was going to be, when I used to go to
church.”
Says he, “What do you say to knocking off and calling it half a day?”
“That’s me,” says I. “I never wanted to get off watch so bad in my
life.”
So we started. Millions were coming to the cloud-bank all the time,
happy and hosannahing; millions were leaving it all the time, looking
mighty quiet, I tell you. We laid for the new-comers, and pretty soon
I’d got them to hold all my things a minute, and then I was a free man
again and most outrageously happy. Just then I ran across old Sam
Bartlett, who had been dead a long time, and stopped to have a talk with
him. Says I—
“Now tell me—is this to go on forever? Ain’t there anything else for a
change?”