“Sam, it ain’t any name for it! I’m dog-tired.”
“Just so—just so. You’ve earned a good sleep, and you’ll get it. You’ve
earned a good appetite, and you’ll enjoy your dinner. It’s the same here
as it is on earth—you’ve got to earn a thing, square and honest, before
you enjoy it. You can’t enjoy first and earn afterwards. But there’s
this difference, here: you can choose your own occupation, and all the
powers of heaven will be put forth to help you make a success of it, if
you do your level best. The 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 more suffering—”
“Oh, hold on; there’s plenty of pain here—but it don’t kill. There’s
plenty of suffering here, but it don’t last. You see, happiness ain’t a
_thing in itself_—it’s only a _contrast_ with something that ain’t
pleasant. That’s all it is. There ain’t a thing you can mention that is
happiness in its own self—it’s only so by contrast with the other thing.
And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast
dulled, it ain’t happiness any longer, and you have to get something
fresh. Well, there’s plenty of pain and suffering in heaven—consequently
there’s plenty of contrasts, and just no end of happiness.”
Says I, “It’s the sensiblest heaven I’ve heard of yet, Sam, though it’s
about as different from the one I was brought up on as a live princess is
different from her own wax figger.”
* * * * *
Along in the first months I knocked around about the Kingdom, making
friends and looking at the country, and finally settled down in a pretty
likely region, to have a rest before taking another start. I went on
making acquaintances and gathering up information. I had a good deal of
talk with an old bald-headed angel by the name of Sandy McWilliams. He
was from somewhere in New Jersey. I went about with him, considerable.
We used to lay around, warm afternoons, in the shade of a rock, on some
meadow-ground that was pretty high and out of the marshy slush of his
cranberry-farm, and there we used to talk about all kinds of things, and
smoke pipes. One day, says I—
“About how old might you be, Sandy?”
“Seventy-two.”
“I judged so. How long you been in heaven?”
“Twenty-seven years, come Christmas.”
“How old was you when you come up?”
“Why, seventy-two, of course.”
“You can’t mean it!”
“Why can’t I mean it?”
“Because, if you was seventy-two then, you are naturally ninety-nine
now.”
“No, but I ain’t. I stay the same age I was when I come.”
“Well,” says I, “come to think, there’s something just here that I want
to ask about. Down below, I always had an idea that in heaven we would
all be young, and bright, and spry.”
“Well, you can be young if you want to. You’ve only got to wish.”
“Well, then, why didn’t you wish?”
“I did. They all do. You’ll try it, some day, like enough; but you’ll
get tired of the change pretty soon.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. Now you’ve always been a sailor; did you ever try
some other business?”
“Yes, I tried keeping grocery, once, up in the mines; but I couldn’t
stand it; it was too dull—no stir, no storm, no life about it; it was
like being part dead and part alive, both at the same time. I wanted to
be one thing or t’other. I shut up shop pretty quick and went to sea.”
“That’s it. Grocery people like it, but you couldn’t. You see you
wasn’t used to it. Well, I wasn’t used to being young, and I couldn’t
seem to take any interest in it. I was strong, and handsome, and had
curly hair,—yes, and wings, too!—gay wings like a butterfly. I went to
picnics and dances and parties with the fellows, and tried to carry on
and talk nonsense with the girls, but it wasn’t any use; I couldn’t take
to it—fact is, it was an awful bore. What I wanted was early to bed and
early to rise, and something to _do_; and when my work was done, I wanted
to sit quiet, and smoke and think—not tear around with a parcel of giddy
young kids. You can’t think what I suffered whilst I was young.”
“How long was you young?”
“Only two weeks. That was plenty for me. Laws, I was so lonesome! You
see, I was full of the knowledge and experience of seventy-two years; the
deepest subject those young folks could strike was only _a-b-c_ to me.
And to hear them argue—oh, my! it would have been funny, if it hadn’t
been so pitiful. Well, I was so hungry for the ways and the sober talk I
was used to, that I tried to ring in with the old people, but they
wouldn’t have it. They considered me a conceited young upstart, and gave
me the cold shoulder. Two weeks was a-plenty for me. I was glad to get
back my bald head again, and my pipe, and my old drowsy reflections in
the shade of a rock or a tree.”
“Well,” says I, “do you mean to say you’re going to stand still at
seventy-two, forever?”
“I don’t know, and I ain’t particular. But I ain’t going to drop back to
twenty-five any more—I know that, mighty well. I know a sight more than
I did twenty-seven years ago, and I enjoy learning, all the time, but I
don’t seem to get any older. That is, bodily—my mind gets older, and
stronger, and better seasoned, and more satisfactory.”
Says I, “If a man comes here at ninety, don’t he ever set himself back?”
“Of course he does. He sets himself back to fourteen; tries it a couple
of hours, and feels like a fool; sets himself forward to twenty; it ain’t
much improvement; tries thirty, fifty, eighty, and finally ninety—finds
he is more at home and comfortable at the same old figure he is used to
than any other way. Or, if his mind begun to fail him on earth at
eighty, that’s where he finally sticks up here. He sticks at the place
where his mind was last at its best, for there’s where his enjoyment is
best, and his ways most set and established.”
“Does a chap of twenty-five stay always twenty-five, and look it?”
“If he is a fool, yes. But if he is bright, and ambitious and
industrious, the knowledge he gains and the experiences he has, change
his ways and thoughts and likings, and make him find his best pleasure in
the company of people above that age; so he allows his body to take on
that look of as many added years as he needs to make him comfortable and
proper in that sort of society; he lets his body go on taking the look of
age, according as he progresses, and by and by he will be bald and
wrinkled outside, and wise and deep within.”
“Babies the same?”
“Babies the same. Laws, what asses we used to be, on earth, about these
things! We said we’d be always young in heaven. We didn’t say _how_
young—we didn’t think of that, perhaps—that is, we didn’t all think
alike, anyway. When I was a boy of seven, I suppose I thought we’d all
be twelve, in heaven; when I was twelve, I suppose I thought we’d all be
eighteen or twenty in heaven; when I was forty, I begun to go back; I
remember I hoped we’d all be about _thirty_ years old in heaven. Neither
a man nor a boy ever thinks the age he _has_ is exactly the best one—he
puts the right age a few years older or a few years younger than he is.
Then he makes that ideal age the general age of the heavenly people. And
he expects everybody _to stick_ at that age—stand stock-still—and expects
them to enjoy it!—Now just think of the idea of standing still in heaven!
Think of a heaven made up entirely of hoop-rolling, marble-playing cubs
of seven years!—or of awkward, diffident, sentimental immaturities of
nineteen!—or of vigorous people of thirty, healthy-minded, brimming with
ambition, but chained hand and foot to that one age and its limitations
like so many helpless galley-slaves! Think of the dull sameness of a
society made up of people all of one age and one set of looks, habits,
tastes and feelings. Think how superior to it earth would be, with its
variety of types and faces and ages, and the enlivening attrition of the
myriad interests that come into pleasant collision in such a variegated
society.”
“Look here,” says I, “do you know what you’re doing?”
“Well, what am I doing?”
“You are making heaven pretty comfortable in one way, but you are playing
the mischief with it in another.”
“How d’you mean?”
“Well,” I says, “take a young mother that’s lost her child, and—”
“Sh!” he says. “Look!”
It was a woman. Middle-aged, and had grizzled hair. She was walking
slow, and her head was bent down, and her wings hanging limp and droopy;
and she looked ever so tired, and was crying, poor thing! She passed
along by, with her head down, that way, and the tears running down her
face, and didn’t see us. Then Sandy said, low and gentle, and full of
pity:
“_She’s_ hunting for her child! No, _found_ it, I reckon. Lord, how
she’s changed! But I recognized her in a minute, though it’s
twenty-seven years since I saw her. A young mother she was, about twenty
two or four, or along there; and blooming and lovely and sweet? oh, just
a flower! And all her heart and all her soul was wrapped up in her
child, her little girl, two years old. And it died, and she went wild
with grief, just wild! Well, the only comfort she had was that she’d see
her child again, in heaven—‘never more to part,’ she said, and kept on
saying it over and over, ‘never more to part.’ And the words made her
happy; yes, they did; they made her joyful, and when I was dying,
twenty-seven years ago, she told me to find her child the first thing,
and say she was coming—‘soon, soon, _very_ soon, she hoped and
believed!’”
“Why, it’s pitiful, Sandy.”
He didn’t say anything for a while, but sat looking at the ground,
thinking. Then he says, kind of mournful:
“And now she’s come!”
“Well? Go on.”
“Stormfield, maybe she hasn’t found the child, but _I_ think she has.
Looks so to me. I’ve seen cases before. You see, she’s kept that child
in her head just the same as it was when she jounced it in her arms a
little chubby thing. But here it didn’t elect to _stay_ a child. No, it
elected to grow up, which it did. And in these twenty-seven years it has
learned all the deep scientific learning there is to learn, and is
studying and studying and learning and learning more and more, all the
time, and don’t give a damn for anything _but_ learning; just learning,
and discussing gigantic problems with people like herself.”
“Well?”
“Stormfield, don’t you see? Her mother knows _cranberries_, and how to
tend them, and pick them, and put them up, and market them; and not
another blamed thing! Her and her daughter can’t be any more company for
each other _now_ than mud turtle and bird o’ paradise. Poor thing, she
was looking for a baby to jounce; _I_ think she’s struck a
disapp’intment.”
“Sandy, what will they do—stay unhappy forever in heaven?”
“No, they’ll come together and get adjusted by and by. But not this
year, and not next. By and by.”