章节正文
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 scientificlearning
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."
CHAPTER II
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
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 scientificlearning
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."
CHAPTER II
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
- ambition [æm´biʃən]
n.雄心，野心；企图 (初中英语单词) - helpless [´helpləs] a.无助的，无依靠的 (初中英语单词)
- variety [və´raiəti] n.变化；多样(性)；种类 (初中英语单词)
- mischief [´mistʃif] n.伤害；故障；调皮 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- reckon [´rekən] v.计算；认为；估计 (初中英语单词)
- scientific [,saiən´tifik] a.科学(上)的 (初中英语单词)
- learning [´lə:niŋ] n.学习；学问；知识 (初中英语单词)
- unhappy [ʌn´hæpi] a.不幸的；不快乐的 (初中英语单词)
- considerable [kən´sidərəbəl] a.重要的；值得重视 (初中英语单词)
- bishop [´biʃəp] n.主教 (初中英语单词)
- mostly [´məustli] ad.主要地；多半；通常 (初中英语单词)
- conclusion [kən´klu:ʒən] n.结束；结论；推论 (初中英语单词)
- policeman [pə´li:smən] n.警察 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- sensible [´sensəbəl] a.感觉得到的 (初中英语单词)
- suitable [´su:təbəl, ´sju:-] a.合适的，适当的 (初中英语单词)
- jersey [´dʒə:zi] n.毛织运动衫；毛线衫 (初中英语单词)
- welcome [´welkəm] a.受欢迎的；可喜的 (初中英语单词)
- reasonable [´rizənəbəl] a.合理的；有理智的 (初中英语单词)
- heavenly [´hevənli] a.天的，天空的 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- joyful [´dʒɔifəl] a.高兴的，充满快乐的 (高中英语单词)
- pitiful [´pitifəl] a.可怜的；慈悲的 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- turtle [´tə:tl] n.海龟；甲鱼 (高中英语单词)
- founder [´faundə] n.奠基者 v.陷落 (高中英语单词)
- perfectly [´pə:fiktli] ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词)
- militia [mi´liʃə] n.民兵组织 (高中英语单词)
- eternity [i´tə:niti] n.永恒，来世，无穷 (高中英语单词)
- half-way [´hɑ:fwei] ad.半途；几乎 (高中英语单词)
- earthly [´ə:θli] a.地球的；世俗的 (高中英语单词)
- clumsy [´klʌmzi] a.笨拙的；粗俗的 (高中英语单词)
- outfit [´aut,fit] n.装备 vt.供给；装备 (高中英语单词)
- cupboard [´kʌbəd] n.碗柜，食橱 (高中英语单词)
- peculiarity [pi,kju:li´æriti] n.特色；特性；怪癖 (高中英语单词)
- sentimental [,senti´mentl] a.感伤的；多愁善感的 (英语四级单词)
- myriad [´miriəd] n.极大数量 a.无数的 (英语四级单词)
- blooming [´blu:miŋ] a.正开花的；妙龄的 (英语四级单词)
- shorten [´ʃɔ:tn] v.缩短，变短 (英语四级单词)
- experienced [ik´spiəriənst] a.有经验的；熟练的 (英语四级单词)
- collision [kə´liʒən] n.碰幢；冲突；互撞事件 (英语六级单词)
- middle-aged [´midl´eidʒid] a.中年的 (英语六级单词)
- hunting [´hʌntiŋ] n.打猎 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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