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?"

Says he--

"I'll set you right on that point very quick. People take the
figurative language of the Bible and the allegories for literal,
and the first thing they ask for when they get here is a halo and a
harp, and so on. Nothing that's harmless and reasonable is refused
a body here, if he asks it in the right spirit. So they are
outfitted with these things without a word. They go and sing and
play just about one day, and that's the last you'll ever see them
in the choir. They don't need anybody to tell them that that sort
of thing wouldn't make a heaven--at least not a heaven that a sane
man could stand a week and remain sane. That cloud-bank is placed
where the noise can't disturb the old inhabitants, and so there