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?"