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