From this time, the events which I am trying to relate began to assume in fact a much more orderly course; yet in form I scarcely find them more easy to present. Narrative, as has been said of conversation, “is always but a selection,” and in this case the peculiar difficulties of choosing from an immense mass of material that which can be most fitly compressed into the compass allowed me by these few pages, are so great, that I have again and again laid down my task in despair; only to be urged on by my conviction that it is more clearly my duty to speak what may carry comfort to the hearts of some, than to worry because my imperfect manner of expression may offend the heads of others. All I can presume to hope for this record of an experience is, that it may have a passing value to certain of my readers whose anticipations of what they call “the Hereafter” are so vague or so dubious as to be more of a pain than a pleasure to themselves.

From the time of my reception into my father’s house, I lost the sense of homelessness which had more or less possessed me since my entrance upon the new life, and felt myself becoming again a member of an organized society, with definite duties as well as assured pleasures before me.

These duties I did not find astonishingly different in their essence, while they had changed greatly in form, from those which had occupied me upon earth. I found myself still involved in certain filial and domestic responsibilities, in intellectual acquisition, in the moral support of others, and in spiritual self-culture. I found myself a member of an active community in which not a drone nor an invalid could be counted, and I quickly became, like others who surrounded me, an exceedingly busy person. At first my occupations did not assume sharp professional distinctiveness, but had rather the character of such as would belong to one in training for a more cultivated condition. This seemed to be true of many of my fellow-citizens; that they were still in a state of education for superior usefulness or happiness. With others, as I have intimated, it was not so. My father’s business, for instance, remained what it had always been—that of a religious teacher; and I met women and men as well, to whom, as in the case of my old neighbor, Mrs. Mersey, there had been set apart an especial fellowship with the spirits of the recently dead or still living, who had need of great guidance. I soon formed, by observation, at least, the acquaintance, too, of a wide variety of natures;—I met artisans and artists, poets and scientists, people of agricultural pursuits, mechanical inventors, musicians, physicians, students, tradesmen, aerial messengers to the earth, or to other planets, and a long list besides, that would puzzle more than it would enlighten, should I attempt to describe it. I mention these points, which I have no space to amplify, mainly to give reality to any allusions that I shall make to my relations in the heavenly city, and to let it be understood that I speak of a community as organized and as various as Paris or New York; which possessed all the advantages and none of the evils that we are accustomed to associate with massed population; that such a community existed without sorrow, without sickness, without death, without anxiety, and without sin; that the evidences of almost incredible harmony, growth, and happiness which I saw before me in that one locality, I had reason to believe extended to uncounted others in unknown regions, thronging with joys and activities the mysteries of space and time.

For reasons which will be made clear as I approach the end of my narrative, I cannot speak as fully of many high and marvelous matters in the eternal life, as I wish that I might have done. I am giving impressions which, I am keenly aware, have almost the imperfection of a broken dream. I can only crave from the reader, on trust, a patience which he may be more ready to grant me at a later time.

I now began, as I say, to assume regular duties and pleasures; among the keenest of the latter was the constant meeting of old friends and acquaintances. Much perplexity, great delight, and some disappointment awaited me in these dÉnouements of earthly story.

The people whom I had naturally expected to meet earliest were often longest delayed from crossing my path; in some cases, they were altogether missing. Again, I was startled by coming in contact with individuals that I had never associated, in my conceptions of the future, with a spiritual existence at all; in these cases I was sometimes humbled by discovering a type of spiritual character so far above my own, that my fancies in their behalf proved to be unwarrantable self-sufficiency. Social life in the heavenly world, I soon learned, was a series of subtle or acute surprises. It sometimes reminded me of a simile of George Eliot’s, wherein she likened human existence to a game of chess in which each one of the pieces had intellect and passions, and the player might be beaten by his own pawns. The element of unexpectedness, which constitutes the first and yet the most unreliable charm of earthly society, had here acquired a permanent dignity. One of the most memorable things which I observed about heavenly relations was, that people did not, in the degree or way to which I was accustomed, tire of each other. Attractions, to begin with, were less lightly experienced; their hold was deeper; their consequences more lasting. I had not been under my new conditions long, before I learned that here genuine feeling was never suffered to fall a sacrifice to intellectual curiosity, or emotional caprice; that here one had at last the stimulus of social attrition without its perils, its healthy pleasures without its pains. I learned, of course, much else, which it is more than difficult, and some things which it is impossible, to explain. I testify only of what I am permitted.

Among the intellectual labors that I earliest undertook was the command of the Universal Language, which I soon found necessary to my convenience. In a community like that I had entered, many nationalities were represented, and I observed that while each retained its own familiar earthly tongue, and one had the pleasant opportunity of acquiring as many others as one chose, yet a common vocabulary became a desideratum of which, indeed, no one was compelled to avail himself contrary to his taste, but in which many, like myself, found the greatest pleasure and profit. The command of this language occupied much well-directed time.

I should not omit to say that a portion of my duty and my privilege consisted in renewed visits to the dearly-loved whom I had left upon the earth. These visits were sometimes matters of will with me. Again, they were strictly occasions of permission, and again, I was denied the power to make them when I most deeply desired to do so. Herein I learned the difference between trial and trouble, and that while the last was stricken out of heavenly life, the first distinctly remained. It is pleasant to me to remember that I was allowed to be of more than a little comfort to those who mourned for me; that it was I who guided them from despair to endurance, and so through peace to cheerfulness, and the hearty renewal of daily human content. These visits were for a long time—excepting the rare occasions on which I met Him who had spoken to me upon the sea-shore—the deepest delight which was offered me.

Upon one point I foresee that I shall be questioned by those who have had the patience so far to follow my recital. What, it will be asked, was the political constitution of the community you describe? What place in celestial society has worldly caste?

When I say, strictly none at all, let me not be misunderstood. I observed the greatest varieties of rank in the celestial kingdom, which seemed to me rather a close Theocracy than a wild commune. There were powers above me, and powers below; there were natural and harmonious social selections; there were laws and their officers; there was obedience and its dignity; there was influence and its authority; there were gifts and their distinctions. I may say that I found far more reverence for differences of rank or influence than I was used to seeing, at least in my own corner of the earth. The main point was that the basis of the whole thing had undergone a tremendous change. Inheritance, wealth, intellect, genius, beauty, all the old passports to power, were replaced by one so simple yet so autocratic, that I hardly know how to give any idea at once of its dignity and its sweetness. I may call this personal holiness. Position, in the new life, I found depended upon spiritual claims. Distinction was the result of character. The nature nearest to the Divine Nature ruled the social forces. Spiritual culture was the ultimate test of individual importance.

I inquired one day for a certain writer of world-wide—I mean of earth-wide—celebrity, who, I had learned, was a temporary visitor in the city, and whom I wished to meet. I will not for sufficient reasons mention the name of this man, who had been called the genius of his century, below. I had anticipated that a great ovation would be given him, in which I desired to join, and I was surprised that his presence made little or no stir in our community. Upon investigating the facts, I learned that his public influence was, so far, but a slight one, though it had gradually gained, and was likely to increase with time. He had been a man whose splendid powers were dedicated to the temporary and worldly aspects of Truth, whose private life was selfish and cruel, who had written the most famous poem of his age, but “by all his searching” had not found out God.

In the conditions of the eternal life, this genius had been obliged to set itself to learning the alphabet of spiritual truth; he was still a pupil, rather than a master among us, and I was told that he himself ardently objected to receiving a deference which was not as yet his due; having set the might of his great nature as strenuously now to the spiritual, as once to the intellectual task; in which, I must say, I was not without expectation that he would ultimately outvie us all.

On the same day when this distinguished man entered and left our city (having quietly accomplished his errand), I heard the confusion of some public excitement at a distance, and hastening to see what it meant, I discovered that the object of it was a plain, I thought in her earthly life she must have been a poor woman, obscure, perhaps, and timid. The people pressed towards her, and received her into the town by acclamation. They crowned her with amaranth and flung lilies in her path. The authorities of the city officially met her; the people of influence hastened to beseech her to do honor to their homes by her modest presence; we crowded for a sight of her, we begged for a word from her, we bewildered her with our tributes, till she hid her blushing face and was swept out of our sight.

“But who is this,” I asked an eager passer, “to whom such an extraordinary reception is tendered? I have seen nothing like it since I came here.”

“Is it possible you do not know —— ——?”

My informant gave a name which indeed was not unfamiliar to me; it was that of a woman who had united to extreme beauty of private character, and a high type of faith in invisible truths, life-long devotion to an unpopular philanthropy. She had never been called a “great” woman on earth. Her influence had not been large. Her cause had never been the fashion, while she herself was living. Society had never amused itself by adopting her, even to the extent of a parlor lecture. Her name, so far as it was familiar to the public at all, had been the synonym of a poor zealot, a plain fanatic, to be tolerated for her conscientiousness and—avoided for her earnestness. Since her death, the humane consecration which she represented had marched on like a conquering army over her grave. Earth, of which she was not worthy, had known her too late. Heaven was proud to do honor to the spiritual foresight and sustained self-denial, as royal as it was rare.

I remember, also, being deeply touched by a sight upon which I chanced, one morning, when I was strolling about the suburbs of the city, seeking the refreshment of solitude before the duties of the day began. For, while I was thus engaged, I met our Master, suddenly. He was busily occupied with others, and, beyond the deep recognition of His smile, I had no converse with Him. He was followed at a little distance, as He was apt to be, by a group of playing children; but He was in close communion with two whom I saw to be souls newly-arrived from the lower life. One of these was a man—I should say he had been a rough man, and had come out of a rude life—who conversed with Him eagerly but reverently, as they walked on towards the town. Upon the other side, our Lord held with His own hand the hand of a timid, trembling woman, who scarcely dared raise her eyes from the ground; now and then she drew His garment’s edge furtively to her lips, and let it fall again, with the slow motion of one who is in a dream of ecstasy. These two people, I judged, had no connection with each other beyond the fact that they were simultaneous new-comers to the new country, and had, perhaps, both borne with them either special need or merit, I could hardly decide which. I took occasion to ask a neighbor, an old resident of the city, and wise in its mysteries, what he supposed to be the explanation of the scene before us, and why these two were so distinguished by the favor of Him whose least glance made holiday in the soul of any one of us. It was then explained to me, that the man about whom I had inquired was the hero of a great calamity, with which the lower world was at present occupied. One of the most frightful railway accidents of this generation had been averted, and the lives of four hundred helpless passengers saved, by the sublime sacrifice of this locomotive engineer, who died (it will be remembered) a death of voluntary and unique torture to save his train. All that could be said of the tragedy was that it held the essence of self-sacrifice in a form seldom attained by man. At the moment I saw this noble fellow, he had so immediately come among us that the expression of physical agony had hardly yet died out of his face, and his eye still blazed with the fire of his tremendous deed.

“But who is the woman?” I asked.

“She was a delicate creature—sick—died of the fright and shock; the only passenger on the train who did not escape.”

I inquired why she too was thus preferred; what glorious deed had she done, to make her so dear to the Divine Heart?

“She? Ah, she,” said my informant, “was only one of the household saints. She had been notable among celestial observers for many years. You know the type I mean—shy, silent—never thinks of herself, scarcely knows she has a self—toils, drudges, endures, prays; expects nothing of her friends, and gives all; hopes for little, even from her Lord, but surrenders everything; full of religious ideals, not all of them theoretically wise, but practically noble; a woman ready to be cut to inch pieces for her faith in an invisible Love that has never apparently given her anything in particular. Oh, you know the kind of woman: has never had anything of her own, in all her life—not even her own room—and a whole family adore her without knowing it, and lean upon her like infants without seeing it. We have been watching for this woman’s coming. We knew there would be an especial greeting for her. But nobody thought of her accompanying the engineer. Come! Shall we not follow, and see how they will be received? If I am not mistaken, it will be a great day in the city.”