IT was in a dream, and, I think, the Andante of the fifth symphony had something to do with it. In any event I left this Earth very suddenly on a trip among the stars. After I had risen a short distance, I looked down upon the Earth, and was astonished to find what a small and insignificant place it was, after all. Quite a number of people whom I might mention, who make a great parade and show, and who strut up and down the green footstool, like Sir Oracles, actually looked to me like ants, running about on an ant hill, and they didn't appear at my height to any better advantage than those who were more humble and retired. Several loud, blatant fellows, and several women gifted with Gab, strange to say, I couldn't hear at all. In fact, I couldn't discover that there was anything at all of much consequence in this world, to a man half a mile up in the air. When I arrived at the Moon, I stopped to rest, and had a talk with the Man in it, who laid down his bundle of sticks and was very affable. Much to my surprise, when I looked after the Earth I couldn't find it, and inquiry of the Man did not help me any, as he had never known such a place, except from hearsay. He pointed out several millions of stars in an obscure and remote part of the heavens, which were dimly visible, and intimated that the Earth might be among them, but, as it was of so little consequence he never troubled himself about it. When I told him, however, how the lovers of Earth worshipped his planet, he seemed pleased, and expressed his gratification that there was so much moonshine in love. I gave him the latest intelligence of the doings of the Sorosis, in which he manifested considerable interest, there being, as he told me, no women in the Moon. I noticed that the place was exceedingly quiet.
After guiding me upon my way to Heaven, he picked up his bundle of sticks and resumed his journey, and I set off on another flight. I passed Jupiter, who was still up to his scandalous tricks, which, of old, brought Antiope, Leda, Europa, and others, into the divorce courts; passed Mars, who was just putting on his helmet and preparing to thresh a small planet in a distant galaxy; passed Venus, to whom I touched my hat and hurried on, as she was just then engaged in a tete-a-tete with Adonis; passed the Pleiades, all of whom still wear mourning for their lost sister, who, they informed me, ran away several thousand years ago, with a pretty little comet with a tail like a peacock's; passed Ursa Major, who growled somewhat, but finally gave me a drink from his Dipper; passed the North Star, the only steady and well-behaved star in the heavens. After leaving the Cynosure, my course led me into the Milky Way, a wretched place, which, to my astonishment, I found full of milkmen, who, on earth, have been accustomed to sell chalk and water. One of these unfortunate shades, who used to have an Elgin dairy on the Archer road, informed me, with tears in his ghostly eyes, that the Milky Way was reserved for the milkmen of Earth, who have proclivities for pumps, and that they are doomed to be chased through all eternity by stump-tailed cows. He begged me, when I returned to earth, to warn his relatives and all others in the business. I promised to do so, and, when I left the Milky Way, he was making the grand round, with a whole herd of stump-tails, who used to live on the North Branch, after him.
After leaving the Milky Way, I reached the boundary of our system of planets, and dodging innumerable meteors and comets which were flying about in the most eccentric manner, and narrowly escaping destruction by the explosion of a planet, many times larger than the Earth, which burst into millions of atoms with a roar which seemed to shake the whole empyrean, and went floating off into space like a piece of burned tinder, passed into another system of stars and planets, all revolving round their central sun. The earthly system was soon lost to view. I passed from planet to planet, from galaxy to galaxy, floated in azure fields full of gorgeous nebulÆ, or rode on undulating billows of air, between comets of lustrous sheen, and moons and suns, whose orbits interlaced, in sheens of glowing, rosy light. Out of this system into still another, and the last faded from sight again, and so on till I reached a great calm sea of golden light in which there were no suns nor no moons. I had passed the confines of all worlds, and they had all disappeared. Above, below, and all around was only this serene, golden atmosphere, unflecked by a single spot, undotted by a single island. It was the vast, open sea of Immortality, which never began, and shall never end. In that sea there was no limit to vision. In that sea all things became clear. Time dwindled to a speck, and Death was only an incident. Life was incomprehensible in this sea, but it seemed to me with my new vision that I had lived many lives before this one, and that I saw the shadows and indistinct forms of others yet to be lived. As I floated on, I suddenly rose out of the gold into a crystal atmosphere, which was no longer the solitude of the sea, but was peopled with beautiful forms which flew slowly past me with wondering eyes, and one or two there were, who gazed at me with an old familiar look I somehow seemed to remember in that Earth, millions of miles below me, but no sound came from their lips, and thus I questioned them in vain. As I rose higher, this crystal atmosphere was crowded with lustrous forms, and suddenly, in a blaze of almost blinding brightness, I found myself at the great gate of pearl, with St. Peter keeping watch and ward, the keys in his hands, as the old masters loved to paint him. He very courteously denied me admission, as I was only in a dream, and had not yet passed to that sleep which knows no dreams; but he allowed me to stand at the gate.
And as I stood there, several disembodied individuals who had formerly lived on Earth, applied for admission. Upon each application, St. Peter inquired in a loud voice within, if there was any objection. The first who came was a cartman. The usual inquiry was made, and as the cartman was about to enter, his horse, whom he had beaten and killed with cruelty, and whose sufferings had reached the throne of the infinite God, confronted him, and gazed at him with those eyes which had appealed to him for mercy in life, until he fled in dismay into the outer abyss. Another came, and a little bird, whom he had wantonly shot on Earth, to whom God had given life not without purpose, flew from a lotus plant to the gate, and confronted him. He, too, asked no questions and turned away. Another came, and, as he was about to enter, a pallid form with a gory wound on his forehead, suddenly appeared before him, and the now revealed murderer fled, shrieking, away from the gate. The next who came was a purse-proud individual, who had on Earth ground down his female employees, and paid them only the scantiest pittance, and as he was about to enter, a woman in rags, with pinched, wan features, who had died of neglect and starvation, met him and prevented his entrance. I could not begin to enumerate all who came to that gate and went away. One man's entrance was prevented by a butterfly, whom he, cruelly and in wanton sport, had torn to pieces to gratify his malicious idleness. Each one that had perpetrated a needless wrong, met that wrong at the gate, and it stood in his way. And I inquired of St. Peter if that was the universal law in Heaven, and he said to me: "The law of Heaven is love. The law of kindness is the law of love, and he loves the great God best who loves everything He has made—the beast of the field, the bird of the air, and the fish of the sea; and Heaven loves him best who loves all His works on the Earth, from the tiniest insect to his brother Man."
St. Peter ceased, for just then Beethoven and Mozart and Mendelssohn and Bach commenced to play a new quartette, which they had just composed together, and so sweet was that music that all the angels came flocking to hear it. Dante stood by listening, with Beatrice, for he no longer looked up to her in the shining heights, but beheld his "most gentle lady" face to face. Irma, who found repose on the Heights, and the other Beatrice, now kindred spirits, were there. Petrarch and Laura, and Abelard and Heloise, freed from all earthly taints, reclined upon a flowery bank and listened, and many others, whom I have not time to enumerate, who did great deeds upon Earth, and suffered great sorrows, and yet were nameless heroes there, found their great reward in these delights. As the music ceased and I was about to turn away, there was a little form which flew towards me and looked at me with unutterable love in her eyes, and stretched out her little white hands to me, and I recognized the eyes as those I had seen on Earth and the hands as those which I had seen crossed over a rose-bud no whiter than they, and the form as one we had laid away, when all the birds were singing and all the flowers were in bloom, in the populous Acre of God. And I would fain have gone to her, but as I sprang forward, she vanished slowly into the distance, still looking at me with the loving eyes, still stretching out the white hands, and, like a strain of beautiful music wafted over water in the night-watches, came the words to me, "Not yet." And the heavens vanished and I awoke upon the dim spot which men call Earth.
