Inside of fifteen minutes I was a mile on my way towards the cloud-banks and about a million people along with me. Most of us triedto fly, but some got crippled and nobody made a success of it. Sowe concluded to walk, for the present, till we had had some wingpractice.

Just as far as your eye could reach, there was swarms of clerks,running and bustling around, tricking out thousands of Yanks andMexicans and English and Arabs, and all sorts of people in theirnew outfits; and when they gave me my kit and I put on my halo andtook a look in the glass, I could have jumped over a house for joy,I was so happy. "Now THIS is something like!" says I. "Now," saysI, "I'm all right--show me a cloud."

I opened my eyes. Sure enough, it was a Pi Ute Injun I used toknow in Tulare County; mighty good fellow--I remembered being athis funeral, which consisted of him being burnt and the otherInjuns gauming their faces with his ashes and howling likewildcats. He was powerful glad to see me, and you may make up yourmind I was just as glad to see him, and feel that I was in theright kind of a heaven at last.

"A harp and a hymn-book, pair of wings and a halo, size 13, forCap'n Eli Stormfield, of San Francisco!--make him out a clean billof health, and let him in."

I hopped onto the carpet and held my breath and shut my eyes andwished I was in the booking-office of my own section. The verynext instant a voice I knew sung out in a business kind of a way--