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The story follows Captain Elias Stormfield on his decades long cosmic journey to Heaven; his accidental misplacement after racing a comet; his short-lived interest in singing and playing the harp (generated by his preconceptions of heaven); and the general obsession of souls with the celebrities of Heaven such as Adam, Moses, and Elijah, who ...
Sep 1, 1997 · In the story, Captain Stormfield recounts the peculiar experiences he undergoes upon arriving in Heaven, where he encounters a bureaucratic and somewhat chaotic system attempting to organize the souls who have passed on.
- Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
- English
- Transcribed by David Price
- “Her Own Wax Figger”
- Continued to Tinker with It
- “For Show, Not For Use”
- “A Good Deal Surprised”
Just like on earth — which, in heaven, for some reason, is known as Wart — everyone has to work. The difference, Sam explains, is that you get to choose your job. Which, the Captain, says is reasonable: “Plenty of work, and the kind you hanker after; no more pain, no more suffering—” But Sam, again, sets him straight:
All of this is explained in Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, the last book that Mark Twain published in his lifetime. It’s a short book, just 121 pages in a small volume, reproduced in full in the 1996 edition from the Oxford Mark Twain series and accompanied by three commentaries. In his afterword, James A. Miller writes that the...
Still, there is much that is delightful inExtract. Such as the lowdown that the Captain gets from “an old bald-headed angel by the name of Sandy McWilliams…from somewhere in New Jersey.” The Captain has been having a heck of a time getting the hang of his wings, and, finally, he realizes that Sandy and many others don’t wear wings. “I’ve been makin...
The Captain finds out from Sandy that white people of European stock are relatively few and far between in the United States section of the Earth (Wart) section of heaven. That’s because, for many centuries before Columbus landed on the New World, Native Americans were going to heaven. In fact, Sandy says that “the main charm of heaven” is that “th...
Well, you try it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands. Why, Stormfield, a man like you, that had been active and stirring all his life, would go mad in six months in a heaven where he hadn't anything to do. Heaven is the very last place to come to REST in,--and don't you be afraid to bet on that!" Says I--
May 15, 2011 · The story follows Captain Elias Stormfield on his extremely long cosmic journey to heaven. It deals with the obsession of souls with the "celebrities" of heaven, like Adam and Moses, who according to Twain become as distant to most people in heaven as living celebrities are on Earth.
The story follows Captain Stormfield on his extremely long cosmic journey to heaven, his accidental misplacement, his short-lived interest in singing and playing the harp, and the obsession of souls with the "celebrities" of heaven, like Adam and Moses, whom, according to Twain, become as distant to most people in heaven as living celebrities ...
Mar 15, 2016 · Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (1909) by Mark Twain. Chapter I. →. sister projects: Wikipedia article, Commons gallery, Commons category, Wikidata item.
