“If he is a fool, yes. But if he is bright, and ambitious and industrious, the knowledge he gains and the experiences he has, change his ways and thoughts and likings, and make him find his best pleasure in the company of people above that age; so he allows his body to take on that look of as many added years as he needs to make him comfortable and proper in that sort of society; he lets his body go on taking the look of age, according as he progresses, and by and by he will be bald and wrinkled outside, and wise and deep within.” “Babies the same?” “Babies the same. Laws, what asses we used to be, on earth, about these things! We said we’d be always young in heaven. We didn’t say _how_ young—we didn’t think of that, perhaps—that is, we didn’t all think alike, anyway. When I was a boy of seven, I suppose I thought we’d all be twelve, in heaven; when I was twelve, I suppose I thought we’d all be eighteen or twenty in heaven; when I was forty, I begun to go back; I remember I hoped we’d all be about _thirty_ years old in heaven. Neither a man nor a boy ever thinks the age he _has_ is exactly the best one—he puts the right age a few years older or a few years younger than he is. Then he makes that ideal age the general age of the heavenly people. And he expects everybody _to stick_ at that age—stand stock-still—and expects them to enjoy it!—Now just think of the idea of standing still in heaven! Think of a heaven made up entirely of hoop-rolling, marble-playing cubs of seven years!—or of awkward, diffident, sentimental immaturities of nineteen!—or of vigorous people of thirty, healthy-minded, brimming with ambition, but chained hand and foot to that one age and its limitations like so many helpless galley-slaves! Think of the dull sameness of a society made up of people all of one age and one set of looks, habits, tastes and feelings. Think how superior to it earth would be, with its variety of types and faces and ages, and the enlivening attrition of the myriad interests that come into pleasant collision in such a variegated society.” “Look here,” says I, “do you know what you’re doing?” “Well, what am I doing?” “You are making heaven pretty comfortable in one way, but you are playing the mischief with it in another.” “How d’you mean?” “Well,” I says, “take a young mother that’s lost her child, and—” “Sh!” he says. “Look!” It was a woman. Middle-aged, and had grizzled hair. She was walking slow, and her head was bent down, and her wings hanging limp and droopy; and she looked ever so tired, and was crying, poor thing! She passed along by, with her head down, that way, and the tears running down her face, and didn’t see us. Then Sandy said, low and gentle, and full of pity: