One of the recent instances of satiric pictures of the hereafter is Lord Dunsany's _The Glittering Gate_, a one-act drama, where Bill and Jim, two burglars, crack the gate of heaven to get in. Sardonic laughter sounds while they are engaged in the effort to effect an entrance, and wondering what heaven will be like. Bill thinks that his mother will be there. "I don't know if they want a good mother in there who would be kind to the angels and sit and smile at them when they sing, and soothe them if they were cross. (Suddenly) Jim, they won't have brought me up against her, will they?" Jim: "It would be just like them to. Very like them." When the glittering gate of heaven swings open and the two toughs enter eagerly, they find nothing--absolutely nothing but empty space, and the sardonic laughter sounds in their ears. Bill cries out, "It is just like them! Very like them"! Was not this suggested by Rupert Brooke's poem, _Failure_? In the stories treating satirically or humorously of the future life we find the purpose in reality to be to image this life by illustration of the other. Eternity is described in order that we may understand time a little better. Angels and devils are made like men, to show mortal potentialities either way. The absurdities of mankind are illustrated as seen by angel eyes, the follies as satirized by devils. The tendency now is to treat supernatural life humorously, satirically or symbolically, rather than with the conventional methods of the past. Commonplace treatment of great subjects is liable to be unsatisfactory, and any serious treatment, other than symbolically simple, of heaven or hell seems flat after Dante and Milton.