or Hell?' are all, as decisively as the philippic against King
Leopold, the diatribe against the Czar of Russia, essential vindications
of the moral principle. 'Was it Heaven or Hell?' in its simple pathos,
'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg' in its morally salutary irony,
present vital evidence of that same transvaluation of current moral
values which marks the age of Nietzsche and Ibsen, of Tolstoy and Shaw.
In that amusing, naive biography of her father, little Susy admits that
he could make exceedingly bright jokes and could be extremely amusing;
but she maintains that he was more interested in earnest books and
earnest conversation than in humorous ones. She pronounced him to be as
much of a Pholosopher (sic) as anything. And she hazards the opinion
that he might have done a great deal in this direction if only he had
studied when he was a boy!

Years ago, Mark Twain wrote a book which he called 'An Extract from
Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven'. For long he desisted from
publishing it because of his fear that its outspoken frankness would
appear irreverent and shock the sensibilities of the public. While his
villa of "Stormfield" was in course of erection several years ago, he
discovered that half of it was going to cost what he had expected to
pay for the whole house. His heart was set on having a loggia or
sun-parlour; and when it seemed that he would have to sacrifice this
apple of his eye through lack of funds, he threw discretion to the winds,
hauled out Captain Stormfield and made the old tar pay the piper. His
fears as to its reception were wholly unwarranted; for it was generously
enjoyed for its shrewd and vastly suggestive ideas on religion and heaven
as popularly taught nowadays from the pulpits. This book is full of a
keen and bluff common sense, cannily expressed in the words of an old
sea-captain whom Mark Twain had known intimately. It is only another
link in the chain of evidence which goes to prove that Mark Twain had
thought long and deeply upon the problematical nature of a future life.
It is, in essence, a _reductio ad absurdum_ of those professors of
religion who still preach a heaven of golden streets and pearly gates, of
idleness and everlasting psalm-singing, of restful and innocuous bliss.
Mark Twain wanted to point out the absurdity of taking the allegories and
the figurative language of the Bible literally. Of course everybody
called for a harp and a halo as soon as they re