a good joke? Well,
with the highest respect to Professor Doctor Miles Standish, the Puritan
Hearse-hound, and Professor Doctor Elder Brewster, the Plymouth Dr.
Frank Crane--BLAA!"

She shrieked this last in their faces and fell lifeless at their feet.

She never recovered consciousness; an hour later she died. An overdose
of the medicine had been too much for her weak heart.

"Poor William," comforted Elder Brewster, "you must be brave. You will
miss her sorely. But console yourself with the thought that it was for
the best. Priscilla has gone where she will always be happy. She has at
last found that bliss which she searched for in vain on earth."

"Yes William," added Miles Standish. "Priscilla has now found eternal
joy."

VIII

Heaven.

Smug saints with ill-fitting halos and imitation wings, singing
meaningless hymns which Priscilla had heard countless times before.

Sleek prosaic angels flying aimlessly around playing stale songs on
sickly yellow harps.

Three of the harps badly out of tune; two strings missing on another.

Moses, a Jew.

Methuselah, another Jew. Old and unshaven.

Priscilla threw herself on a cloud, sobbing.

"Well, sister, what seems to be the matter here?"

She looked up; she saw a sympathetic stranger looking down at her.

"Because you know, sister," he went on, "if you don't like it here you
can always go back any time you want to."

"Do you mean to say," gasped Priscilla, "that I can return to earth?"

"You certainly can," said the stranger. "I'm sort of manager here, and
whenever you see any particular part of the earth you'd like to live in,
you just let me know and I'll arrange it."

He smiled and was gone.

IX

It was two hundred years before Priscilla Kennicott definitely decided
that she could stand it no longer in heaven; it was another hundred
years before she located a desirable place on earth to return to.

She finally selected a small town in the American northwest, far from
the Puritan-tainted Plymouth; a small town in the midst of fields of
beautiful waving grain; a small town free from the artificiality of
large cities; a small town named Gopher Prairie.

She made known her desire to the manager; she said goodby to a small
group of friends who had gathered to see her off; she heard the sound
of the eternal harp playing and hymn singing grow gradually fainter and
fainter; she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again she found herself on Main Stree