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Not even heaven was safe from the comprehensive survey of his satire; and 'Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven' is a remarkable document, a forthright lay sermon, the conventional idea of heaven, the theologic conception of eternity, as heedlessly taught from the pulpit, thrown into comic, yet profoundly significant, relief against the background of the common-sense of a deeply human, thoroughly modern intelligence.

I particularly remember his reading me here his first rough sketch of Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, with the real name of the captain, whom I knew already from his many stories about him. We had a peculiar pleasure in looking off from the high windows on the pretty Hartford landscape, and down from them into the tops of the trees clothing the hillside by which his house stood.

I particularly remember his reading me here his first rough sketch of Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, with the real name of the captain, whom I knew already from his many stories about him. We had a peculiar pleasure in looking off from the high windows on the pretty Hartford landscape, and down from them into the tops of the trees clothing the hillside by which his house stood.

The germ of Mark Twain's humour, wherever it is found, from 'The Innocents Abroad' to 'The Connecticut Yankee' and 'Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven', is found in the mental reactions resulting from stupendous and glaring contrasts. First it is the Wild Western humorist, primitive and untamed, running amuck through the petrified formulas and encrusted traditions of Europe.

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.