Further, all sane people detest noise.

    All people, sane or insane, like to have variety in their lives. 
    Monotony quickly wearies them.

Now then, you have the facts.  You know what men don’t enjoy.  Well, they have invented a heaven, out of their own heads, all by themselves; guess what it is like?  In fifteen hundred years you couldn’t do it.  They have left out the very things they care for most their dearest pleasures—­and replaced them with prayer!

In man’s heaven everybody sings.  There are no exceptions.  The man who did not sing on earth sings there; the man who could not sing on earth sings there.  Thus universal singing is not casual, not occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on all day long and every day during a stretch of twelve hours.  And everybody stays where on earth the place would be empty in two hours.  The singing is of hymns alone.  Nay, it is one hymn alone.  The words are always the same in number—­they are only about a dozen—­there is no rhyme—­there is no poetry.  “Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna unto the highest!” and a few such phrases constitute the whole service.

Meantime, every person is playing on a harp!  Consider the deafening hurricane of sound.  Consider, further, it is a praise service—­a service of compliment, flattery, adulation.  Do you ask who it is that is willing to endure this strange compliment, this insane compliment, and who not only endures it but likes it, enjoys it, requires it, commands it?  Hold your breath:  It is God!  This race’s God I mean—­their own pet invention.

Most of the ideas presented in this his last commentary on human absurdities were new only as to phrasing.  He had exhausted the topic long ago, in one way or another; but it was one of the themes in which he never lost interest.  Many subjects became stale to him at last; but the curious invention called man remained a novelty to him to the end.

From my note-book: 

October 25.  I am constantly amazed at his knowledge of history—­all history—­religious, political, military.  He seems to have read everything in the world concerning Rome, France, and England particularly.

Last night we stopped playing billiards while he reviewed, in the most vivid and picturesque phrasing, the reasons of Rome’s decline.  Such a presentation would have enthralled any audience—­I could not help feeling a great pity that he had not devoted some of his public effort to work of that sort.  No one could have equaled him at it.  He concluded with some comments on the possibility of America following Rome’s example, though he thought the vote of the people would always, or at least for a long period, prevent imperialism.

November 1.  To-day he has been absorbed in his old interest in shorthand.  “It is the only rational alphabet,” he declared.  “All this spelling reform