Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
    Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
    Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
    Ebook80 pages1 hour

    Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

    By Mark Twain

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 1, 1981
    Author

    Mark Twain

    Mark Twain, who was born Samuel L. Clemens in Missouri in 1835, wrote some of the most enduring works of literature in the English language, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was his last completed book—and, by his own estimate, his best. Its acquisition by Harper & Brothers allowed Twain to stave off bankruptcy. He died in 1910. 

    Read more from Mark Twain

    Related to Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Feb 26, 2021

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Feb 26, 2021

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Mar 24, 2022

      It Happened to Me…
      7 min read

    • Article

      Bard In The Woods

      Nov 30, 2020

      Bard In The Woods
      4 min read

    • Article

      Rock Hard

      Sep 10, 2020

      Rock Hard
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Lost Story

      Oct 13, 2022

      The Lost Story
      8 min read

    • Article

      Into Oblivion

      May 13, 2021

      Into Oblivion
      8 min read

    • Article

      Sabotage In Stormy Seas

      May 23, 2019

      THE SHADOW IN THE SANDS First published by Headline in 1998. Currently available via Kindle, £4.64 Gloria was thundering under bare poles into a night no less black than when I had last seen it. The wind felt softer, which is always the way when that

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ocean Awakening

      Apr 8, 2021

      Of all the yachting books I have read, not one starts like The Boat They Laughed At, by the inimitable Max Liberson: ‘I tapped the large man on the shoulder, interrupting his current occupation which was hitting the security guard repeatedly on the h

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Seal Of Approval

      Dec 2, 2020

      The Seal Of Approval
      4 min read

    • Article

      The thirteenth Day

      Apr 14, 2022

      The thirteenth Day
      31 min read

    • Article

      Running For Shelter

      Jun 8, 2023

      Running For Shelter
      8 min read

    • Article

      If Sheep COULD FLY…

      Aug 3, 2022

      If Sheep COULD FLY…
      6 min read

    • Article

      Boom!

      Oct 4, 2017

      ‘It was maybe a little bit bigger than we thought.’ You could hear it all the way down Sunset Strip. Even with the stezza cranked and the windows rolled up tight against the frost. A low, shuddery growl, reverbing against the sound of the engine, rum

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Sea Has A poker Face

      Jun 20, 2019

      The Sea Has A poker Face
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Passage To Greenland

      Oct 16, 2018

      A Passage To Greenland
      8 min read

    • Article

      Taken By Surprise

      Jan 17, 2018

      Taken By Surprise
      5 min read

    • Article

      Baptism Of Fire

      Sep 27, 2019

      Baptism Of Fire
      6 min read

    • Article

      Tempting Fate

      May 11, 2023

      Read about sailing all your life and you won’t find another book quite like Bound for Cape Horn, with its interesting subtitle Skills for Expedition Cruising. Any suggestion this might be yet another text book on how to do it is dissipated in the ope

      7 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Jun 30, 2023

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Jun 30, 2023

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      I Hate To Miss A Comet

      Jul 29, 2020

      TWENTY years ago, I camped out in the Sahara desert with a couple of Libyans and I remember two things: the almost painful brightness of the night sky, unobscured by wisp of cloud or earthly light, and the small rocks that I rather nervously supposed

      2 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2021

      The light from the full moon lent a silky, glacial sheen to the towering front of the cloud, which stretched off to the horizon in both directions. I stood transfixed as it made its way down the street toward me at a little over the town’s speed limi

      3 min read

    • Article

      In Search Of ...

      Apr 1, 2019

      Fifteen-year-old Tay lives on Rannoch, a distant planet covered with water, where undersea pods or living chambers provide life support for up to three people—usually two adults and one child. Tay learns that her parents are expecting another child a

      8 min read

    • Article

      In Praise of Captains

      Oct 27, 2020

      In Praise of Captains
      3 min read

    Reviews for Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

    4/5

    25 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      A satirical look at heaven, who gets in and what goes on. A brief humorous sketch that is enjoyable but not one of Twain's best.
    • 4/5
      Amusing. I prefer Twain's view of heaven to that of any organized religion now extant. Twain just makes so much more sense. His heaven sounds way more kindly, realistic and way more fun.
    • 5/5
      This is the shortened version of the story, finally published by Twain after years of tinkering, and I am rereading it for the umpteenth time. Of course, I prefer the longer version compiled from his notes by his first biographer and found in an out-of-print book called Report from Paradise, published by Harper & Brothers in 1952. Many versions are now available so grab one and read this story, short or long version!! It is my very favorite. LOVE IT!
    • 4/5
      Not as well-known as some of his other works and I was exhausted when reading it, so I can't recall the ending, but I did enjoy it as I read it in bits and pieces.

    Book preview

    Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven - Mark Twain

    The Project Gutenberg eBook, Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to

    Heaven, by Mark Twain, Illustrated by Albert Levering

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

    Author: Mark Twain

    Release Date: February 14, 2013  [eBook #1044]

    [This file was first posted on September 26, 1997]

    Language: English

    Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

    ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXTRACT FROM CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S

    VISIT TO HEAVEN***

    Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

    Extract from

    Captain Stormfield’s

    Visit to Heaven

    BY

    Mark Twain

    NEW YORK AND LONDON

    HARPER & BROTHERS

    Copyright, 1909, by Mark Twain Company

    Printed in the United States of America

    CHAPTER I

    Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little anxious.  Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time, like a comet.  Like a comet!  Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them!  Of course there warn’t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a brush together.  But it was generally pretty one-sided, because I sailed by them the same as if they were standing still.  An ordinary comet don’t make more than about 200,000 miles a minute.  Of course when I came across one of that sort—like Encke’s and Halley’s comets, for instance—it warn’t anything but just a flash and a vanish, you see.  You couldn’t rightly call it a race.  It was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraph despatch.  But after I got outside of our astronomical system, I used to flush a comet occasionally that was something like.  We haven’t got any such comets—ours don’t begin.  One night I was swinging along at a good round gait, everything taut and trim, and the wind in my favor—I judged I was going about a million miles a minute—it might have been more, it couldn’t have been less—when I flushed a most uncommonly big one about three points off my starboard bow.  By his stern lights I judged he was bearing about northeast-and-by-north-half-east.  Well, it was so near my course that I wouldn’t throw away the chance; so I fell off a point, steadied my helm, and went for him.  You should have heard me whiz, and seen the electric fur fly!  In about a minute and a half I was fringed out with an electrical nimbus that flamed around for miles and miles and lit up all space like broad day.  The comet was burning blue in the distance, like a sickly torch, when I first sighted him, but he begun to grow bigger and bigger as I crept up on him.  I slipped up on him so fast that when I had gone about 150,000,000 miles I was close enough to be swallowed up in the phosphorescent glory of his wake, and I couldn’t see anything for the glare.  Thinks I, it won’t do to run into him, so I shunted to one side and tore along.  By and by I closed up abreast of his tail.  Do you know what it was like?  It was like a gnat closing up on the continent of America.  I forged along.  By and by I had sailed along his coast for a little upwards of a hundred and fifty million miles, and then I could see by the shape of him that I hadn’t even got up to his waistband yet.  Why, Peters, we don’t know anything about comets, down here.  If you want to see comets that are comets, you’ve got to go outside of our solar system—where there’s room for them, you understand.  My friend, I’ve seen comets out there that couldn’t even lay down inside the orbits of our noblest comets without their tails hanging over.

    Well, I boomed along another hundred and fifty million miles, and got up abreast his shoulder, as you may say.  I was feeling pretty fine, I tell you; but just then I noticed the officer of the deck come to the side and hoist his glass in my direction.  Straight off I heard him sing out—Below there, ahoy!  Shake her up, shake her up!  Heave on a hundred million billion tons of brimstone!

    Ay-ay, sir!

    Pipe the stabboard watch!  All hands on deck!

    Ay-ay, sir!

    Send two hundred thousand million men aloft to shake out royals and sky-scrapers!

    Ay-ay, sir!

    Hand the stuns’ls!  Hang out every rag you’ve got!  Clothe her from stem to rudder-post!

    Ay-ay, sir!

    In about a second I begun to see I’d woke up a pretty ugly customer, Peters.  In less than ten seconds that comet was just a blazing cloud of red-hot canvas.  It was piled up

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1