Why he hasn’t played yet!
He looks around in a dazed way. Moritz will explain it, he tells himself wearily, Moritz always understands everything, and he lays his head down on the table beside him.
* * * * *
A young man hastens from among the orchestra players, his face pale and his teeth set, as he thinks of the disappointed old man behind the scenes. He thinks his father is weeping over his disappointment. “Father,” he cries, a sob in his voice, “it is all right, it shall be all right! There were so many encores, you see there was not time for all. The manager didn’t know and he left out the wrong thing. But you are to play to-morrow night, father, so it will be all right, you see,” and he smiles as he raises the dear old face, as he would have done that of a child. Upon the furrowed cheeks there are no tears, but on the face, chiseled by the stern hand of death ... a look of pained surprise ... bewildered disappointment ... the old man’s heart is broken.
THE DEVILS IN HEAVEN
(A legend of the Origin of the Daisy: German of Rudolf Baumbach: Translated for Short Stories by Albert Gleaves.)
It is usually thought that when good children die they go to heaven and become angels. But if anyone imagines that they live there with nothing to do but fly around, and play hide-and-seek in the clouds, he is very much mistaken.
The angel children have to go to school every day like the boys and girls on earth, three hours in the forenoon and two hours in the afternoon. They write with gold pencils on silver slates, and instead of the A B C books, they have story books with all sorts of gay-colored pictures. They do not study geography, for a knowledge of the earth would be of no use in heaven, neither do they learn the long and terrible multiplication table, because they live in Eternity.
The school teacher is Doctor Faust. He was a magistrate on earth, but on account of certain affairs that caused him a good deal of trouble and were very much talked about, he was required to teach school for three thousand years before he can have a vacation. On Wednesday and Saturday afternoon there is no school, and the children are permitted to play by themselves in the Milky Way; but on Sunday, which is the grand holiday, they can go outside of heaven and play in the big meadow. There they enjoy themselves more than all the rest of the week put together.