nd out anything about the hereafter, has to
take it second handed, from some minister or deacon who has not seen it
himself, but has got his idea of it from some other fellow who maybe
dreamed it out.

Some deacon tells a sinner all about the orthodox hell, and the sinner
does not know whether to believe him or not. The deacon may have lied to
the sinner some time in a horse trade, or in selling him goods, and beat
him, and how does he know but the same deacon is playing a brace game on
him on the hereafter, or playing him for a sardine.

Now, if the people who advance these ideas of heaven or hell, had a
license to point to the moon, the nice, cool moon, as heaven, which would
be plausible, to say the least, and say that it was heaven, and prove it,
and could prove that the sun was the other place, which looks reasonable,
according to all we have heard about 'tother place, the moon would be so
full there would not be standing room, and they would have to turn
Republicans away, while the sun would be playing to empty benches, and
there would only be a few editors there who got in on passes.

Of course, during a cold winter, when the thermometer was forty
or fifty degrees below zero, and everybody was blocked in, and coal was up
to seventeen dollars a ton, the cause of religion would not prosper as
much as it would in summer, because when you talked to a sinner about
leading a different life or he would go to the sun, he would look at his
coal pile and say that he didn't care a continental how soon he got there,
but these discouragements would not be any greater than some that the
truly good people have to contend with now, and the average the year round
would be largely in favor of going to the moon.

The moon is very popular now, even, and if it is properly advertised as a
celestial paradise, where only good people could get their work in, and
where the wicked could not enter on any terms, there would be a great
desire to take the straight and narrow way to the moon, and the path to
the wicked sun would be grown over with sand burs, and scorched with lava,
and few would care to take passage by that route. Anyway, this thing is
worth looking into.

PREPARING FOR WAR.

The _Sun_ is no alarmist, but it can see in recent events what it believes
to be a preparation for war. All of the manufactories of fire arms and
cartridges are working night and day, and the Oneida community have just
received an order to immediat