in the government, nobody asked to take a hand in its matters, and nobody allowed to do it? Fine republic, ain’t it?”
“Well, yes – it is a little different from the idea I had – but I thought I might go around and get acquainted with the grandees, anyway – not exactly splice the main-brace with them, you know, but shake hands and pass the time of day.”
“Could Tom, Dick and Harry call on the Cabinet of Russia and do that? – on Prince Gortschakoff, for instance?”
“I reckon not, Sandy.”
“Well, this is Russia – only more so. There’s not the shadow of a republic about it anywhere. There are ranks, here. There are viceroys, princes, governors, sub-governors, sub-sub-governors, and a hundred orders of nobility, grading along down from grand-ducal archangels, stage by stage, till the general level is struck, where there ain’t any titles. Do you know what a prince of the blood is, on earth?”
“No.”
“Well, a prince of the blood don’t belong to the royal family exactly, and he don’t belong to the mere nobility of the kingdom; he is lower than the one, and higher than t’other. That’s about the position of the patriarchs and prophets here. There’s some mighty high nobility here – people that you and I ain’t worthy to polish sandals for – and they ain’t worthy to polish sandals for the patriarchs and prophets. That gives you a kind of an idea of their rank, don’t it? You begin to see how high up they are, don’t you? just to get a two-minute glimpse of one of them is a thing for a body to remember and tell about for a thousand years. Why, Captain, just think of this: if Abraham was to set his foot down here by this door, there would be a railing set up around that foot-track right away, and a shelter put over it, and people would flock here from all over heaven, for hundreds and hundreds of years, to look at it. Abraham is one of the parties that Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn, is going to embrace, and kiss, and weep on, when he comes. He wants to lay in a good stock of tears, you know, or five to one he will go dry before he gets a chance to do it.”
“Sandy,” says I, “I had an idea that I was going to be equals with everybody here, too, but I will let that drop. It don’t matter, and I am plenty happy enough anyway.”
“Captain, you are happier than you would be, the other way. These old patriarchs and prophets have got ages the start of you; they know more in two minutes than you know in a year. Did you ever try to have a sociable improving-time discussing winds, and currents and variations of compass with an undertaker?”
“I get your idea, Sandy. He couldn’t interest me. He would be an ignoramus in such things – he would bore me, and I would bore him.”
“You have got it. You would bore the patriarchs when you talked, and when they talked they would shoot over your head. By and by you would say, ‘Good morning, your Eminence, I will call again’ – but you wouldn’t. Did you ever ask the slush-boy to come up in the cabin and take dinner with you?”
“I get your drift again, Sandy. I wouldn’t be used to such grand people as the patriarchs and prophets, and I would be sheepish and tongue-tied in their company, and mighty glad to get out of it. Sandy, which is the highest rank, patriarch or prophet?”
“Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs. The newest prophet, even, is of a sight more consequence than the oldest patriarch. Yes, sir, Adam himself has to walk behind Shakespeare.”
“Was Shakespeare a prophet?”
“Of course he was; and so was Homer, and heaps more. But Shakespeare and the rest have to walk behind a common tailor from Tennessee, by the name of Billings; and behind a horse-doctor named Sakka, from Afghanistan. Jeremiah, and Billings and Buddha walk together, side by side, right behind a crowd from planets not in our astronomy; next come a dozen or two from Jupiter and other worlds; next come Daniel, and Sakka and Confucius; next a lot from systems outside of ours; next come Ezekiel, and Mahomet, Zoroaster, and a knife-grinder from ancient Egypt; then there is a long string, and after them, away down toward the bottom, come Shakespeare and Homer, and a shoemaker named Marais, from the back settlements of France.”
“Have they really rung in Mahomet and all those other heathens?”
“Yes – they all had their message, and they all get their reward. The man who don’t get his reward on earth, needn’t bother – he will get it here, sure.”
“But why did they throw off on Shakespeare, that way, and put him away down there below those shoemakers and horse-doctors and knife-grinders – a lot of people nobody ever heard of?”
“That is the heavenly justice of it – they warn’t rewarded according to their deserts, on earth, but here they get their rightful rank. That tailor Billings, from Tennessee, wrote poetry that Homer and Shakespeare couldn’t begin to come up to; but nobody would print it, nobody read it but his neighbors, an ignorant lot, and they laughed at it. Whenever the village had a drunken frolic and a dance, they would drag him in and crown him with cabbage leaves, and pretend to bow down to him; and one night when he was sick and nearly starved to death, they had him out and crowned him, and then they rode him on a rail about the village, and everybody followed along, beating tin pans and yelling. Well, he died before morning. He wasn’t ever expecting to go to heaven, much less that there was going to be any fuss made over him, so I reckon he was a good deal surprised when the reception broke on him.”
“Was you there, Sandy?”
“Bless you, no!”
“Why? Didn’t you know it was going to come off?”
“Well, I judge I did. It was the talk of these realms – not for a day, like this barkeeper business, but for twenty years before the man died.”
“Why the mischief didn’t you go, then?”
“Now how you talk! The like of me go meddling around at the reception of a prophet? A mudsill like me trying to push in and help receive an awful grandee like Edward J. Billings? Why, I should have been laughed at for a billion miles around. I shouldn’t ever heard the last of it.”
“Well, who did go, then?”
“Mighty few people that you and I will ever get a chance to see, Captain. Not a solitary commoner ever has the luck to see a reception of a prophet, I can tell you. All the nobility, and all the patriarchs and prophets – every last one of them – and all the archangels, and all the princes and governors and viceroys, were there, – and no small fry – not a single one. And mind you, I’m not talking about only the grandees from our world, but the princes and patriarchs and so on from all the worlds that shine in our sky, and from billions more that belong in systems upon systems away outside of the one our sun is in. There were some prophets and patriarchs there that ours ain’t a circumstance to, for rank and illustriousness and all that. Some were from Jupiter and other worlds in our own system, but the most celebrated were three poets, Saa, Bo and Soof, from great planets in three different and very remote systems. These three names are common and familiar in every nook and corner of heaven, clear from one end of it to the other – fully as well known as the eighty Supreme Archangels, in fact – whereas our Moses, and Adam, and the rest, have not been heard of outside of our world’s little corner of heaven, except by a few very learned men scattered here and there – and they always spell their names wrong, and get the performances of one mixed up with the doings of another, and they almost always locate them simply in our solar system, and think that is enough without going into little details such as naming the particular world they are from. It is like a learned Hindoo showing off how much he knows
