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.
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