This young snob was just of age--he was six or seven
thousand of his days old--say two million of our years--and he had
all the puppy airs that belong to that time of life--that turning-
point when a person has got over being a boy and yet ain't quite a
man exactly. If it had been anywhere else but in heaven, I would
have given him a piece of my mind. Well, anyway, Billings had the
grandest reception that has been seen in thousands of centuries,
and I think it will have a good effect. His name will be carried
pretty far, and it will make our system talked about, and maybe our
world, too, and raise us in the respect of the general public of
heaven. Why, look here--Shakespeare walked backwards before that
tailor from Tennessee, and scattered flowers for him to walk on,
and Homer stood behind his chair and waited on him at the banquet.
Of course that didn't go for much THERE, amongst all those big
foreigners from other systems, as they hadn't heard of Shakespeare
or Homer either, but it would amount to considerable down there on
our little earth if they could know about it. I wish there was
something in that miserable spiritualism, so we could send them
word. That Tennessee village would set up a monument to Billings,
then, and his autograph would outsell Satan's. Well, they had
grand times at that reception--a small-fry noble from Hoboken told
me all about it--Sir Richard Duffer, Baronet.
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