It swarms with a mean kind of leather-headed mud-colored
angels--and your nearest white neighbor is likely to be a million
miles away. WHAT A MAN MOSTLY MISSES, IN HEAVEN, IS COMPANY--
company of his own sort and color and language. I have come near
settling in the European part of heaven once or twice on that
account."
"Well, why didn't you, Sandy?"
"Oh, various reasons. For one thing, although you SEE plenty of
whites there, you can't understand any of them, hardly, and so you
go about as hungry for talk as you do here. I like to look at a
Russian or a German or an Italian--I even like to look at a
Frenchman if I ever have the luck to catch him engaged in anything
that ain't indelicate--but LOOKING don't cure the hunger--what you
want is talk."
"Well, there's England, Sandy--the English district of heaven."
"Yes, but it is not so very much better than this end of the
heavenly domain. As long as you run across Englishmen born this
side of three hundred years ago, you are all right; but the minute
you get back of Elizabeth's time the language begins to fog up, and
the further back you go the foggier it gets. I had some talk with
one Langland and a man by the name of Chaucer--old-time poets--but
it was no use, I couldn't quite understand them, and they couldn't
quite understand me. I have had letters from them since, but it is
such broken English I can't make it out.
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