All the millions went down on their knees, and
stared, and looked glad, and burst out into a joyful kind of
murmurs. They said,--
"Two archangels!--that is splendid. Who can the others be?"
The archangels gave the barkeeper a stiff little military bow; the
two old men rose; one of them said, "Moses and Esau welcome thee!"
and then all the four vanished, and the thrones were empty.
The barkeeper looked a little disappointed, for he was calculating
to hug those old people, I judge; but it was the gladdest and
proudest multitude you ever saw--because they had seen Moses and
Esau. Everybody was saying, "Did you see them?--I did--Esau's side
face was to me, but I saw Moses full in the face, just as plain as
I see you this minute!"
The procession took up the barkeeper and moved on with him again,
and the crowd broke up and scattered. As we went along home, Sandy
said it was a great success, and the barkeeper would have a right
to be proud of it forever. And he said we were in luck, too; said
we might attend receptions for forty thousand years to come, and
not have a chance to see a brace of such grand moguls as Moses and
Esau. We found afterwards that we had come near seeing another
patriarch, and likewise a genuine prophet besides, but at the last
moment they sent regrets. Sandy said there would be a monument put
up there, where Moses and Esau had stood, with the date and
circumstances, and all about the whole business, and travellers
would come for thousands of years and gawk at it, and climb over
it, and scribble their names on it.
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