"No--anyway, not the hoop kind. The archangels and the upper-class
patriarchs wear a finer thing than that. It is a round, solid,
splendid glory of gold, that is blinding to look at. You have
often seen a patriarch in a picture, on earth, with that thing on--
you remember it?--he looks as if he had his head in a brass
platter. That don't give you the right idea of it at all--it is
much more shining and beautiful."

"Did you talk with those archangels and patriarchs, Sandy?"

"Who--_I_? Why, what can you be thinking about, Stormy? I ain't
worthy to speak to such as they."

"Is Talmage?"

"Of course not. You have got the same mixed-up idea about these
things that everybody has down there. I had it once, but I got
over it. Down there they talk of the heavenly King--and that is
right--but then they go right on speaking as if this was a republic
and everybody was on a dead level with everybody else, and
privileged to fling his arms around anybody he comes across, and be
hail-fellow-well-met with all the elect, from the highest down.
How tangled up and absurd that is! How are you going to have a
republic under a king? How are you going to have a republic at
all, where the head of the government is absolute, holds his place
forever, and has no parliament, no council to meddle or make in his
affairs, nobody voted for, nobody elected, nobody in the whole
universe with a voice in the government, nobody asked to take a
hand in its matters, and nobody ALLOWED to do it? Fine republic,