"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. Not a solitary commoner ever has the luck to see a
reception of a prophet, I can tell you. All the nobility, and all
the patriarchs and prophets--every last one of them--and all the
archangels, and all the princes and governors and viceroys, were
there,--and NO small fry--not a single one. And mind you, I'm not
talking about only the grandees from OUR world, but the princes and
patriarchs and so on from ALL the worlds that shine in our sky, and
from billions more that belong in systems upon systems away outside
of the one our sun is in. There were some prophets and patriarchs
there that ours ain't a circumstance to, for rank and
illustriousness and all that. Some were from Jupiter and other
worlds in our own system, but the most celebrated were three poets,
Saa, Bo and Soof, from great planets in three different and very
remote systems. These three names are common and familiar in every
nook and corner of heaven, clear from one end of it to the other--
fully as well known as the eighty Supreme Archangels, in fact--
where as our Moses, and Adam, and the rest, have not been heard of
outside of our world's little corner of heaven, except by a few
very learned men scattered here and there--and they always spell
their names wrong, and get the performances of one mixed up with