it's no difference about a few millions one way or t'other. Well,
now, you can see, yourself, that when you come to spread a little
dab of people like that over these hundreds of billions of miles of
American territory here in heaven, it is like scattering a ten-cent
box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and expecting to
find them again. You can't expect us to amount to anything in
heaven, and we DON'T--now that is the simple fact, and we have got
to do the best we can with it. The learned men from other planets
and other systems come here and hang around a while, when they are
touring around the Kingdom, and then go back to their own section
of heaven and write a book of travels, and they give America about
five lines in it. And what do they say about us? They say this
wilderness is populated with a scattering few hundred thousand
billions of red angels, with now and then a curiously complected
DISEASED one. You see, they think we whites and the occasional
nigger are Injuns that have been bleached out or blackened by some
leprous disease or other--for some peculiarly rascally SIN, mind
you. It is a mighty sour pill for us all, my friend--even the
modestest of us, let alone the other kind, that think they are
going to be received like a long-lost government bond, and hug
Abraham into the bargain. I haven't asked you any of the
particulars, Captain, but I judge it goes without saying--if my
experience is worth anything--that there wasn't much of a hooraw
made over you when you arrived--now was there?"

"Don't mention it, Sandy," says I, coloring up a little; "I
wouldn't have had the family see it for any amount you are a mind
to name. Change the subject, Sandy, change the subject."

"Well, do you think of settling in the California department of