"'Where some, like magistrates, correct at home.....
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make loot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor:
He, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold.'
"Ain't that a fine description of bees a-workin'? 'The singing masons building roofs of gold!' Puts 'em right before yu', and is poetry without bein' foolish. His Holiness and his Grace. Well, they could not hire me for either o' those positions. How many religions are there?"
"All over the earth?"
"Yu' can begin with ourselves. Right hyeh at home I know there's Romanists, and Episcopals—"
"Two kinds!" I put in. "At least two of Episcopals."
"That's three. Then Methodists and Baptists, and—"
"Three Methodists!"
"Well, you do the countin'."
I accordingly did it, feeling my revolving memory slip cogs all the way round. "Anyhow, there are safely fifteen."
"Fifteen." He held this fact a moment. "And they don't worship a whole heap o' different gods like the ancients did?"
"Oh, no!"
"It's just the same one?"
"The same one."
The Virginian folded his hands over the horn of his saddle, and leaned forward upon them in contemplation of the wide, beautiful landscape.
