"Now, when you gets hold on a bit like that, you don't want to go dressin' on it up. You just puts it in your pipe and smokes it, and then it does you good! That's it!
"There's was once a Salvation Army man as come and asked me if I accepted the Gospel. 'Yes, my lad,' I sez; 'I've accepted it—but only as a thing to smoke, not as a thing to go bangin' about. Put your drum in the cup-board, my lad,' I sez; 'and put the Gospel in your pipe, and you'll be a wiser man.'
"As for all this 'ere argle-bargling about them big things, there's nowt in it, you take my word for that! The little things for argle-bargle, the big uns' for smokin', that's what I sez! Put the big 'uns in your pipe, sir; put 'em in your pipe, and smoke 'em!"
These last words were spoken in tones of great solemnity and repeated several times.
"That's good advice, Snarley," I said; "but the writer you just quoted hadn't got a pipe to put 'em in."
"Didn't need one," said Snarley; "there weren't so many talkin' men about in his time. Folks then were born right end up to begin wi', and didn't need to smoke 'emselves round.
"Ay, ay, sir, I often think about them old days—and it's the Bible as set me thinkin' on 'em. That's the only old book as I ever read. And there's some staggerers in it, I can tell you! Wonderful! If some o' them old Bible men could come back and hear the parsons talkin' about 'em—eh, my word, there would be a rumpus! I'd like to see it, that I would! I'll tell you one thing, sir—and don't you forget it—you'll never understand the old Bible, leastways not the best bits in it, so long as you only wants to talk about 'em, same as a man allus wants to do when he's stuck inside his own skin. Now, there's that bit about the heavens, as I just give you—that's a bit o' real all-right, isn't it?"
"Yes," I said, "it is."
"Well, can't you see as the man as said them words had just let himself out to the other end o' the line and was lookin' back? He'd got himself right into the middle o' the bigness o' things, and that's what you can't do as long as you keeps inside your own skin. But I tell you that when you gets outside for the first time it gives you a pretty shakin' up. You begins to think what a fool you've been all your life long."
Beyond such statements as these, repeated many times and in many forms, I could get no light on Snarley's dealings with the heavens.