I'm gonna take a guess at this: Poor old Hadleysburg was in such
a state of dogmatic bliss that it could only understand form, not
content.  That being the case, Hadleysburg could not conceptualize
'who' - not about a stranger, or even about itself.  To illustrate: a
bunch of cannibals might well say, "the missionary that came to dinner" -
at least 'Christian cannibals' would... it being easy to make bar-b-q
from a 'that', while being far more difficult to make it from a 'who'.

Unfortunately for Hadleysburg, the stranger (missionary) was the guy
who ran the bar-b-q.  :)

No matter MT's reason, though, I'm sure it was a good one.

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