"You, Herr Mohr? You're joking."
"Not at all, my dear sir. If you've only cared for the feet all your life, I've spent my best days in merely making heads, that is heads to notes, and also very good tails to them; but the best part was lacking,--the rascals had no hands and feet. You must know, my dear friend, I've just discovered the reason of this, and if I'm not mistaken, the case is precisely the same with you; we're both men of mediocre ability, Herr Feyertag. Once this vexed me very much, and an admirable lecture Papa Zaunkönig once gave, to prove that there must be such people in the world, was entirely lost upon me. Since then I've grown somewhat wiser. To be sure, it's disagreeable that we're neither of us remarkable men and only belong to the masses, helping to make up the crowd and to prepare the soil which supports the really gigantic human plants. But look around you at Nature--isn't it the same story everywhere? To one oak that lasts for centuries, there are hundreds of thousands of low bushes, which moulder and decay, that this historical representative of the species may grow to an unusual height. If we wish to fret or lament about it, of course we're at liberty to do so. It's only a pity, that there's no court before which we can bring our complaint, for it's useless, my dear sir, and therefore only injurious, first to ourselves because it sours the blood and poisons the wine, and secondly to our fellow men, whose happiness we spoil by our discontent."
"But progress, Herr Mohr, the aspiration toward higher things called propagandism--?"
Mohr stood still. "How old are you now, my dear friend?" he asked, pulling an over ripe ear of corn from the field through which they were just passing.
"Fifty-nine, Herr Mohr."
"An excellent age, Herr Feyertag, and I trust you may live to a still greater. And how tall are you now--I mean in feet and inches?"
"Five feet three inches, Herr Mohr."
"Do you expect to grow any more?"
"I? With my fifty-nine years?"
"But if you desired to do so, if you felt the aspiration to look over a file leader's shoulder?"