“I find him so,” said the book.
“You must be differently made from me,” said the reader.
“Let me tell you a fable,” said the book. “There were two men wrecked upon a desert island; one of them made believe he was at home, the other admitted——”
“O, I know your kind of fable,” said the reader. “They both died.”
“And so they did,” said the book. “No doubt of that. And everybody else.”
“That is true,” said the reader. “Push it a little further for this once. And when they were all dead?”
“They were in God’s hands, the same as before,” said the book.
“Not much to boast of, by your account,” cried the reader.
“Who is impious now?” said the book.
And the reader put him on the fire.