"Ah!" sighed a three-legged stool, "if I had only been a quadruped, I
should have been happy as the day is long--which, on the twenty-first
of June, would be considerable felicity for a stool."
"Ha! look at me!" said a toadstool; "consider my superior privation,
and be content with your comparatively happy lot."
"I don't discern," replied the first, "how the contemplation of
unipedal misery tends to alleviate tripedal wretchedness."
"You don't, eh!" sneered the toadstool. "You mean, do you, to fly in
the face of all the moral and social philosophers?"
"Not unless some benefactor of his race shall impel me."
"H'm! I think Zambri the Parsee is the man for that kindly office, my
dear."
This final fable teaches that he is.