Peer.
My story, Sir Pen, is, to put it briefly:
I'm a blank sheet of paper that no one will write on.
Hussein.
No man understands in the least what I'm good for;
They all want to use me for scattering sand with!
Peer.
I was in a woman's keeping a silver-clasped book;—
It's one and the same misprint to be either mad or sane!
Hussein.
Just fancy, what an exhausting life.
To be a pen and never taste the edge of a knife!
Peer.
[With a high leap.]
Just fancy, for a reindeer to leap from on high—
To fall and fall—and never feel the ground beneath your hoofs!
Hussein.
A knife! I am blunt;—quick, mend me and slit me!
The world will go to ruin if they don't mend my point for me!
Peer.
A pity for the world which, like other self-made things,
Was reckoned by the Lord to be so excellently good.
