[The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link book
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

CHAPTER 7
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Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin's head.

Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him--caring whether he is happy or isn't, or whether he is wealthy or poor, or whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, or whether his mother is sick or well, or whether he is looked up to in society or not, or whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, or whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, or whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land?
These things can never be important to the elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them.

Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant.

The elephant has nothing against the spider--he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man.

The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent.


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