Fantastic Fables

An Office Seeker whom the President had ordered out of Washington was watering the homeward highway with his tears.

“Ah,” he said, “how disastrous is ambition! how unsatisfying its rewards! how terrible its disappointments!  Behold yonder peasant tilling his field in peace and contentment!  He rises with the lark, passes the day in wholesome toil, and lies down at night to pleasant dreams.  In the mad struggle for place and power he has no part; the roar of the strife reaches his ear like the distant murmur of the ocean.  Happy, thrice happy man!  I will approach him and bask in the sunshine of his humble felicity.  Peasant, all hail!”

Leaning upon his rake, the Peasant returned the salutation with a nod, but said nothing.

“My friend,” said the Office Seeker, “you see before you the wreck of an ambitious man — ruined by the pursuit of place and power.  This morning when I set out from the national capital — “

“Stranger,” the Peasant interrupted, “if you’re going back there soon maybe you wouldn’t mind using your influence to make me Postmaster at Smith’s Corners.”

The traveller passed on.