Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 4).djvu/231



My story, Sir Pen, is, to put it briefly: I'm a blank sheet of paper that no one will write on.

No man understands in the least what I'm good for; They all want to use me for scattering sand with!

I was in a woman's keeping a silver-clasped book;— It's one and the same misprint to be either mad or sane!

Just fancy, what an exhausting life. To be a pen and never taste the edge of a knife!

[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!

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!

A pity for the world which, like other self-made things, Was reckoned by the Lord to be so excellently good.