self-satisfied--in fact, it is not sufficiently developed for an
old raven--at your service!"

"Am I wrong, then, in presuming that a man is superior to a bird?"

"That is as it may be. We do not waste our intellects in
generalising, but take man or bird as we find him.--I think it
is now my turn to ask you a question!"

"You have the best of rights," I replied, "in the fact that you
CAN do so!"

"Well answered!" he rejoined. "Tell me, then, who you are--if
you happen to know."

"How should I help knowing? I am myself, and must know!"

"If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody
else; but do you know that you are yourself? Are you sure you
are not your own father?--or, excuse me, your own fool?--Who are
you, pray?"

I became at once aware that I could give him no notion of who
I was. Indeed, who was I? It would be no answer to say I was who!
Then I understood that I did not know myself, did not know what I
was, had no grounds on which to determine that I was one and not
another. As for the name I went by in my own world, I had forgotten
it, and did not care to recall it, for it meant nothing, and what
it might be was plainly of no consequence here. I had indeed almost
forgotten that there it was a custom for everybody to have a name!