Explore "The Pandean Pipes" by Anatole France on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THREE children of the same village, Pierre, Jacques, and Jean, stand staring, side by side in a row, where they look for all the world like a mouth-organ or Pandean Pipes, only with three pipes instead of seven. Pierre, to the left, is a tall lad; Jean, to the right, is a short child; Jacques, who is betwixt the two, may call himself tall _or_ short, according as he looks at his left-hand or his right-hand neighbour. It is a situation I would beg you to ponder, for it is your own, and mine, and everybody else's. Each one of us is just like Jacques, and deems himself great or small according as his neighbours' inches are many or few.
That is the reason why it is true to say that Jacques is neither tall nor short, and why it is also true to say he is tall _and_ he is short. He is what God chooses him to be. For us, he is the middle reed of our living Pandean Pipes.