On the fifth day of the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, after one speaker pleaded with the delegates to stop abusing each other's faiths, Swami Vivekananda rose and told the hall a story about a frog.

The frog had spent its whole life at the bottom of a well. It knew every stone down there and had grown sleek and fat on the worms. One day a frog from the sea dropped in. The well frog asked how big the sea was, and the visitor said it was bigger than this. The well frog leapt from one wall to the other. This big? Far bigger, said the visitor. The well frog stopped jumping. Nothing in creation, he announced, could be bigger than his well, and any frog who claimed otherwise was a liar who deserved to be thrown out on his slimy back.

Then Vivekananda turned the story on his audience. The Hindu sits in his own little well, he told them. The Christian sits in his, the Muslim in his, and each one takes his well for the whole world.