Page:Peter Whiffle (1922).djvu/190

 This was before the day of Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. The contessa snorted. Mina Loy, at the other end of the table, looked interested in Peter for the first time, I thought. The white Persian cat, one of Edith's cats, with his superb porcelain-blue eyes, sauntered into the room, his tail raised proudly. Edith spoke:

The great artists put themselves into their work; the cat never does. Men like Stieglitz and de Meyer put themselves into their cameras, that is why their photographs are wonderful, but the cat never puts himself into a camera. The great conquerors put themselves into their actions; the cat never does. Lovers put themselves into the selves of their loved ones, seeking identity; the cat never does. Mystics try to lose themselves in union with their gods; the cat never does. Musicians put themselves into their instruments; the cat never does. Indian men, working in the ground, put themselves in the earth, in order to get themselves back in the forms of wheat or maize to nourish their bodies; the cat never does. Navajo women, when they weave blankets, go so completely into the blanket while they are working on it, that they always leave a path in the weaving that comes out at the last corner for their souls to get out of the blanket; otherwise they would be imprisoned in it. The cat never does things like this!

So every one really centres his self somewhere