Peter

Strong and slippery, built for the midnight grass-party confronted by four cats,

        he sleeps his time away — the detached first claw on his foreleg which corresponds

        to the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds

            or katydid legs above each eye, still numbering the units in each group;

                the shadbones regularly set about his mouth, to droop or rise

    in unison like the porcupine's quills — motionless. He lets himself be flat­

        tened out by gravity, as it were a piece of seaweed tamed and weakened by

        exposure to the sun; compelled when extended, to lie

            stationary. Sleep is the result of his delusion that one must do as

              well as one can for oneself; sleep — epitome of what is to

  him as to the average person, the end of life. Demonstrate on him how

      the lady caught the dangerous southern snake, placing a forked stick on either

      side of its innocuous neck; one need not try to stir

          him up; his prune shaped head and alligator eyes are not a party to the

              joke. Lifted and handled, he may be dangled like an eel or set

  up on the forearm like a mouse; his eyes bisected by pupils of a pin's

      width, are flickeringly exhibited, then covered up. May be? I should say,

      might have been; when he has been got the better of in a

          dream — as in a fight with nature or with cats — we all know it. Profound sleep is

              not with him, a fixed illusion. Springing about with froglike ac­

  curacy, emitting jerky cries when taken in the hand, he is himself

      again; to sit caged by the rungs of a domestic chair would be unprofit­

      able — human. What is the good of hypocrisy? It

          is permissible to choose one's employment, to abandon the wire nail, the

              roly-poly, when it shows signs of being no longer a pleas­

  ure, to score the adjacent magazine with a double line of strokes. He can

      talk, but insolently says nothing. What of it? When one is frank, one's very

      presence is a compliment. It is clear that he can see

          the virtue of naturalness, that he is one of those who do not regard

              the published fact as a surrender. As for the disposition

  invariably to affront, an animal with claws wants to have to use

      them; that eel-like extension of trunk into tail is not an accident. To

      leap, to lengthen out, divide the air — to purloin, to pursue.

          to tell the hen: fly over the fence, go in the wrong way — in your perturba­

              tion — this is life; to do less would be nothing but dishonesty.