was an exception.


Let me interrupt this lament to say a word for myself and my
ancestors. It is easy to blame us as undiscriminating, but we
are at least full of zest. And it's well to be interested, eagerly
and intensely, in so many things, because there is often no knowing
which may turn out important. We don't go around being interested
on purpose, hoping to profit by it, but a profit may come. And
anyway it is generous of us not to be too self-absorbed. Other
creatures go to the other extreme to an amazing extent. They are
ridiculously oblivious to what is going on. The smallest ant in
the garden will ignore the largest woman who visits it. She is a
huge and most dangerous super-mammoth in relation to him, and her
tread shakes the earth; but he has no time to be bothered,
investigating such-like phenomena. He won't even get out of her
way. He has his work to do, hang it.

Birds and squirrels have less of this glorious independence of
spirit. They watch you closely--if you move around. But not if
you keep still. In other words, they pay no more attention than
they can help, even to mammoths.

We of course observe everything, or try to. We could spend our lives
looking on. Consider our museums for instance: they are a sign of
our breed. It makes us smile to see birds, like the magpie, with a
mania for this collecting--but only monkeyish beings could reverence
museums as we do, and pile such heterogeneous trifles and quantities
in them.