Albert Bigelow Paine

“ He put the brush in the pail, and came over and stood in front of Jack Rabbit, and said:
"Why can't you whitewash me?" he said. "I've always thought it would be pleasant to be white, for a change. I heard of a white crow, once, in our family, and I always wondered how he got that way. Of course he must have been whitewashed—I can see it, now, as plain as anything. I am sure you could whitewash me, Mr. Rabbit, with all the practise you've had, so that none of the black would show. Whitewash me for Sunday, Mr. Rabbit, and I will go home and give Mr. 'Coon and Mr. 'Possum a great surprise." ”

“ When Miss Meadows said that Jack Rabbit looked at her with his head tipped a little to one side, as if he were trying to decide whether Mr. Man's little girl had been right or not. Then he looked at the Hollow Tree people and said:
"H'm! H'm! Very nice little girl" (meaning Mr. Man's, of course) , "and very smart, too."
"I got used to being without my own folks," Miss Meadows went on, "but I did not forget the nice green grass of the country, and always wanted to go back to it. ”

“ Rabbit bowed and said, "To be happy is to be young—to be young is to be handsome—to be handsome is to be well-dressed." Then everybody said that besides all those things Jack Rabbit was certainly the smartest person in the Big Deep Woods. ”

“ So then Miss Myrtle began to tell her story, but kept looking down at her lap at first, being so bashful among such perfect strangers as the Hollow Tree people were to her at that time.
"Well," she said, "I wasn't born in the Big Deep Woods, nor in any woods at all, but in a house with a great many more of our family, a long way from here, and owned by a Mr. Man who raised us to sell." ”

“ Man's medicine was certainly wonderful; but just then Mr. Rabbit dropped in, and when they told him about it, he said of course the medicine might have had some effect, but that the dumplings and chicken caused the real cure. He said there was an old adage to prove that—one that his thirty-fifth great-grandfather had made for just such a case of this kind. This, Mr. Rabbit said, was the adage:
"If you want to live forever
Stuff a cold and starve a fever."
Mr. 'Possum's trouble had come from catching cold, he said, so the dumplings were probably just what he needed. ”

“ Once upon a time, when it was early summer in the Big Deep Woods, the Hollow Tree people and Jack Rabbit went over to spend the day with Mr. Turtle, who lives in a very nice stone house which he built himself on the edge of the Wide Blue Water. Mr. Turtle fishes a good deal, and makes most of his living that way, and knows all the best places, so when his friends came he said that perhaps they would enjoy fishing a little—which they could do and sit in a pleasant place at the same time, and talk, and look out over the Wide Blue Water, which was especially blue at this season. ”

“ Then he went right on to tell his story, like this:
"The sky is also a world—as big a world as this is, with a wide, rounding floor that looks blue in the daytime and nearly black at night, when the sun is gone. The sky country is really kind of an up-stairs world, and the stars are small windows, or peep-holes, in the big, blue floor, for the people up there to look down through when they want to see what is going on below. ”

“ We hunted nights and we hunted days, to keep him in chicken-pie with dumplings and gravy, but that beautiful appetite of his seemed to grow and grow until we couldn't keep up with it, this hard year, and one day our noble friend said:
"'Don't try any more—the more I eat, the more I want—good-by.'"
Mr. Crow wiped his eyes again, while Mr. Bear grumbled to himself something about a nice state of affairs; but pretty soon he seemed to listen, for Mr. 'Possum was smacking his lips, thinking of those chicken pies Mr. Crow had described, and Mr. Bear has very quick ears. ”

“ The Deep Woods people think that Mr. Man is after them, and there is some truth in it, because Mr. Man thinks the Deep Woods people are after him, or his property, when, of course, all Deep Woods people know that it was never intended that Mr. Man should own all the chickens, and they are obliged to borrow one, now and then, in order to have chicken pie, such as has been served on this happy occasion.
"I am looking forward to the day when Mr. Man will understand this, as well as the Hollow Tree people do, and will become friendly and open his heart and hen-house to all who would enter in." ”

“ Well, of course I told everything that had happened, and almost everybody in the Wide Blue Water came to hear about it, and they told it to others, and Old Man Moccasin heard so much about how Mr. Eagle had fooled him, and how I had fooled Mr. Eagle, that he moved to another drift, farther down, and probably lives there still. And Mr. Eagle heard so much about the way he tried to teach me to fly that he made up a story of his own and flew in all directions, telling it; and that is the story most people know about to-day and the one that Mr. Man put into his books. ”

“ Painter took after one of my ancestors that ancestor would make for a tree and run out on a limb that was too small to bear up Mr. Painter, and just cling there, because Mr. Painter would climb up, too, and shake the limb, and very often he would shake an ancestor down, like a papaw, and the only thing to do then was to make for another tree, or if the next tree was too far, to play dead, because Mr. Painter did not much like anything he hadn't killed himself. ”

“ Somers never came back, and they never heard of him again. Some of my ancestors used to say that he was not a real person at all, but something that could take different shapes and work magic, just as Mr. Painter [Pg 168] believed he did. Anyhow, he was a great blessing to our family, as you may have noticed."
Mr. 'Possum moved over to the Edge of the World in the sun, hooked his tail about the same little bush, and went to sleep again. The other Deep Woods people looked at the way he did it, as if it was something new that they had never seen before. ”

“ Rabbit made a little speech in which he said that if anything had been needed to make his grand wedding complete it was to have a performance given for it by Mr. Man, even though Mr. Man might not realize that he was entertaining a wedding. And everybody said, "Yes, yes, that's so," and that this was the greatest day in the Big Deep Woods, which I believe it really was.
Then they all formed a procession and marched to Jack Rabbit's house, to take home the bride and groom. ”

“ But Mr. 'Possum said that Mr. 'Coon's war was a good deal better than Mr. Man's, because, being so soon over, nothing but those silly fighting bees was wasted; and for Mr. 'Coon and Cousin Redfield Bear to have stayed out of it until there was no more fighting, and then go in and carry off a wagon-load of honey, was probably the smartest thing they had ever done in their lives. ”

“ My folks thought those great tails were handsome, especially our young people, who would walk about waving them and practise carrying them in new positions, and about once a week would do up the long, thick fur on them in little knots, tied with tough, twisted grass, which would make the hair curl and look very showy indeed. Even some of my ancestors who happened to get old acted in that foolish way, and when the fur got thin would wear some kind of false stuff, though any one but a blind person could always tell it. ”

“ One day when Cousin Redfield was looking at the jug he had an idea. Just outside of the cave his father had made a bear-ladder for Reddie to learn to climb on. A bear-ladder is a piece of a tree set up straight in the ground. It has short, broken-off limbs, and little bears like to run up and down on it, and big bears, too, for it gives them exercise and keeps them in practice for climbing real trees. ”

“ MR. 'POSSUM'S CAR MR. 'POSSUM SHOWS HE CAN INVENT THINGS, ESPECIALLY AN AUTOMOBILE LIKE MR. MAN'S
"You may remember," said the Story Teller, one evening, to the Little Lady, "my telling you about Mr. Man's automobile, and how the Hollow Tree people, Mr. 'Coon, Mr. 'Possum, and the Old Black Crow, got a ride in it; how Mr. Dog helped them, you know, and just barely managed to keep them all from being caught by Mr. Man." ”

“ IT GAVE HIM SUCH A SICK TURN THAT HE NEARLY DIED
"Uncle Brownwood Bear did not punish little Cousin Redfield," Mr. Crow said. "He thought Reddie had been punished enough. Besides, Reddie was sick for several days. But Uncle Brownwood put up the bear-ladder much stronger than before, and set the empty molasses-jug in the middle of the table, and kept it there a long time, and when Cousin Redfield tried even to look at it, it gave him such a sick turn that he nearly died." ”

“ But Mr. 'Coon and Mr. Crow couldn't turn any slower, and when they tried to hold back on the crank it just jerked them right around, and when they let go entirely they went even faster, for that slanting road had turned into a real hill, and they were going down it as speedy as Mr. Man would go down, and perhaps speedier, and Mr. 'Possum wasn't looking at the scenery any more, but was holding as fast as he could to the steering-wheel, trying to keep in the road, and not doing it the best in the world, though nobody was pushing now. ”

“ I told my folks about seeing Mr. Man and his folks making the stars, but they didn't think much of my story. When I showed them the singed place on my back they said that I had probably been shot at, as I deserved to be for trying to borrow a chicken before Mr. Man had gone to bed, and that I had imagined or made up the rest. But I hadn't, for it all happened just as I have been telling it now. I don't know whether Mr. Man makes stars on the Fourth of July every year or not. ”

“ There wasn't one of them that could unwind himself from his limb, except old Mr. Waters, who had got only a teaspoonful of the medicine, which very likely was just about the right amount. Mr. Waters swung quite loose and free from his limb, and got down without much trouble, and it took him all the afternoon to go around from tree to tree and pry the rest of my ancestors loose, and unwind [Pg 167] them, because those new-fangled tails would snap together like springs, and it took several days' steady practice and straightening before they were really useful at a moment's notice. ”

“ Man getting out of the car, and they got ready to make a wild jump the moment he lifted the seat cover. But then—right at the instant when they expected him to do it—they heard Mr. Dog break right out into a great, big bark, shouting as loud as he could: [Pg 117]
"Come! Come! Come! Mr. Man—it's up a tree!—it's up a tree!—it's up a tree!" and they knew by the sound that he had jumped out and was calling to Mr. Man to come into the woods near the road, and then, a second later, they heard him call to them, in Hollow Tree words—"Now! now! jump and run! ”