HOW THE REST OF THE RABBITS
LOST THEIR TAILS
"Well," he said, "my twenty-seventh great-grandfather Hare didn't go out again for several days. He put up a sign that said 'Not at Home' on his door, and then tried a few experiments, to see what could be done.
HE TRIED TO SPLICE HIS PROPERTY BACK IN PLACE
"He first tried to splice his property back into place, as Mr. Tortoise had told him he might, but that plan didn't work worth a cent. He never could get it spliced on straight, and if he did get it about right, it would lop over or sag down or something as soon as he moved, and when he looked at himself in the glass he made up his mind that he'd rather do without his nice plumy brush altogether than to go out into society with it in that condition.
"So he gave it up and put on some nice all-healing-ointment, and before long what there was left of it was well, and a nice bunch of soft, white cottony fur had grown out over the scar, and Grandpaw Hare thought when he looked at himself in the glass that it was really quite becoming, though he knew the rest of his family would always be saying things about it, and besides they would laugh at him for letting Mr. Tortoise beat him in a foot race.
GRANDFATHER WOULD LIGHT HIS PIPE AND THINK IT OVER
"Sometimes, when there was nobody around, my grandfather would go out into the sun and light his pipe and lean up against a big stone, or maybe a stump, and think it over.
"And one morning, as he sat there thinking, he made up his mind what he would do. Mr. Lion lived in the Big Deep Woods in those days, and he was King. Whenever anything happened among the Deep Woods People that they couldn't decide for themselves, they went to where King Lion lived, in a house all by himself over by the Big West Hills, and he used to settle the question; and sometimes, when somebody that wasn't very old, and maybe was plump and tender, had done something that wasn't just right, King Lion would look at him and growl and say it was too bad for any one so young to do such things, and especially for them to grow up and keep on doing them; so he would have him for breakfast, or maybe for dinner, and that would settle everything in the easiest and shortest way.