Mr. 'Coon and Mr. 'Possum shook their heads. They had their troubles, too.
THE HOLLOW TREE POETRY CLUB
HOW MR. DOG CAME TO A POETRY CLUB, AND WHAT HAPPENED
ONCE upon a time, when it was getting along toward fall in the Hollow Tree, when Jack Rabbit and Mr. Robin and the others had come to live with the 'Coon and 'Possum and the Old Black Crow, there began to be long evenings, and the Hollow Tree people used to think of new ways to pass the time. They tried games at first, and sleight-of-hand tricks. Then they tried doing things, and Mr. Turtle carried them all together twice around the big parlor room on his back. But even that wasn't so funny after the first evening, and Mr. Crow, who did most of the thinking, had to scratch his head and think pretty hard what to do next.
All at once he happened to remember that Jack Rabbit, who was the big man of the party, was also a first rate poet, and liked to read his own poetry better than anything. So, when he thought of that, he said:—
"I'll tell you. We'll have a poetry club."
And of course that made Mr. Rabbit wake up right away.
"What's that?" he said. "What kind of a thing is a poetry club?"