“I leave it,” said Doctor Fox, excitedly, “to my learned friend, Professor Bray.”
The Donkey bowed.
“I have always believed,” he said, “that a donkey wrote the first book; I know he wrote the last one. I regret to say that I am unacquainted with any literature by the Fox family, with the exception of the Book of Martyrs, a most excellent work, as instructive, though not so entertaining, as the rhymes of Mother Goose. The first is the older, but the second is the more popular.”
This decision was, as usual, agreeable to both disputants, and Doctor Goose continued:
“At all events, it may safely be assumed that the earliest man stories were merely records of the chase. After a man had been pursued, captured and eaten by a bear—”
“Eh? What’s that?” asked the Great Huge Bear, unclosing his eyes. “I never did anything of the sort.”
“I was speaking of the old and savage days,” replied Doctor Goose, and the Bear dozed off again.
“After such a successful hunt, it was the custom to relate the details, with more or less exaggeration, to a circle of companions; and this was the beginning of the man story. For centuries these tales of the chase held their popularity; but as reason superseded mere instinct and animals advanced in civilization, they hunted man less and studied him more. Gradually they began to believe that this strange creature, whose kind spread all over the world, possessed reasoning faculties similar to their own—he might even have a soul; and to-day it is generally admitted that the line between the lowest animals and the highest man is so fine as scarcely to be discerned.”
At this point the Rabbit returned to announce, with a little swagger, the complete discomfiture of the Golf Lynx. Buddie was not so sure of this; she could see the Lynx peeping from behind a tree at the farther end of the amphitheater; whereas, according to the Rabbit, he should be “running yet.”
“That the average animal,” resumed Doctor Goose, “is superior to the average man in the common virtues of cleanliness, orderliness, straightforwardness, common sense, and capacity for sane enjoyment, goes without saying.”