THE FIRST CHAPTER
PUDDLEBY
ONCE upon a time, many years ago when our grandfathers were little
children--there was a doctor; and his name was Dolittle-- John Dolittle,
M.D. "M.D." means that he was a proper doctor and knew a whole lot.
He lived in a little town called, Puddleby- on-the-Marsh. All the
folks, young and old, knew him well by sight. And whenever he walked
down the street in his high hat everyone would say, "There goes the
Doctor!--He\'s a clever man." And the dogs and the children would all
run up and follow behind him; and even the crows that lived in the churchtower
would caw and nod their heads.
The house he lived in, on the edge of the town, was quite small; but his
garden was very large and had a wide lawn and stone seats and weepingwillows
hanging over. His sister, Sarah Dolittle, was housekeeper for
him; but the Doctor looked after the garden himself.
He was very fond of animals and kept many kinds of pets. Besides
the gold-fish in the pond at the bottom of his garden, he had rabbits in the
pantry, white mice in his piano, a squirrel in the linen closet and a
hedgehog in the cellar. He had a cow with a calf too, and an old lame
horse-twenty-five years of age--and chickens, and pigeons, and two lambs,
and many other animals. But his favorite pets were Dab-Dab the duck,
Jip the dog, Gub-Gub the baby pig, Polynesia the parrot, and the owl Too-
Too.
His sister used to grumble about all these animals and said they made
the house untidy. And one day when an old lady with rheumatism came to
see the Doctor, she sat on the hedgehog who was sleeping on the sofa and
never came to see him any more, but drove every Saturday all the way to
Oxenthorpe, another town ten miles off, to see a different doctor.
Then his sister, Sarah Dolittle, came to him and said,