Classic Audiobook Collection - Doctor Dolittle’s Post Office by Hugh Lofting ~ Full Audiobook [fantasy]

Starting point is 00:00:00 dr do little's post-office by hugh lofting preface nearly all of the history of dr doolittle's post-office took place when he was returning from a voyage to west africa therefore i will begin as soon as i have told you a little about how he came to take the journey from where he turned his ship towards home again and set sail for puddleby on the marsh some time before this the push-me-pull you after a long long long time before this the push-me pull you after a long long stay in England, had grown a little homesick for Africa, and although he was tremendously fond of the doctor and never wanted to leave him altogether, he asked him one winter day when the weather was particularly cold and disagreeable, if he would mind running down to Africa for a holiday just for a week or two. The doctor readily agreed, because he hadn't been on a voyage in a long while, and he felt he too needed a change from the chilly December days of England.

Starting point is 00:01:03 So he started off. Besides the Push Me Pull You, he took dab-dab the duck, jip the dog, gob-gub the pig, tutu the owl, and the white mouse. The same good company he had had with him on his adventurous return from the land of the monkeys. For this trip the doctor bought a little sailing boat, very very much. old and battered and worn, but a good sound craft for bad weather. They sailed away down to the south coast of the Bight of Benin. There they visited many African kingdoms and strange tribes, and while they were assured

Starting point is 00:01:42 the Push Me Pull You had a chance to wonder freely through his old grazing grounds, and he enjoyed his holiday thoroughly. One morning the doctor was delighted to see his old friend the Swallows, gathering one once more about his ship at anchor for their yearly flight to England. They asked him whether he too was returning, because if so, they said, they would accompany him, the same as they had done when he was escaping from the kingdom of Jolly Jenki. As the Pushmeep Pou was now quite ready to leave, the doctor thanked the swallows and told them he would be delighted to have their company.

Starting point is 00:02:20 Then for the remainder of that day all was hustle and hurry and bustle. getting the ship provisioned and making preparations for the long trip back to England. By the following morning, everything was in readiness to put to sea. The anchor was drawn up, and with all sail set, the doctor ship moved northward before a favorable wind. And it is from this point that my story begins. End of Preface. Part 1, Chapter 1 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office. by Hugh Lofting.

Starting point is 00:03:03 This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 1, Chapter 1, Zuzana. One morning, in the first week of the return voyage, when Dr. Doolittle and his animals were all sitting at breakfast round the big table in the cabin. One of the swallows came down and said that he wanted to speak to the doctor. John Doolittle at once left the table and went out into the passage where he found the swallow,

Starting point is 00:03:30 leader himself, a very neat, trim little bird, with long, long wings and sharp, snappy black eyes. Speedy the skimmer, he was called, a name truly famous throughout the whole of the feathered world. He was the champion flycatcher and aerial acrobat of Europe, Africa, Asia, and America. For years, every summer, he had won all the flying races, having broken his own record only last year by crossing the Atlantic in eleven and a half hours, at a speed of over two hundred miles an hour.

Starting point is 00:04:06 "'Well, speedy,' said John Doolittle, what is it?' "'Doctor,' said the little bird in a mysterious whisper. "'We have sighted a canoe about a mile ahead of the ship, and a little to the eastward, with only a black woman in it. She is weeping bitterly and isn't paddling the canoe at all. She is several miles from land, ten at least, I should say, because at the moment we are crossing the Bay of Fantipo and can only just see the shore of Africa. She is really in dangerous straits, with such a little bit of boat that far out at sea.

Starting point is 00:04:45 But she doesn't seem to care. She's just sitting in the bottom of the canoe, crying as if she didn't mind what happens to her. I wish you would come and speak to her, for we fear she is in the canoe. in great trouble." All right," said the doctor. Fly slowly on to where the canoe is, and I will steer the ship to follow you." So John Doolittle went up on deck, and by steering the boat after the guiding swallows,

Starting point is 00:05:13 he presently saw a small dark canoe rising and falling on the waves. It looks so tiny on the wide face of the waters that it could be taken for a log or a stick, or indeed missed altogether, unless you are in the wide face of the waters, that it could be taken for a log or a stick, or indeed, all together, unless you were close enough to see it. In the canoe sat a woman with her head bowed down upon her knees. What's the matter? shouted the doctor as soon as he was near enough to make the woman here. Why have you come so far from the land?

Starting point is 00:05:44 Don't you know that you are in great danger if a storm should come up? Slowly the woman raised her head. Go away! said she, and leave me to my sorrow. Haven't you white men done me enough harm?' John Doolittle steered the boat up closer still, and continued to talk to the woman in a kindly way, but she seemed for a long time to mistrust him because he was a white man.

Starting point is 00:06:16 Little by little, however, the doctor won her confidence, and at last, still weeping bitterly, she told him her story. Those were the days you must understand when slavery was being done away with. To capture, to buy, or to sell slaves had in fact been strictly forbidden by most governments, but certain bad men still came down to the west coast of Africa and captured or bought slaves secretly and took them away on ships to other lands to work on cotton and tobacco plantations. Some African kings sold prisoners they had taken in war to these men and made a great deal of money that way. Well, this woman in the canoe belonged to a tribe which had been at war

Starting point is 00:07:03 with the king of Fantipo, an African kingdom situated on the coast near which the swallows had seen the canoe. And in this war the king of Fantipo had taken many prisoners, among whom was the woman's husband. Shortly after the war, the war was the war. over some white men in a ship had called at the kingdom of fantipo to see if they could buy slaves for tobacco plantations and when the king heard how much money they were willing to give for black slaves he thought he would sell them the prisoners he had taken in the war the woman's name was zuzana and her husband was a very strong and fine-looking man the king of fantipo would have kept zuzana's husband for this reason because he liked to have strong and fine-looking man the king of fantipo would have kept zuzana's husband for this reason because he liked to have strong men at his court, but the slave traders also wanted strong men, for they could do a lot of work on the plantations, and they offered the king of Fontipo a specially high price for Zuzana's husband, and the king had sold him.

Starting point is 00:08:07 Zuzana described to the doctor how she had followed the white man's ship a long way out in a canoe, imploring them to give her back her husband. But they had only laughed at her and gone on their way. and their ship had soon passed out of sight. That was why, she said, she hated all white men and had not wanted to speak to the doctor when he had hailed her canoe.

Starting point is 00:08:31 The doctor was dreadfully angry when he had heard the story, and he asked Zuzana how long ago it was that the slavery ship bearing her husband had left. She told him it was half an hour ago. Without her husband, she said, life meant nothing to her,

Starting point is 00:08:48 and when the ship had passed from view, going northward along the coast, she had burst into tears and just let the canoe drift, not even having the heart to paddle back to land. The doctor told the woman that no matter what it cost he was going to help her, and he was all for speeding up his ship and going in chase of the slave boat right away, but dab-dab the duck warned him that his boat was very slow, and that its sails could be easily seen by the slavers, who would never allow it to come near them. So the doctor put down his anchor, and, leaving the ship where it was, got into the woman's

Starting point is 00:09:29 canoe. Then, calling to the swallows to help him as guides, he set off northward along the coast, looking into all the bays and behind all the islands for the slave-ship which had taken Zuzana's husband. But after many hours of fruitless search, night began to come on, and the swallows who were acting his guides could no longer see big distances, for there was no moon. Poor Zuzana began weeping some more when the doctor said he would have to give up for the night.

Starting point is 00:09:59 "'By morning,' said she, "'the ship of the wicked slave-dealers will be many miles away, and I shall never get my husband back, alas, alas!' The doctor comforted her as best he could, saying that if he failed he would get her another husband just as good. But she didn't seem to care for that idea, and went on wailing, alas, alas. She made such a noise that the doctor couldn't get to sleep on the bottom of the canoe, which wasn't very comfortable anyway. So he had to sit up and listen. Some of the swallows were still with him, sitting on the edge of the canoe. And the famous skimmer, the leader, was also

Starting point is 00:10:43 there. They and the doctor were talking over what they could do. when suddenly the skimmer said, "'Sh, look!' And pointed out to the westward over the dark heaving sea. Even Zuzala stopped her wailing and turned to look. And there, a way out on the dim black edge of the ocean, they could see a tiny light. "'A ship!' cried the doctor.

Starting point is 00:11:08 "'Yes,' said Speedy. "'That's a ship, sure enough. I wonder if it's another slave ship.' "'Well, if it's a slave ship.' "'Well, if it's a slave ship, it's not the one we're looking for,' said the doctor. "'Because it's in the wrong direction. The one we're after went northward.' "'Listen, doctor,' said Speedy the Skimmer. "'Suppose I fly over to it and see what kind of a ship it is and come back and tell you.

Starting point is 00:11:34 Who knows it might be able to help us?' "'All right, Speedy, thank you,' said the doctor. So skimmer sped off into the darkness toward the tiny light far out to sea, while the doctor fell to wondering how his own ship was getting on, which he had left at anchor, some miles down the coast to the southward. After twenty minutes had gone by, John Doolittle began to get worried, because the skimmer, with his tremendous speed, should have had time to get there and back long ago. But soon, with a flirt of the skimmer.

Starting point is 00:12:10 the wings, the famous leader made a neat circle in the darkness overhead and dropped light as a feather on the doctor's knee. "'Well,' said John Doolittle, what kind of a ship was it?' "'It's a big ship,' panted the skimmer, with tall, high masts, and I should judge a fast one. But it is coming this way, and it is sailing with great care, afraid I imagine, of shallows and sandbars. It is a very neat ship, smart and new-looking all over.

Starting point is 00:12:42 And there are great big guns, cannons, looking out of little doors in her sides. The men on her, too, are all well-dressed in smart blue clothes, not like ordinary seamen at all. And on the ship's hull was painted some lettering, her name, I suppose. Of course I couldn't read it, but I remember what it looked like. Give me your hand, and I'll show you. Then the skimmer, with one of his claws, began tracing out some letters on the doctor's palm. Before he had got very far, John Doolittle sprang up, nearly overturning the canoe. H. M.S., he cried.

Starting point is 00:13:24 That means her majesty ship? It's a man o' war, a navy vessel. The very thing we want to deal with slave traders. End of Part 1, Chapter 1. Part 1, Chapter 2 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 1, Chapter 2, The Doctor's Reception on the Warship. Then the doctor and Zuzana started to paddle their canoe for all they were worth

Starting point is 00:14:07 in the direction of the light. The night was calm, but the long swell of the ocean swung the little canoe up and down like a seesaw, and it needed all. all Zuzana's skill to keep it in a straight line. After about an hour had gone by, the doctor noticed that the ship they were trying to reach was no longer coming toward them but seemed to have stopped. And when he finally came up beneath its towering shape in the darkness, he saw the reason why. The Manawar had run into his own ship, which he had left at anchor with no lights. However, the Navy vessel had fortunately been going so carefully that no serious

Starting point is 00:14:46 damage, it seemed, had been done to either ship. Finding a rope ladder hanging on the side of the man-of-war, John Doolittle climbed up it with Zusana and went aboard to see the captain. He found the captain strutting the quarter-deck, mumbling to himself. Good evening, said the doctor politely. Nice weather we're having. The captain came up to him and shook his fist in his face. Are you the owner of that nose-ark down there?

Starting point is 00:15:16 he stormed, pointing to the other ship alongside. "'Yes, temporarily,' said the doctor. "'Why?' "'Well, will you be so good?' snarled the captain. His face all out of shape with rage, as to tell me what in thunder you mean by leaving your old junk at anchor on a dark night without any lights? What kind of a sailor are you?'

Starting point is 00:15:41 Here I bring Her Majesty's latest cruiser after Jimmy Bones, the slave-trader, been hunting him for weeks I have, and as though the beastly coast wasn't difficult enough as it is, I bump into a craft riding at anchor with no lights. Luckily I was going slow, taking soundings, or we might have gone down with all hands. I hallowed to your ship and got no answer. So I go aboard her with pistols ready, thinking maybe she's a slaver, trying to play tricks on me. I creep all over the ship, but not a soul do I meet. At last in the cabin I find a pig asleep in an armchair. Do you usually leave your craft in the charge of a pig with orders

Starting point is 00:16:26 to go to sleep? If you own the ship, why aren't you on her? Where have you been? I was out canoeing with the lady, said the doctor, and he smiled comfortingly at Zuzana, who was beginning to weep again. "'Cannewing with a lady?' sputtered the captain. "'Well, I'll be—' "'Yes,' said the doctor. "'Let me introduce you. "'This is Zuzana, Captain—'

Starting point is 00:16:52 But the captain interrupted him by calling for a sailor who stood near. "'I'll teach you to leave Noah's arcs at anchor on the high seas "'for the Navy to bump into my fine deep-sea philanderer. "'Think the shipping laws are made for a joke? "'Here.' He turned to the sailor who had. come in answer to his call. Master-at-arms put this man under arrest.

Starting point is 00:17:16 Aye, sir, said the master-in-arms. And before the doctor knew it, he had handcuffs fastened firmly on his wrists. But this lady was in distress, said the doctor. I was in such a hurry I forgot all about lighting the ship. In fact, it wasn't dark yet when I left. Take him below, roared the captain. Take him below before I can. kill him."

Starting point is 00:17:41 And the poor doctor was dragged away by the master-at-arms toward a stair leading to the lower decks. But at the head of the stairs he caught hold of the handrail and hung on long enough to shout back to the captain. I could tell you where Jimmy Bones is if I wanted to. What's that? Snorted the captain. Here, bring him back.

Starting point is 00:18:02 What was that you said? I said, murmured the doctor, getting his handkerchief out and blowing his nose with his handcuffed hands, that I could tell you where Jimmy Bones is if I wanted to." "'Jimmy Bones, the slaver,' cried the captain. "'That's the man the government has sent me after. Where is he?' "'My memory doesn't work very well while my hands are tied,' said the doctor quietly, nodding toward the handcuffs. "'Possibly if you took these things off I might remember.'

Starting point is 00:18:34 "'Oh, excuse me,' said the captain, his manner changing at once. and arms, released the prisoner." "'Aye, aye, sir,' said the sailor, removing the handcuffs from the doctor's wrists and turning to go. "'Oh, and by the way,' the captain called after him, "'bring a chair up on deck, perhaps our visitor is tired.' Then John Doolittle told the captain the whole story of Zuzana and her troubles, and all the other officers on the ship gathered around to listen.

Starting point is 00:19:05 "'And I have no doubt,' the doctor ended, that this slaver who took away the woman's husband was no other than Jimmy Bones the man you are after. Quite so, said the captain. I know he is somewhere around the coast, but where is he now? He's a difficult fish to catch. He has gone northward, said the doctor. But your ship is fast and should be able to overtake him.

Starting point is 00:19:31 If he hides in some of these bays and creeks, I have several birds here with me who can as soon as it is light, seek him out for us and tell us where he is." The captain looked with astonishment into the faces of his listening officers, who all smiled unbelievingly. "'What do you mean, birds?' the captain asked. "'Pigeons? Train canaries or something?' "'No,' said the doctor.

Starting point is 00:19:57 I mean the swallows who are going back to England for the summer. They very kindly offered to guide my ship home. They're friends of mine, you see.' this time the officers all burst out laughing and tapped their foreheads knowingly to show they thought the doctor was crazy and the captain thinking he was being made a fool of flew into a rage once more and was all for having the doctor arrested again but the officer who was second in command whispered in the captain's ear why not take the old fellow along and let him try sir our course was northward anyway i seemed to remember I remember hearing something when I was attached to the home fleet about an old chap in the West countries who had some strange powers with beasts and birds. I have no doubt this is he.

Starting point is 00:20:48 Do little, he was called. He seems harmless enough. There's just a chance he may be of some assistance to us. The natives evidently trust him, or the woman wouldn't have come with him. You know how scared they are of putting to sea with a white man. After a moment's thought, the captain turned to the doctor again. You sound clean crazy to me, my good man, but if you can put me in the way of capturing Jimmy Bones of the slaver,

Starting point is 00:21:17 I don't care what means you use to do it. As soon as the day breaks, we will get underway. But if you are just amusing yourself at the expense of Her Majesty's Navy, I warn you, it will be the worst day's work for yourself you ever did. Now go and put riding lights on that ark of yours and tell the pig that if he lets them go out he shall be made into rashes of bacon for the officer's mess. There was much laughter and joking as the doctor climbed over the side and went back to his own ship to get his lights lit.

Starting point is 00:21:51 But the next morning, when he came back to the Man o' War, and about a thousand swallows came with him, the officers of Her Majesty's Navy were not nearly so inclined to make fun of him. The sun was just rising over the distant coast of Africa, and it was as beautiful a morning as you could wish to see. Speedy the skimmer had arranged plans with the doctor overnight, and, long before the Great Warshap pulled up her anchor and swung around upon her course, the famous swallow leader was miles ahead with a band of picked hunters, exploring up creeks and examining all the hollows of the coast where the slave-trader might be hiding.

Starting point is 00:22:31 The treaty had agreed with the doctor upon a sort of overhead telegraph system to be carried on by the swallows. And as soon as the millions of little birds had spread themselves out in a line along the coast so that the sky was speckled with them as far as the eye could reach, they began passing messages by whistling to one another, all the way from the scouts in front back to the doctor on the warship to give news of how the hunt was progressing. And somewhere about noon, word came through. through that the Bones of Slave ship had been sighted behind a long high cape.

Starting point is 00:23:07 Great care must be taken the message, said, because the slave-ship was all in readiness to sail at a moment's notice. The slavers had only stopped to get water, and lookouts were posted to warn them to return it once if necessary. When the doctor told this to the captain, the Manawar changed her course still closer in shore to keep behind the cover of the long cape. All the sailors were warned to keep very quiet, so the Navy ship could sneak up on the slaver unawares.

Starting point is 00:23:39 Now the captain, expecting the slavers to put up a fight, also gave orders to get the guns ready, and just as they were about to round the long cape, one of the silly gunners led a gun off by accident. Boom! The shot went rolling and echoing over the silent sea like angry thunder. Instantly back came the word over the Swallows telegraph line that the slavers were warned and were escaping. And sure enough, when the warship rounded the cape at last, there was the slave ship putting out to sea with all sail set and a good ten-mile start on the man-of-war. End of Part 1, Chapter 2.

Starting point is 00:24:28 Part 1, Chapter 7 of Dr. Do-Little's Post Office by Hugh Lofting. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Part 1, Chapter 7. The Animals Paradise At length, the extraordinary creature that had come to their rescue reached the island, and with Jip and the doctor still clinging to his wide back, he crawled out of the water onto the beach. And then Dr. Doolittle, seeing its head for the first time, cried out in great excitement.

Starting point is 00:25:04 "'Jip, it's a quiffinidoccus, as sure as I'm alive.' "'A quiffin o whatas?' asked Jip. "'A quiffinodocus,' said the doctor. "'A prehistoric beast. "'Naturists thought they were extinct, "'that there weren't any more alive ones anywhere in the world. "'This is a great day, Chip. "'I'm awfully glad I came here.'

Starting point is 00:25:28 "'The tremendous animal which the Fantipians had called a dragon had now climbed right up the beach and was standing fully revealed in all his strangeness. At first he looked like some curious mixture between a crocodile and a giraffe. He had short, spreading legs, but enormously long tail and neck. On his head were two stubby little horns. As soon as the doctor and jip had climbed down off his back, he swung his head around on the end of that enormous neck and said to the doctor, Do you feel all right now?"

Starting point is 00:26:05 "'Yes, thanks,' said John Doolittle. "'I was afraid,' said the creature, "'that I wouldn't be in time to save your life. It was my brother who first saw you. We thought it was the native, and we were getting ready to give him our usual terrifying reception. But while we watched from behind the trees, my brother suddenly cried, "'Great heavens, that's Dr. Doolittle, and he's drowning.

Starting point is 00:26:35 See how he waves his arms? He must be saved at any cost. There isn't one man like that born in a thousand years. Let's go after him quick.' Then word was passed around the island that John Doolittle, the great doctor, was drowning out in the straits. Of course we had all heard of you, and rushing down to a secret cove,

Starting point is 00:26:59 which we have on the far side of the island. We dashed into the sea and swam out to you underwater. I was the best swimmer and got to you first. I'm awfully glad I was in time. You're sure you feel all right?" "'Oh, quite,' said the doctor. Thank you. But why did you swim underwater?'

Starting point is 00:27:20 "'We didn't want the natives to see us,' said the strange beast. They think we are dragons, and we let them go on thinking it, because then they don't come near the island and we have our country to ourselves. The creature stretched his long neck still longer and whispered in the doctor's ear. They think we live on men and breathe fire, but all we ever really eat is bananas. And when anyone tries to come here, we go down to a hollow in the middle of the island and suck up the mist, the fog, that always hangs around there. Then we come back to the beach and roar and rampage, and we breathe the fog out through our nostrils, and they think it's smoke.

Starting point is 00:28:07 That's the way we've kept this island to ourselves for a thousand years, and this is the only part of the world where we are left, where we can live in peace. How very interesting, said the doctor. Naturalists have thought your kind of animals are no longer living, you know. You are quiffin or dochi, are you not? "'Oh, no,' said the beast. "'Quifinodocus has gone long ago. "'We are the Pifilosaurus. "'We have six toes on the back feet

Starting point is 00:28:38 "'while the Quiffinodokie, our cousins, have only five. "'They died out about two thousand years ago.' "'But where are the rest of your people?' asked the doctor. "'I thought you said that many of you had swum out to rescue us.' "'They did,' said the Pifelosaurus, "'but they kept hidden under the water.' lest the natives on the shore should see and get to know that the old story about the dragon's mother-in-law wasn't true. While I was bringing you here they were swimming all around you under the water, ready to help if I needed them.

Starting point is 00:29:11 They have gone around to the secret cove so that they may come ashore unseen. We had better be going on ourselves now. Whatever happens we mustn't be seen from the shore and have the natives coming here. It would be the end of us if that should ever happen. because, between ourselves, although they think us so terrible, we are really more harmless than sheep. Do any other animals live here? asked the doctor. Oh, yes, indeed, said the Pifilosaurus. This island is entirely peopled by harmless vegetable-eating creatures.

Starting point is 00:29:49 If we had the others, of course, we wouldn't last long. But come, I will show you around the island. Let us go quietly up that valley there. so we shan't be seen till we reach the cover of the woods. Then John Doolittle and Jip were taken by the Pifilosaurus all over the island of no man's land. The doctor said afterward that he had never had a more enjoyable or more instructive day. The shores of the island all around were high and steep, which gave it the appearance Jim had it spoken of like a plum pudding,

Starting point is 00:30:26 but in the center on top, There was a deep and pleasant hollow, invisible from the sea and sheltered from the winds. In this great bowl a good thirty miles across, the Pifalosaurus had lived at peace for a thousand years, eating ripe bananas and frolicking in the sun. Down by the banks of the streams the doctor was shown great herds of hippopotamai, feeding on the luscious reeds that grew at the water's edge. In the wide fields of high grass there were elephants. and rhinoceros, browsing.

Starting point is 00:31:00 On the slopes where the forest were sparse, he spied long-necked giraffes, nibbling from the trees. Monkeys and deer of all kinds were plentiful, and birds swarmed everywhere. In fact, every kind of creature that does not eat meat was there, living peaceably and happily with the others in this land where vegetable food abounded and the disturbing tread of man was never heard. Standing on the top of the hill with Jip and the Pifalosaurus at his side,

Starting point is 00:31:32 the doctor gazed down over the wide bowl of contented animal life and heaved a sigh. This beautiful land could also have been called the animal's paradise, he murmured. Long may they enjoy it to themselves. May this indeed be no man's land forever. You, doctor, said the deep voice of the Pifalosarist. at his elbow, are the first human in a thousand years that had set foot here. The last one was King Cacabucci's mother-in-law. By the way, what really became of her? asked the doctor. The natives believed she was turned into a dragon, you know. We married her off, said the great

Starting point is 00:32:17 creature, nibbling idly at a lily stalk. We couldn't stand her here any more than the king could. you never heard anybody talk so in all your life. Yes, we carried her one dark night by sea, far down the coast of Africa, and left her at the palace door of a deaf king who ruled over a small country south of the Congo River. He married her. Of course, being deaf, he didn't mind her everlasting chatter in the least.

Starting point is 00:32:49 And now, for several days, the doctor forgot all about his post office work and king, Coco, and his ship at anchor, and everything else, for he was kept busy from morning to night with all the animals who wanted to consult him about different things. Many of the giraffes were suffering from sore hoofs, and he showed them where to find a special route that they could put into a foot bath and would bring immediate relief. The rhinoceros' horns were growing too long, and John Doolittle explained to them how by grinding them against a certain kind of stone, and by eating less grass and more berries, they could

Starting point is 00:33:27 keep the growth down. A special sort of nut tree that the deer were fond of had grown scarce and almost died out from constant nibbling, and the doctor showed the chief stags how by taking a few nuts and poking them down into the soft earth with their hoofs before the rainy season set in, they could make new trees grow and so increase the supply. One day, when he was pulling out a loose tooth for a baby hippopotamus with his watch chain, Speedy the skimmer turned up, looking rather annoyed. Well, said the neat little bird, settling down on the ground at his feet,

Starting point is 00:34:05 I found you at last, doctor. I've been hunting all over creation for you. Oh, hello, Speedy, said the doctor. Glad to see you. Did you want me for something? Why, of course I did, said Speedy. We finished the nesting season two days ago, and you had said you wanted to see me about some special business as soon as it was over.

Starting point is 00:34:29 I went to your house, but Dab-Dab had no idea where you could be. Then I hunted all over. At last I heard some gossiping boatmen down at the harbor say that you came to this island five days ago and had never returned. All the Fantipians have given you up for lost. They say you have surely been eaten by the day. dragons that live here. I got an awful fright, though of course I didn't quite believe the dragon story. Still, you have been gone so long I didn't know what to make of it. The post office,

Starting point is 00:35:03 as you can imagine, is in a worse mess than ever. Hmm, said the doctor, who had now got the loose tooth out and was showing the baby hippo how to rinse his mouth in the river. I'm sorry, I suppose I should have sent you a message. But I've been there. so awfully busy. Let's go up under the shade of those palms and sit down. It was about the post office that I wanted to talk to you." End of Part 1, Chapter 7. Part 1, Chapter 8 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office. By Hugh Lofting, this Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 1, Chapter 8, The Swiftest Male in the World So the doctor and Jip and Speedy the skimmer sat down in the shade of the palm trees, and for the first time plans for that great service which was to be known as the swallow mail were discussed.

Starting point is 00:36:09 Now my idea, Speedy, is this, said the doctor. Regular foreign mails are difficult for the Fantipo Post Office because so few boats ever call there to bring or take the mails. Now, how would it be if you swallows did the letter-carrying?" "'Well,' said Speedy, "'that would be possible. But, of course, we could only do it during certain months of the year when we are in Africa. And then we can only take letters to the mild and warm countries. We should get frozen if we had to carry mail where severe winters were going on.' "'Oh, of course,' said the doctor.

Starting point is 00:36:50 "'I wouldn't expect you to do that.' But I had thought we might get the other birds to help. Cold climate birds, hot climate ones, and temperate. And if some of the trips were too far or disagreeable for one kind of birds to make, we could deliver the mail in relays. I mean, for instance, a letter going from here to the North Pole could be carried by the swallows as far as the north end of Africa. From there it would be taken by thrushes up to the top of Scotland.

Starting point is 00:37:20 Seagulls would take it from the thrushes and carry it as far as Greenland, and from there penguins would take it to the North Pole. What do you think?" "'I think it might be all right,' said Speedy, "'if we can get the other birds to go in with us on the idea.' "'Well, you see,' said John Duke Little, "'I think we might, because we could use the mail service for the birds themselves, and the animals too, to send their letters by as well as the Fantipians."

Starting point is 00:37:50 "'But, doctor, birds and animals don't send letters,' said Speedy. "'No,' said the doctor. "'But there's no reason why they shouldn't begin.' Neither did people write or send letters once upon a time, but as soon as they began they found it very useful and convenient. So would the birds and animals. We could have the head office here in this beautiful island, in this animal's parrot. You see, my idea is, firstly, a post-office system for the education and betterment of the

Starting point is 00:38:26 animal kingdom, and secondly, a good foreign mail for the Fantipians. Do you think we could ever find some ways by which birds could write letters?" Oh, yes, I think so," said Speedy. We swallows, for incidents, always leave marks on houses where we have nested, which are messages for those who may come after us. Look, Speedy scratched some crosses and signs in the sand at the doctor's feet. That means, don't build your nest in this house. They have a cat here.

Starting point is 00:38:58 And this, the skimmer made four more signs in the sand. This means good house, flies plentiful, folks quiet, building mud can be found behind the stable. Splendid, cried the doctor. It's a kind of shorthand. You say a whole sentence in four signs. And then, Speedy went on, nearly all other kinds of birds have a sign language of their own. For example, the kingfishers have a way of marking the trees along the river to show where good

Starting point is 00:39:30 fishing is to be found. And thrushes have signs, too, one I've often seen on stones, which means, crack your snail shells here. That's so the thrushes won't go throwing their snail shells all over the place and scare the live snails into keeping out of sight. There you are, said the doctor. I always thought you birds had at least the beginnings of a written language. Otherwise you wouldn't be so clever.

Starting point is 00:39:57 Now all we have to do is to build up on these signs a regular and proper system of bird-writing, and I have no doubt whatever that with the animals we can do the same thing. Then we'll get the swallow-mail going, and we'll have animals and birds writing letters to one another all over the world, and to people, too, if they want to. I suspect, said Speedy, that you'll find most of the letters will be written to you, doctor. I've met birds all over creation who wanted to know what you look like, what you ate for breakfast, and all sorts of silly things about you.

Starting point is 00:40:33 Well, said the doctor, I wouldn't mind that. But my idea is firstly an educational one. With a good post-office system of their own, I feel that the conditions of the birds and animals will be greatly bettered. Only today, for example, some deer on this very island asked me what they should do about their nut trees which were nearly eaten up. I showed them at once how they could plant seeds and grow more trees. Heaven knows how long they had been going on short rations.

Starting point is 00:41:05 But if they'd only been able to write to me I could have told them long ago by swallow mail. Then the doctor and Chip went back to Fantipo. by the Pifilosaurus, who landed them on the shore under cover of night, so no one would see them. And in the morning John Doolittle called upon the king again. "'Your Majesty,' said the doctor, "'I have now a plan to provide your country with an excellent service of foreign mails if you will agree to what I suggest.'

Starting point is 00:41:38 "'Good,' said the king. "'My majesty is listening. Proceed! Let me offer you a lollipop." The doctor took one, a green one, from the box the king held out to him. King Coco was very proud of the quality of his lollipops made in the Royal Candy Kitchen. He was never without one himself, and always wore it hung around his neck on a ribbon. And when he wasn't sucking it, he used to hold it up to his eye and peer through it at his courtiers. He had seen white men using quizzical glasses, and he had his lollipops made thin and transparent,

Starting point is 00:42:19 so he could use them in this elegant manner. But constant lollipops had ruined his figure and made him dreadfully stout. However his fatness was considered a sign of greatness on Fentipo, he didn't mind that. My plan, said the doctor, is this. The domestic males of Fentipo, after I have instructed the postpropes, and a little more, can be carried by your own people. But the handling of foreign mails as well as the domestic ones is too much for them, and besides you have so few boats calling at your port.

Starting point is 00:42:56 So I propose to build a floating post-office for the foreign mails which shall be anchored close to the island called—the doctor only just stopped himself in time from speaking the dreaded name— "'ah, close to the island I spoke of to you the other day.' "'I don't like that,' said the king, frowning. "'Your Majesty need have no fear,' the doctor put in hurriedly. "'It will never be necessary for any of your people to land upon the island. The foreign mail post office will be a houseboat, anchored a little way out from the shore. And I will not need any Fantipian postman to run it at all, on the convent.

Starting point is 00:43:38 contrary, I make it a special condition on your part that the island we are speaking of shall continue to be left undisturbed for all time. I am going to run the Foreign Mail's office in my own way with special postmen of my own. When the Fantipians wish to send out letters to foreign lands they must come by canoe and bring them to the House Spote Post Office. But incoming letters addressed to the people of Fantipians. shall be delivered at the doors of the houses in the regular way what do you say to that i agree said the king but the stamps must all have my beautiful face upon them and no other very good said the doctor that can be arranged but it must be clearly understood that from now on the foreign mails shall be handled by my own postman in my way and after i have got the domestic post-office

Starting point is 00:44:38 running properly at Fantipo, you must see to it that it continues to work in order. If you will do that in a few weeks' time, I think I can promise that your kingdom shall have the finest mail service in the world. Then the doctor asked Speedy to send off messages through the birds to every corner of the earth, and to ask all the leaders of seagulls, tomtits, magpies, thrushes, stormy petrels, finches, penguins, vultures, snow buntings, wild geese, and the rest, to come to no man's land because John Doolittle wanted to speak to them. And in the meantime he went back and continued the work of getting the domestic mail service

Starting point is 00:45:21 in good running order at the post office at Fentipo. So the good speedy sent off messengers, and all around the world and back again word was passed from bird to bird, that John Doolittle, the famous animal doctor, wished to see all the leaders of all kinds of birds great and small. And presently, in the big hollow in the center of no man's land, they began to arrive. After three days, Speedy came to the doctor and said, All right, doctor, they are ready for you now. A good strong canoe had by this time been put at the doctor's service by the king, who was also a doctor's service by the king, who was also having the post-office houseboat built at the doctor's orders.

Starting point is 00:46:05 So John Doolittle got into his canoe and came at length to the same hill we had before gazed out over the pleasant hollow of the animal's paradise. And with a skimmer on his shoulder, he looked down into a great sea of bird faces, leaders all, every kind from a humming-bird to an albatross, and taking a palm-leaf and twisting it into a trumpet so that he could make himself. heard, he began his great inauguration speech to the leaders which was to set working the famous swallow mail service. After the doctor had finished his speech and told the leaders what it was he meant to do, the birds of the world applauded by whistling and screeching

Starting point is 00:46:50 and flapping their wings so that the noise was terrible. And in the streets of Fantipo, the natives whispered it about that the dragons were fighting one another in no-man's land. Then the doctor passed down among the birds, and, taking a notebook, he spoke to each leader in turn, asking him questions about the signs and sign language that his particular kind of bird was in the habit of using, and the doctor wrote it all down in his notebook, and took it home with him and worked over it all night, promising to meet the leaders again the following day. And on the morrow, crossing once again to the island, he went on with him. with a discussion and planning and arrangement.

Starting point is 00:47:36 It was agreed that the Swallow Mail surface should have its head office here in no man's land, and that there should be branch offices at Cape Horn, Greenland, in Christmas Island, Tahiti, Kashmir, Tibet, and Puddly on the marsh. Most of the males were arranged so that the birds who migrated or went to other lands in the winter and back again in summer, should carry the letters on their regular yearly journeys. And as there are some kinds of birds crossing from one land to another, in almost every week of the year, this took care of much of the males without difficulty. Then, of course, there were all those birds who don't leave their homelands in winter,

Starting point is 00:48:21 but stay in one country all the time. The leaders of these had come under special guidance of other birds to oblige the doctor by being present at the great meeting. They promised to have their people all the year round take care of letters that were brought to their particular countries to be delivered. So between one thing and another, much of the planning and arrangement of the services

Starting point is 00:48:45 was got through in these first two meetings. Then the doctor and the leaders agreed upon a regular kind of simple, easy writing for all the birds to use, so that the addresses on the envelopes could be understood and read by the post birds. And at last John Doolittle sent them off home again to instruct their relatives in this new writing and reading, and explained to all the birds of all the world how the post-office was going to work, and how much good he hoped it would do for the education and betterment

Starting point is 00:49:20 of the animal kingdom. Then he went home and had a good sleep. The next morning he found that King Coco had got to the young. his post-office houseboat ready and finished, and very smart it looked. It was paddled out and anchored close to the shore of the island. Then dab-dab, jip, two-two, gub-gub, the push-me-pull-you and the white mouse were brought over, and the doctor gave up his house on the main street of Fentipo and settled down to live at the foreign mails post-office for the remainder of his stay.

Starting point is 00:49:56 And now John Doolittle and his animals got tremendously busy arranging the post office, its furniture, the stamp drawers, the postcard drawers, the weighing scales, the sarting bags, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. Dab, of course, was housekeeper as usual, and she saw to it that the post office was swept properly every morning. Jip was the watchman, and had charge of locking up at night and opening in the morning. Tutsu, with his head for mathematics, was given the bookkeeping and kept account of how many stamps were sold and how much money was taken in.

Starting point is 00:50:35 The doctor ran the information window and answered the 101 questions that people are always asking at post offices. And the good and trusty Speedy was here and there and everywhere. And this was how the first letter was sent off by the swallow mail. King Coco himself came one morning, and putting his large face at the information window, asked, what is the fastest foreign mail delivery ever made by any post office anywhere in the world? The British post office is now boasting, said the doctor, that it can get a letter from London to Canada in fourteen days. All right, said the king.

Starting point is 00:51:19 Here is a letter to a friend of mine who runs the shoe-shine parlor in. Alabama. Let me see how quickly you can get me an answer to it." Now the doctor really had not got everything ready yet to work the foreign meals properly, and he was about to explain to the king, but Speedy hopped up on the desk and whispered, Give me that letter, Doctor. We'll show him." Then going outside he called for Quip the carrier.

Starting point is 00:51:48 Quip, said Speedy, take this letter to the Azores as fast as you can. can. There you'll just catch the white-tailed Carolina warblers, about to make their summer crossing to the United States. Give it to them and tell them to get the answer back here as quick as they know how. In a flash, quip was gone, seaward. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, when the king brought that letter to the doctor, and when His Majesty woke up in the morning and came down to breakfast, there was the answer to it lying beside his plate. End of Part 1, Chapter 8. Part 2, Chapter 1 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofning.

Starting point is 00:52:40 This Libre-Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 2, Chapter 1, A Most Unusual Post Office. Nobody thought, not even John Doolittle himself, when the Swoleck's swallow mill was first started, what a tremendous system it would finally grow into, and what a lot of happenings and ideas would come about through it. Of course, such an entirely new thing as this required a great deal of learning and working out before it could be made to run smoothly. Something new, some fresh problem cropped up every day.

Starting point is 00:53:18 But although the doctor, at all times a busy man, was positively worked to death, he found it all so interesting that he didn't take. mind. But the motherly Dab-Dab was dreadfully worried about him, for indeed at the beginning he seemed never to sleep at all. Certainly in the whole history of the world there never was another post office like the doctors. For one thing, it was a houseboat post office. For another, tea was served to everybody, the clerks and the customers as well, regularly at four o'clock every afternoon, with cucumber sandwiches on Sundays. Paddling over. over to the foreign mails post office for afternoon tea became quite the fashionable thing to

Starting point is 00:54:01 do among the more up-to-date Fantipians. A large awning was put over the back entrance, forming a pleasant sort of veranda with a good view of the ocean and the bay. And if you dropped in for a stamp around four o'clock, as likely as not you would meet the king there and all the other high notables of Fantipo sipping tea. Another thing in which the doctor's post office was peculiar, was its pins. Most post offices the doctor had found always had abominably bad pins that sputtered and scratched and wouldn't write. In fact, very many post offices, even nowadays, seem to pride themselves on their bad pins. But the doctor saw to it that his pins were of the very best quality. Of course, in those times

Starting point is 00:54:53 there were no steel pins, only quills were used. And John Doolittle got the albatrosses and the sea-gulls to keep for him their tail feathers which fell out in the molting season. And of course, with such a lot of quills to choose from, it was easy to have the best pins in the post office. Still another thing in which the doctor's post office was different from all others, was the gum used on the stamps. The supply of gum which the king had been used using for his stamps ran short, and the doctor had to set about discovering and making a new kind, and, after a good deal of experiment, he invented a gum made of licorice, which dried quickly and worked very well.

Starting point is 00:55:38 But as I have said, the Fantipians were very fond of sweetmeats, and soon after the new gum was put into use, the post office was crowded with people buying stamps by the hundred. At first the doctor could not understand this sudden new rush of business, which kept Tootoo the cashier, working overtime every night, adding up the day's takings. The post-office safe could hardly hold all the money taken in, and the overflow had to be put in a vase on the kitchen mantelpiece. But presently the doctor noticed that after they had licked the gum off the stamps, the customers would bring them back and want to exchange them for money again.

Starting point is 00:56:19 Now, it is a rule that all post offices have to exchange their own stamps when asked for the price paid for them. So long as they are not torn or marked, it doesn't matter whether the gum has been licked off or not. So the doctor saw that he would have to change his kind of gum if he wanted to keep stamps that would stick. And one day the King's brother came to the post office with a terrible cough and asked him in the same breath or gasp to give him five half-penny stamp.

Starting point is 00:56:49 and a cure for a cough. This gave the doctor an idea. And the next gum which he invented for his stamps he called whooping cough gum. He made it out of a special blend of sweet, sticky cough mixture. He also invented a bronchitis gum, a mumps gum, and several others. And whenever there was a catching disease in the town, the doctor would see that the proper kind of gum to cure it was issued on the stamps. It saved him a lot of trouble because the people were always bothering him to cure colds and sore throats and things, and he was the first postmaster to use this way of getting rid of sickness by serving round pleasant medicine on the back of stamps.

Starting point is 00:57:34 He called it damping out an epidemic. One evening at six o'clock, Jip shut the doors of the post office as usual and hung up the sign closed, as he always did at that hour. The doctor heard the bolts being shot, and he stopped counting postcards, and took out his pipe to have a smoke. The first hard work of getting the post office in full swing was now over. And that night John Doolittle felt when he heard the doors being shut that at last he could afford to keep more regular hours and not be working all the time.

Starting point is 00:58:12 And when Jip came inside the registered mail booths, he found the doctor, leaning back in a chair with his feet on the desk, gazing around him with great satisfaction. "'Well, Jip,' said he with a sigh, "'we now have a real working post-office.' "'Yes,' said Jip, putting down his watchman's lantern, and a mighty good one it is, too. There isn't another like it anywhere.' "'You know,' said John Doolittle, "'although we opened more than a week ago, I haven't myself written a single letter yet. Fancy living in a post office for a week and never writing a letter. Look at that drawer there. Ordinarily the sight of so many stamps would make me write dozens of letters. All my life

Starting point is 00:59:01 I never had a stamp when I really wanted to write a letter, and funny thing, now that I'm living and sleeping in a post office I can't think of a single person to write to. It's a shame, said Chip, and you with such beautiful hand-wrecked. writing, too, as well as a drawer full of stamps. Never mind. Think of all the animals that are waiting to hear from you." "'Of course there's Sarah,' the doctor went on, puffing at his pipe dreamily. "'Poor dear Sarah. I wonder whom she married.' "'But there you are. I haven't her address, so I can't write to Sarah, and I don't suppose

Starting point is 00:59:41 any of my old patients would want to hear from me.' "'I know,' cried Jip. write to the cat's meat man he can't read said the doctor gloomily no but his wife can said jip that's true murmured the doctor but what shall i write to him about just at that moment speedy the skimmer came in and said doctor we've got to do something about the city deliveries in fantipo my post-birds are not very good at finding the right houses to deliver the letters You see, we swallows, although we nest in houses, are not regular city birds. We pick out lonely houses as a rule in the country. City streets are a bit different for swallows to find their way round in. Some of the posts birds have brought back the letters they took out this morning to deliver,

Starting point is 01:00:35 saying they can't find the houses they are addressed to. "'Hm!' said the doctor. "'That's too bad. Let me think a minute.' "'Oh, I know. I'll send for Cheapside." "'Who is Cheapside?' asked Speedy. "'Cheapside is a London sparrow,' said the doctor,

Starting point is 01:00:56 "'who visits me every summer at Puddlby?' The rest of the year he lives around St. Paul's Cathedral. He builds his nest in St. Edmund's left ear. "'Where?' cried Chip. "'In the left ear of a statue of St. Edmund on the outside of the chancel, the cathedral, you know,' the doctor explained. explained. Cheap's the very fellow we want for city deliveries.

Starting point is 01:01:22 There's nothing about houses and towns he doesn't know. I'll send for him right now." "'I'm afraid,' said Speedy, that a post-bird, unless he was a city bird himself, would have a hard job finding a sparrow in London. It's an awful big city, isn't it?' "'Yes, that's so,' said John Doolittle. "'Listen, doctor,' said Jip.

Starting point is 01:01:48 you were wondering just now what to write to catsmeat man about let speedy write the letter to cheapside in bird's scribble and you enclose it in a letter to the cat's meat man then when the sparrow comes to puddle before his summer visit the cat's meat man can give it to him splendid cried the doctor and he snatched a piece of paper off the desk and started to write and you might ask him too put in dab-dab who had been listening to take a look at the back windows of the house to see that none of them is broken we don't want the rain coming in on the beds all right said the doctor i'll mention that so the doctor's letter was written and addressed to matthew mug esquire cat's meat merchant puddleby on the marsh slopshire england and it was sent off by quip the carrier The doctor did not expect an answer to it right away, because the cat's meat man's wife was a very slow reader and still slower writer. And anyhow, Cheap's side would not be expected to visit Pottleby for another week yet. He always stayed in London until after the Easterbank holiday.

Starting point is 01:03:05 His wife refused to let him leave for the country till the spring family had been taught by their father how to find the houses where people threw out crumbs, how to pick up oats from under the cab horse's nose bags, without being stamped on by the horse's hoofs, how to get about in the trafficky streets of London, and a whole lot of other things that young city birds have to know. In the meantime, while Quip was gone, life went forward busily and happily at the doctor's post office. The animals, Tutu, dab-dab, gub-gub, the push-me-pull-you, the white mouse and jip, all agreed

Starting point is 01:03:43 that they found living in a house. houseboat post office great fun. Whenever they got tired of their floating home, they would go off for picnic parties to the island of no-man's land, which was now more often called by the name John Doolittle had given it the Animal's Paradise. On these trips, too, the doctor sometimes accompanied them. He was glad to, because he so got an opportunity of talking with the many different kinds of animals there about the signs they were in the habit of using. And on these signs, which he carefully put down in notebooks, he built up a sort of written language for animals to use, or animal scribble, as he called it, the same as he had done

Starting point is 01:04:27 with the birds. Whenever he could spare the time, he held afternoon scribbling classes for the animals in the Great Hollow, and they were very well attended. He found the monkeys, of course, the easiest to teach, and, because they were so clever, he made some of them into assistant teachers. But the zebras were quite bright, too. The doctor discovered that these intelligent beasts had ways of marking and twisting the grasses to show where they had smelled lions about, though happily they did not have to use this trick

Starting point is 01:05:00 in the animal's paradise, but had brought it with them when they had swung across from the mainland of Africa. The doctor's pets found it quite thrilling to go through the mail that arrived each day, to see if there were any letters for them. At the beginning, of course, that wasn't much. But one day, Quip had returned from Puddleby with an answer to the doctor's letter to the Cat's Meat Man. Mr. Matthew Mug had written, through his wife, that he had hung the letter for Chiefside

Starting point is 01:05:32 on an apple tree in the garden where the sparrow would surely see it when he arrived. The windows of the house were all right, he wrote, but the back door could do with a coat of paint. And while Kip had been waiting for this letter to be written, he had filled in the time at Puddlby by gossiping with all the startlings and blackbirds in the doctor's garden about the wonderful new animals post office on the island of no man's land. And pretty soon every creature in and around Puddleby had got to hear of it. After that, of course, letters began to arrive at the houseboat for the doctor's pets.

Starting point is 01:06:10 And one morning, when the mail was sorted, there was a letter for dab-dab from her sister, one for the white mouse written by a cousin from the doctor's bureau drawer, one for Jip from the collie who lived next door in Puddleby, and one for Tutu, telling him he had a new family of six young ones in the rafters of the stable. But there was nothing for Gub-Gub. The poor pig was nearly in tears at being left out. And when the doctor went into town that afternoon, Gub-Gub asked, could he come along? The next day, the post-birds complained that the mail was an extra heavy one, and when it was

Starting point is 01:06:51 sorted there were ten thick letters for Gub-Gub and none for anybody else. Gip got suspicious about this and looked over Gub-Gub's shoulder when he opened them. In each one there was a banana skin. Who sent you those? asked Jip. I sent them to myself, said Gub-Gub, from Fantipo yesterday. I don't see why you fellow should get all the mail. Nobody writes to me, so I write to myself. End of Part 2, Chapter 2.

Starting point is 01:07:28 Part 2, Chapter 3 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting. This Libre-Vox recording is in the public domain. Portue, Chapter 3, the Birds that Helped Columbus After the doctor had written his first letter by swallow-mail to the cat's-meat man, he began to think of all the other people to whom he had neglected to write for years and years, and very soon every spare moment he had was filled in writing to friends and acquaintances everywhere. And then, of course, there were the letters he sent to and received from birds and animals all over the world.

Starting point is 01:08:16 First he wrote to the various bird leaders who were in charge of the branch offices at Cape Horn, Tibet, Tahiti, Kashmir, Christmas Island, Greenland, and Puddly on the marsh. To them he gave careful instructions how the branch post offices were to be run, always insisting on strict politeness from the post office clerks, and he answered all the questions that the branch postmasters wrote asking for guidance. and he sent letters to various fellow naturalists whom he knew in different countries and gave them a whole lot of information about the yearly flights or migrations of birds because, of course, in the bird mail business, he learned a great deal on that subject

Starting point is 01:08:59 that had never been known to naturalist before. Outside the post office he had a notice board set up on which were posted the outgoing and incoming mails. The notices would read something like this. Next Wednesday, July 18, the red-winged plovers will leave this office for Denmark and points on the Skaggarak. Post your mail early, please. All letters should bear a four-penny stamp.

Starting point is 01:09:25 Small packages will also be carried on this flight for Morocco, Portugal, and the Channel Islands. Whenever a new flight of birds were expected at no man's land, the doctor always had a big supply of food of their particular kind got ready for their arrival beforehand. He had, at the big meeting with the leaders, put down in his notebook the dates of all the yearly flights of the different kinds of birds, where they started from and where they went to, and this notebook was kept with great care. One day, Speedy was sitting on top of the weighing scales when the doctor was sorting a large pile of outgoing letters.

Starting point is 01:10:05 Suddenly the skimmer cried out. Great heavens, doctor, I've gained an ounce. I'll never be able to fly in the races again. Look, it says four and a half ounces. No, speedy, said the doctor. See, you have an ounce weight on the pan as well as yourself. That makes you only three and a half ounces. Oh, said Skimmer, is that the trouble?

Starting point is 01:10:29 I was never good at arithmetic. Oh, what a relief. Thank goodness I haven't gained. Listen, Speedy, said the doctor. In this batch of mail, we have a lot of letters for Panama. What mails have we got going out tomorrow? I'm not sure, said Speedy. I'll go and look at the notice board.

Starting point is 01:10:48 I think it's the Golden Jays. Yes, he said, coming back in a moment. That's right, the Golden Jays tomorrow. Tuesday the 15th, weather permitting. Where are they bound for, Speedy? asked the doctor. My notebook's in the safe. From Dahomey to Venezuela. said Speedy, raising his right foot to smother a yawn.

Starting point is 01:11:09 Good, said Dr. Doolittle. Then they can take these Panama letters for me. It won't be much out of their way. What do Golden Jays eat? They are very fond of acorns, said Speedy. All right, said the doctor. Please tell Gub-Gub for me to go across to the island and get the wild boars to gather up a couple of sacks of acorns.

Starting point is 01:11:31 I want all the birds who work for us to have a good feed before they leave. the main office for their flights. The next morning when the doctor woke up he heard a tremendous chattering all around the post office and he knew that the Golden Jays had arrived overnight. And after he had dressed and come out onto the veranda there, sure enough, they were. Myriads of very handsome gold and black birds swarming everywhere gossiping away at a great rate and gobbling up the acorns laid out for them in bushels. The leader, who already knew the doctor, of course, came forward to get orders and to see how

Starting point is 01:12:10 much mail there was to be carried. After everything had been arranged, and the leader had decided he needed to expect no tornadoes or bad weather for the next twenty-four hours, he gave a command. Then all the birds rose in the air to fly away, whistling farewell to postmaster General Doolittle and the head office. Oh, by the way, doctor, said the leader, turning back a moment. Did you ever hear of a man called Christopher Columbus? Oh, surely, said the doctor.

Starting point is 01:12:41 He discovered America in 1492. Well, I just wanted to tell you, said the Jay, that if it hadn't been for an ancestor of mine, he wouldn't have discovered it in 1492, later perhaps, but not in 1492. Oh, indeed, said John Doolittle. Tell me more about it. and he pulled a note-book out of his pocket and started to write well said the jay the story was handed down to me by my mother who heard it from my grandmother who got it from my great-grandmother and so on way back to an ancestor of ours who lived in america in the fifteenth century

Starting point is 01:13:24 our kind of birds in those days did not come across to this side of the atlantic neither summer nor winter we used to spend from march to september in the bermudas and the rest of the year in Venezuela. And when we made the autumn journey south, we used to stop at the Bahama Islands to rest on the way. The fall of the year 1492 was a stormy season. Gales and squalls were blowing up all the time, and we did not get started on our trip until the second week in October. My ancestor had been the leader of the flock for a long time,

Starting point is 01:13:59 but he had grown sort of old and feeble, and a younger bird was elected in his place to live. lead the Golden Jays to Venezuela that year. The new leader was a conceited youngster, and because he had been chosen he thought he knew everything about navigation and weather and sea crossings. Shortly after the birds started, they cited, to their great astonishment, a number of boats sailing on a westward course. This was about halfway between the Bermudas and the Bahamas. The ships were much larger than anything they had ever seen before. All they had been accustomed to up to that time were little canoes

Starting point is 01:14:39 with Indians in them. The new leader immediately got scared and gave the order for the Jays to swing in further toward the land so they wouldn't be seen by the men who crowded these large boats. He was a superstitious leader, and anything he didn't understand he kept away from. But my ancestor did not go with the flock, but came straight for the ships. he was gone about twenty minutes and presently he flew after the other birds and said to the new leader over there in those ships a brave man is in great danger they come from europe seeking land the sailors not knowing how near they are to sighting it have mutiny against their admiral i'm an old bird and i know this brave seafarer once when i was making a crossing the first i ever made a gale came up and i was separated from my fellows For three days I had to fly with the battering wind, and finally I was blown eastward near the old world.

Starting point is 01:15:41 Just when I was ready to drop into the sea from exhaustion I spied a ship. I simply had to rest. I was weather-beaten and starving, so I made for the boat and fell half dead upon the deck. The sailors were going to put me in a cage, but the captain of the ship, this same navigator whose life is now threatened by his rebellious crew in those ships over there, fed me crumbs and nursed me back to life. Then he let me go free to fly to Venezuela when the weather was fair. We are land birds.

Starting point is 01:16:15 Let us now save this good man's life by going to his ship and showing ourselves to his sailors. They will then know that land is near and be obedient to their captain." Yes, yes, said the doctor. Go on. I remember Columbus writing of land birds in his diary. Go on." So, said the Jay, the whole flock turned and made for Columbus's fleet. They were only just in time, for the sailors were ready to kill their admiral, who they

Starting point is 01:16:47 said had brought them on a fool's errand to find land when there was none. He must turn back and sail for Spain, they said, or be killed. But when the sailors saw a great flock of land birds passing over the ship going southwest instead of west, they took Newhart, for they were sure land must lie not far to the southwestward. So we led them on to the Bahamas, and on the seventh day, very early in the morning, the crew, with the cry of, land, land, fell down upon their knees and gave thanks to heaven. Warlings Island, one of the smaller Bahamas, lay ahead of them smiling in the sea. Then the sailors gathered about the admiral,

Starting point is 01:17:33 Christopher Columbus, whom a little before they were going to kill, and cheered and called him the greatest navigator in the world, which in truth he was. But even Columbus himself never learned to his dying day that it was the weather-beaten bird who had fallen on his friendly deck some years before, who had led him by the shortest cut to the land of the New World. So you see, Doctor, the Jay ended, picking up his letters and getting ready to fly. If it hadn't been for my ancestor, Christopher Columbus would have had to turn back to please his sailors or be killed. If it hadn't been for him, America would not have been discovered in 1492, later perhaps, but not in 1492.

Starting point is 01:18:20 Goodbye, I must be going. Thanks for the acorns. Part 2, Chapter 3. Part 2, Chapter 4 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office By Hugh Lofting. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Part 2, Chapter 4, Cape Stephen Light. On the coast of West Africa, about 20 miles to the northward of Fantipo, there was a Cape running out into the sea which had a lighthouse on it called the Cape Stephen Light.

Starting point is 01:19:00 This light was kept carefully burning by the government who controlled that part of Africa, in order that ships should see it from the sea and know where they were. It was a dangerous part of the coast, this. There were many rocks and shallows near the end of Cape Stephen, and if the light were ever allowed to go out at night, of course ships traveling that part of the sea would be in great danger of running into the long cape and wrecking themselves. Now one evening, not long after the Golden Jays had gone west, the doctor was writing letters in the post office by the light of a candle.

Starting point is 01:19:38 It was late, and all the animals were fast asleep long ago. Presently, while he wrote he heard a sound a long way off, coming through the open window at his elbow. He put down his pen and listened. It was the sound of a sea-bird calling way out at sea. Now, seabirds don't, as a rule, call very much unless they are in great numbers. This call sounded like a single bird. The doctor put his head through the window and looked out.

Starting point is 01:20:11 It was a dark night, as black as pitch, and he couldn't see a thing, especially as his eyes were used to the light of the candle. The mysterious call was repeated again and again, like a cry of distress from the sea. The doctor didn't know quite what to make of it. But soon he thought it seemed to be coming nearer, and grabbing his hat, he ran out onto the veranda. "'What is it? What's the matter?' he shouted into the darkness over the sea.

Starting point is 01:20:44 He got no answer. But soon with a rush of wings that nearly blew his candle out, a great seagull swept down on to the houseboat rail beside him. "'Doctor!' panted the gull. the cape stephen light is out i don't know what's the matter it has never gone out before we use it as a landmark you know when we are flying after dark the night's as black as ink i'm afraid some ship will surely run into the cape i thought i'd come and tell you good heavens cried the doctor what can have happened there's a lighthouse keeper living there to attend to it was it lighted earlier in the evening "'I don't know,' said the gull. "'I was coming in from catching herring.

Starting point is 01:21:33 They're running just now, you know, a little to the north. And expecting to see the light, I lost my way and flew miles too far south. When I found out my mistake I went back, flying close down by the shore, and I came to Stephen Cape. But it had no light. It was black as anything, and I would have run right into the rocks myself if I hadn't been going carefully. How far would it be from here? asked Dr. Doolittle.

Starting point is 01:22:02 Well, by land it would be twenty-five miles to where the lighthouse stands, said the gull, but by water it would be only about twelve, I should say. All right, said the doctor, hurrying into his coat. Wait just a moment till I wake, Dab-Dab. The doctor ran into the post-office kitchen and woke the poor housekeeper, who was slumbering soundly beside the kitchen stove. "'Listen, Dab-Dab,' said the doctor, shaking her. "'Wake up!

Starting point is 01:22:30 The Cape Stephen's lights gone out.' "'Was that?' said Dab-Dab, sleepily opening her eyes. "'Stove's gone out?' "'No, the lighthouse on Cape Stephen,' said the doctor. "'A gull just came and told me. "'The shipping's in danger. "'Rex you know and all that. "'Wake up and look sensible for pity's sake.'

Starting point is 01:22:51 "'At last, poor Dab-Dab-Dab fully o' awakened, understood what was the matter. And in a moment she was up and doing. I know where it is, Doctor. I'll fly right over there. No, I won't need the gull to guide me. You keep him to show you the way. Follow me immediately in the canoe.

Starting point is 01:23:11 If I can find out anything, I'll come back and meet you halfway. If not, I'll wait for you by the lighthouse tower. Thank goodness it's a calm night anyway, even if it is dark. With a flap of her wings, Dab-dab flew right through the open window and was gone into the night, while the doctor grabbed his little black medicine bag, and, calling to the gull to follow him, ran down to the other end of the houseboat, untied the canoe, and jumped in. Then he pushed off, heading around the island of no man's land, and paddled for all he was worth for the seaward end of Cape Stephen.

Starting point is 01:23:49 About halfway to the long neck of land that jutted out into the gloomy ocean, the doctor's canoe was met by Dab-Dab. Though how she found it in the darkness with only the sound of the paddle to guide her, goodness only knows. "'Doctor,' said she, "'if the lighthouse keeper is in there at all, he must be sick or something. I hammered on the windows, but nobody answered.' "'Dear me!' muttered the doctor, paddling harder than ever.

Starting point is 01:24:19 I wonder what can have happened." "'And that's not the worst,' said Dab-Dab. "'On the far side of the Cape—you can't see it from here. There's the headlight of a big sailing ship, bearing down southward, making straight for the rocks. They can't see the lighthouse, and they don't know what danger they're in.' "'Good Lord!' groaned the doctor, and he nearly broke the paddle as he churned the water astern to make the canoe go astriette.

Starting point is 01:24:51 How far off the rocks is the ship now? asked the gull. About a mile, I should say, said Dab-Dab. But she's a big one, judging by the height of her mass light, and she won't be long before she's a ground on the cape. Keep right on, doctor, said the gull. I'm going off to get some friends of mine. And the seagull spread his wings and flew away toward the land, calling the same cry as the doctor had heard through the post-office window.

Starting point is 01:25:19 John Doolittle had no idea of what he meant to do, nor was the gull himself sure that he would be in time to succeed with the plan he had in mind. But presently, to his delight, the seabird heard his call being answered from the rocky shores shrouded in darkness, and soon he had hundreds of his brother gulls circling round him in the night. Then he took them to the great ship, which was sailing calmly onward toward the rocks and destruction. And there, going forward to where the helmsman held the spokes of the wheel, and watched the compass swinging before him in the light of a little dim lamp, the gulls

Starting point is 01:26:01 started dashing themselves into the wheelman's face and covering the glass of the compass, so he could not steer the ship. The helmsman, battling with the birds, set up a yell for help, saying he couldn't see to steer the boat. Then the officers and sailors rushed up to his assistance and tried to beat the birds off. In the meantime, the doctor in his canoe had reached the end of Cape Stephen, and, springing ashore, he scrambled up the rocks to where the great tower of the lighthouse rose skyward over the black, unlighted sea. Feeling and fumbling, he found the door and hammered on it, yelling to be let in. But no one answered him, and Dab-Dab whispered in a hoarse voice that the light of the ship was,

Starting point is 01:26:50 nearer now, less than half a mile from the rocks. Then the doctor drew back for a run and threw his whole weight against the door. But the hinges in lock had been made to stand the beating of the sea, and they budged no more than if it had been a fly. At last, with a roar of rage, the doctor grabbed up a rock from the ground as big as a chair, and banged it with all his might against the lock of the lighthouse door. With a crash the door flew open and the doctor sprang within. On the ship the seamen were still fighting with the gulls.

Starting point is 01:27:29 The captain, seeing that no helmsman could steer the boat right with thousands of wings fluttering in his eyes, gave the order to lay the ship to for a little and to get out the hosepipes. And a strong stream of water was turned on to the gulls around the helmsman so they could no longer get near him. Then the ship got underway again and came on toward the Cape once more. Inside the lighthouse, the doctor found the darkness blacker still. With hands out stretched before him, he hurried forward, and the first thing he did was to stumble over a man who was lying on the floor just within the door. Without waiting to see what was the matter with him,

Starting point is 01:28:12 the doctor jumped over his body and began to grope his way up the wind standing stairs of the tower that led to the big lamp at the top. Meanwhile, Dab-Dab stayed below at the door, looking out over the sea at the mast-light of the ship, which, after a short delay, was now coming on again toward the rocks. At any minute she expected the great beam of the lighthouse lamp to flare out over the sea as soon as the doctor should get it lit to warn the sailors of their dangers. But instead she presently heard the doctor's agonized voice calling from the head of the stairs. "'Dab-Dab! Dab! Dab! I can't light it. We forgot to bring matches!'

Starting point is 01:28:59 "'Well, what have you done with the matches, Doctor?' called Dab-Dab. They were always in your coat. "'I left them beside my pipe on the information desk,' came the doctor's voice from the top of the dark stairs. but there must be matches in the lighthouse somewhere. We must find them. What chance have we of that? shouted Dab-Dab. It's as black as black down here, and the ship is coming nearer every minute. Feel in the man's pockets, called John Doolittle.

Starting point is 01:29:32 Hurry! In a minute, Dab-Dab went through the pockets of the man who lay so still upon the floor. He hasn't any matches on him, she shouted. not a single one. Confound the luck, muttered John Doolittle. And then there was a solemn silence in the lighthouse, while the doctor above and dab-dab below thought gloomily of that big ship,

Starting point is 01:29:59 sailing onward to her wreck because they had no matches. But suddenly out of the black stillness came a small sweet voice, singing somewhere near. "'Dab, dab!' cried the doctor in a whisper. "'Do you hear that? A canary. There's a canary singing somewhere. Probably in a cage in the lighthouse kitchen.' In a moment he was clattering down the stairs. "'Come on,' he cried.

Starting point is 01:30:27 "'We must find the kitchen. That canary will know where the matches are kept. Find the kitchen.' Then the two of them went stumbling around in the darkness, feeling the walls, and presently they came upon a low door, opened it, and fell headlong down a short flight of steps that led to the lighthouse kitchen. This was a little underground room, like a cellar, cut out of the rockman which the lighthouse stood. If there was any fire or stove in it, it had long since gone out, for the darkness

Starting point is 01:31:00 here was as black as anywhere else. But as soon as the door had opened, the trills of the songbird grew louder. tell me called dr doolittle in canary language where are the matches quick oh at last you come said a high small polite voice out of the darkness would you mind putting a cover over my cage that's a draught and i can't sleep nobody's been near me since midday i don't know what can have happened to the keeper he always covers up my cage at tea-time but to-night i wasn't covered at all so i went on singing you'll find out of the keeper you'll find out of the keeper he always covers up my cage at tea-time but to-night i wasn't covered at all so i went on singing you'll find my cover up on the matches, matches, where are the matches? screamed, dab-dab. The lights out and there's a ship in danger. Where are the matches kept? On the mantelpiece, next to the pepper box, said the canary. Come over here to my cage and feel along to your left high up, and your hand will fall right

Starting point is 01:32:00 on them. The doctor sprang across the room of setting a chair on his way and felt along the wall. His hand touched the corner of a stone shelf, and the next moment dab-dab gave a deep sigh of relief, for she heard the cheerful rattle of a box of matches as the doctor fumbled to strike a light. "'You'll find a candle on the table.' "'There, look, behind you,' said the canary, when the matchlight dimly lit up the kitchen. With trembling fingers the doctor lit the candle. Then shielding the flame with his hand, He bounded out of the room and up the stairs. At last, he muttered, let's hope I'm not too late.

Starting point is 01:32:43 At the head of the kitchen steps he met the seagull, coming into the lighthouse with two companions. "'Doctor!' cried the gull. "'We held off the ship as long as we could, but the stupid sailors, not knowing we were trying to save them, turned hoses on us and we had to give up. The ship is terribly near now.' Without a word the doctor sped on up the winding steps of the tower. Round and round he went upward till he was ready to drop from dizziness. At lift, reaching the great glass lamp chamber at the top, he set down his candle, and, striking two matches at once, he held one in each hand and lit the big wick in two places.

Starting point is 01:33:28 By this time, Dab-Dab had gone outside again, and was watching, over the sea for the oncoming ship. And when at last the great light from the big lamp at the top of the tower suddenly flared out over the sea, there was the bow of the vessel, not more than a hundred yards from the rocky shore of the Cape. Then came a cry from the lookout, shouted orders from the captain, much blowing of whistles and ringing of bells, and just in time to save herself from a watery grave, the big ship swung her nose out to sea and sails safely passed upon her way.

Starting point is 01:34:08 End of Part 2, Chapter 4. Part 2, Chapter 5 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 2, Chapter 5, Gulls and Ships The morning sun, peeping in at the window of the lighthouse, found the doctor still working over the keeper where he lay at the foot of the tower stairs. He's coming, too, said Dab-Dab. See, his eyes are beginning to blink.

Starting point is 01:34:46 Get me some more clean water from the kitchen, said the doctor, who was bathing a large lump on the side of the man's head. Presently the keeper opened his eyes wide and stared up into the doctor's face. Who? What? He murmured stupidly. The light! I must attend to the light.

Starting point is 01:35:07 I must attend to the light, and he struggled weakly to get up. It's all right, said the doctor. The light has been lit, and it's nearly day now. Here, drink this, then you'll feel better. And the doctor held some medicine to his lips which he had taken from the little black bag. In a short while the man grew strong enough to stand on his feet. Then, with the doctor's help, he walked as far as the kitchen, where John Doolittle and Dabab made him comfortable in the room.

Starting point is 01:35:37 an armchair, lit the stove, and cooked his breakfast for him. "'I'm mighty grateful to you, stranger, whoever you are,' said the man. "' Usually there's two of us here, me and my partner, Fred. But yesterday morning I let Fred go off with the catch to get oysters. That's why I'm alone. I was coming down the stairs about noon from putting new wicks in the lamp, when my foot slipped, and I took a tumble to the bottom. my head fetched up against the wall and knocked the senses right out of me how long i lay there before you found me i don't know well all's well that ends well said the doctor take this you must nearly be starved

Starting point is 01:36:19 and he handed the keeper a large cup of steaming coffee about ten o'clock in the morning fred the partner returned in the little sailboat from his oyster-gathering expedition he was very much worried when he heard of the accident which had happened while he had been off duty fred like the other keeper was a londoner and a seaman he was a pleasant fellow when both he and his partner who was now almost entirely recovered from his injury were very glad of the doctor's company to break the tiresome dullness of their lonely life. They took John Doolittle all over the lighthouse to see the workings of it, and outside they showed him with great pride the tiny garden of tomatoes and nasturgiums which they had planted near the foot of the tower. They only got a holiday once a year, they told John Doolittle, when a government ship stopped near Cape Stephen and took them back to England for six weeks' vacation.

Starting point is 01:37:19 leaving two other men in their place to take care of the lighthouse while they were gone. They asked the doctor if he could give them any news of their beloved London, but he had to admit that he also had been away from that city for a long time. However, while they were talking, Cheapside came into the lighthouse kitchen, looking for the doctor. The city sparrow was delighted to find that the keepers were also cockneys, and he gave them, through the doctor, all the latest, gossip of whopping, limehouse, and the East India docks, and the wharves and the shipping of London River.

Starting point is 01:37:56 The two keepers thought that the doctor was surely crazy when he started a conversation of chirps with Cheapside, but from the answers they got to their questions they could see there was no fake about the news of the city which the sparrow gave. Cheapside said the faces of those two Cockney seamen were the best scenery he had looked on since he had come to Africa. And after that first visit he was always flying over to the lighthouse in his spare time to see his new friends. Of course, he couldn't talk to them because neither of them knew sparrow talk, not even Cockney Sparrow Talk. But Cheapside loved being with them anyway. They're such a nice, wholesome Christian change, he said. After these they're

Starting point is 01:38:42 either idolaters, and you should just hear Fred sing, see that my graves kept green." The lighthouse keepers were sorry to have the doctor go, and they wouldn't let him leave till he promised to come and take dinner with them next Sunday. Then after they had loaded his canoe with a bushel of rosy tomatoes and a bouquet of nasturgums, the doctor, with dab-dab and sheepside, paddled away for Fantipo, while the keepers waved to them from the lighthouse door. The doctor had not paddled very far on his return journey to the post office, when the seagull who had brought him the news of the light overtook him. "'Everything all right now, doctor?' he asked as he swept in graceful circles around the canoe.

Starting point is 01:39:30 "'Yes,' said Dr. Doolittle, munching a tomato. The man got an awful crack on the head from that fall, but he will be all over it in a little while. If it hadn't been for the canary, though, who told us where the matches were, and for you, too, holding back the sailors, we would never have saved that ship. The doctor threw a tomato skin out of the canoe, and the gull caught it neatly in the air, before it touched the water. Well, I'm glad we were in time, said the bird. Tell me, asked the doctor, watching him thoughtfully, as he hovered and swung and circled

Starting point is 01:40:07 around the tiny boat. What made you come and bring me the news about the light? Goals don't, as a rule, bother much about people or what happens to ships, do they? You're mistaken, doctor, said the gull, catching another skin with deadly accuracy. Ships and the men in them are very important to us, not so much down here in the south, but up north, why, if it wasn't for the ships in the winter, we goals would often have a hard time finding enough to eat. You see, after it gets cold, fish and seafoods become sort of scarce. Sometimes we make out by going up the rivers to towns and hanging about the artificial lakes

Starting point is 01:40:49 and parks where fancy waterfowl are kept. The people come to the parks and throw biscuits into the lakes for the waterfowl, but if we are around, the biscuits get caught before they hit the lake like that, and the gull snatched a third tomato skin on the wing with a lightning lunge. but you were speaking of ships said the doctor yes the gull went on rather indistinctly because his mouth was full of tomato skin we find ships much better for winter feeding you see it isn't really fair of us to go and bag all the food from the fancy waterfowl in parks so we never do it unless we have to usually in winter we stick to the ships why two years ago i and a cousin of mine lived the whole year round following ships for the food scraps the stewards threw out into the sea the rougher the weather the more food we got because then the passengers don't feel like eating and most of

Starting point is 01:41:49 the grub gets thrown out yes I and my cousin attached ourselves as it were to the transatlantic packet line which runs ships from Glasgow to Philadelphia and travel back and forth with them across the ocean dozens of trips but later on we've changed over to the binnacle line, Tilbury to Boston. Why? asked the doctor. We found they ran a better table for their passengers, with the binnacle, who threw us out morning biscuits, afternoon tea and sandwiches last thing at night, as well as three square meal today, we lived like fighting cocks.

Starting point is 01:42:28 It nearly made sailors of us for good. It's a great life. All you do is eat. I should say gulls are interested in. men and ships, doctor? Very much so. Why, I wouldn't have an accident happen to a ship for anything, especially a passenger ship. Hmm, that's very interesting, murmured the doctor.

Starting point is 01:42:52 And have you seen many accidents, ships in trouble? Oh, heaps of times, said the gull. Storms, collisions at night, ships going aground in the fog and the rest. Oh, yes, I've seen lots of votes in trouble at sea. Ah, said the doctor, looking up from his paddling. See, we are already back at the post office. And there's the push-me-pull you ringing the lunch bell. We're just in time.

Starting point is 01:43:22 I smell liver and bacon. These tomatoes will go with it splendidly. Won't you come in and join us? He asked the goal. I would like to hear more about your life with ships. You've given me and I do. Dear. Thank you, said the gull.

Starting point is 01:43:38 I am feeling kind of peckish myself. You are very kind. This is the first time I've eaten ship's food inside a ship. And when the canoe was tied up, they went into the houseboat and sat down to lunch at the kitchen table. Well, now, said the doctor to the gull as soon as they were seated. You were speaking of fogs. What do you do yourself in that kind of weather? I mean, you can't see any more in the fog than the sailors can, can you?"

Starting point is 01:44:08 "'No,' said the goal. "'We can't see any more. It is true. But my goodness, if we were as helpless in the fog as the sailors are, we'd always be lost. What we do, if we are going anywhere special and we run into a fog, is to fly up above it, way up where the air is clear. Then we can find our way as well as ever.' I see, said the doctor.

Starting point is 01:44:35 But the storms, what do you do in them to keep yourself safe? Well, of course, in storms, bad storms, even seabirds can't always go where they want. We seagulls never try to battle our way against a real gale. The petrels sometimes do, but we don't. It's too tiring. And even when you can come down and rest on the water swimming every once in a while, it's a dangerous game. We fly with the storm, just let it carry us where it will.

Starting point is 01:45:07 Then when the wind dies down we come back and finish our journey. But that takes a long time, doesn't it? asked the doctor. Oh, yes, said the gull. It wastes a little time, but you know we very seldom let ourselves get caught by a storm. How do you mean? asked John Doolittle. We know before we reach one where it is and we go around. it. No experienced seabird ever runs his head into a bad storm. But how do you know where the storms are? asked the doctor.

Starting point is 01:45:42 Well, said that gole, I suppose two great advantages we birds have over the sailors in telling when and where to expect bad weather, or our good eyesight and our experience. For one thing, we can always rise high in the air and look over the sea for a distance of 50 or 60 miles. Then if we see gales approaching, we can turn and run for it, and we can put on more speed than the fastest gale that ever blew. And then another thing, our experience is so much better than sailors. Sailors, bored duffers, think they know the sea that they spend their life on it. They don't. Believe me, they don't. Half the time they spend in the cabin, part of the time they spend on shore, and a lot of the time they spend sleeping.

Starting point is 01:46:37 And even when they are on deck, they're not always looking at the sea. They fiddle around with ropes and paintbrushes and mops and buckets. You very seldom see a sailor looking at the sea. I suppose they get rather tired of it, poor fellows, murmured the doctor. Maybe. But after all, if you want to be a good seaman, the sea is the thing that counts. isn't it? That's the thing you've got to look at to study. Now we sea birds spend nearly all our lives night and day, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, looking at the sea. And what is the result?

Starting point is 01:47:17 Estegol, taking a fresh piece of toast from the rack that dab-dab handed him. The result is we know the sea. Why, doctor, if you were to shut me up in a little box, with no windows in it, and take me out into the middle of any ocean you liked, and then open the box and let me look at the sea, even if there wasn't a speck of land in sight. I could tell you what ocean it was, and almost to a mile what part of it we were in. But of course I'd have to know what data was. "'Marvellous!' cried the doctor. How do you do it?

Starting point is 01:47:58 From the color of it. the little particles of things that float in it, from the kind of fishes and sea-creatures swimming in it, from the way the little ripples rippled and the big waves waved, from the smell of it, from the taste, the saltiness of it, and a couple of hundred other things. But you know, in most cases—not always, but in most cases I could tell you where we were with my eyes shut as soon as I got out of the box, just from the wind blowing on my feathers. "'Great heavens!' the doctor exclaimed. "'You don't say.

Starting point is 01:48:35 "'That's the main trouble with sailors, doctor. "'They don't know winds the way they ought. "'They can tell a northeast wind from a west wind, "'and a strong one from a weak one, "'and that's about all. "'But when you've spent most of your life the way we have, "'flying among the winds, using them to climb on, "'to swoop on and to hover on,

Starting point is 01:48:59 You get to know that there's a lot more to a wind beside its direction and its strength. How often it puffs upward or downward, how often it grows weak or grows strong, will tell you, if you know the science of winds, a whole lot. End of Part 2, Chapter 5. Part 2, Chapter 6 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofning. Part 2, Chapter 6, Weather Bureau's When the lunch was over, the doctor took an armchair beside the kitchen stove and lit his pipe. I am thinking, he said to the goal, of starting a new department in my post office.

Starting point is 01:49:49 Many of the birds who have helped me in this mail business seem to be remarkably good weather profits, and what you have just told me about your knowledge of the sea and storms has given me the idea of opening a weather bureau. What's that? asked Jip, who was brushing up the table-crumbs, to be put out later for the birds on the houseboat deck. A weather bureau, said the doctor, is a very important thing, especially for shipping and farmers. It's an office for telling you what kind of weather you're going to have.

Starting point is 01:50:22 How do they do it? asked Gub-Gub. They don't, said the doctor. At least they do sometimes. But as often as not they're wrong. They do it with instruments, thermometers, barometers, hydrometers, and wind gauges and things. But most weather bureaus so far have been pretty poor. I think I can do much better with my birds. They very seldom go wrong in prophesying the weather.

Starting point is 01:50:50 Well, for what parts of the world do you want to know the weather, Doctor? Ask the gull. If it's just for Fentipo or West Africa, it will be easy as pie. All you ever get here is tornadoes. The rest of the year is just frying heat. But if you want to prophesy the weather for the Straits of Magellan or Nova Zimbla, or those countries where they have all sorts of fancy weathers, it will be a different matter. Even prophesying the weather for England would keep you busy.

Starting point is 01:51:23 Myself, I never thought that the weather itself knew what it was going to do next in England. The English climate's all right, put in cheap side, his feathers ruffling up for a fight. Don't you get turning up your long nautical nose at England, my lad? What do you call this ear a climate? Well, I should call it a Turkish bath. In England, we like variety in our climate, and we get it. That's why Englishmen have such already red faces. Ear, the poor creatures turn black.

Starting point is 01:51:55 I would like, said the doctor, to be able. able to prophesy weather for every part of the world. I really don't see why I shouldn't. This office, together with my branch offices, is in communication with birds going to every corner of the earth. I can improve the farming and the agriculture of the whole human race, but also and especially I want to have a bureau for ocean weather to help the ships." "'Ah,' said the gull, "'for land weather I wouldn't be much help to you.

Starting point is 01:52:27 But when it comes to the oceans, I know a bird who can tell you more about sea weather than any bureau ever knew." "'Oh,' said the doctor, who is that?' "'We call him one eye,' said the gull. "'He's an old, old albatross. Nobody knows how old. He lost an eye fighting with a fish eagle over a flounder. But he's the most marvelous weather-profit that ever lived.

Starting point is 01:52:57 All sea birds have the greatest respect for his opinions. He has never been known to make a mistake. Indeed, said the doctor, I would like very much to meet him. I'll get him for you, said the gull. His home is not very far from here, out on a rock off the Angola coast. He lives there because the shellfish are so plentiful on the rock, and he's too feeble with his bad sight to catch the other kinds of livelier fish. It's a sort of dull life for his old age, after all the great traveling he has done.

Starting point is 01:53:32 He'll be no in pleased to know you want his help. I'll go and tell him right away. That would be splendid, said the doctor. I think your friend should be very helpful to us. So the gull, after thanking the doctor and Dab-Dab for a very excellent luncheon, took a couple of postcards which were going to Angola, and flew off to get one eye. the albatross.

Starting point is 01:53:58 Later in the afternoon the gull returned, and with him came the great one-eye, oldest of bird-weather prophets. The doctor said afterward that he had never seen a bird who reminded him so much of a sailor. He had the rolling, straddling walk of a seafaring man. He smelt strongly of fish, and whenever he spoke of the weather he had an odd trick of squinting up at the sky with his one-faring man. his one eye the way old sailors often do. He agreed with the doctor that the idea of a bird weather bureau was quite a possible thing, and would lead to much better weather reports than

Starting point is 01:54:37 had so far been possible. Then for a whole hour and a half he gave the doctor a lecture on winds. Every word of this John Doolittle wrote down in a notebook. Now the wind is the chief thing that changes the weather. And if, for instance, you know that it is raining in the Channel Islands at tea time on the Thursday, and there's a northeast wind blowing, you can be pretty sure that the rain will reach England sometime Thursday night. The next thing that the doctor did was to write to all the branch postmasters and have them arrange exactly with the different kinds of birds a time for them to start their yearly

Starting point is 01:55:19 migrations, not just the second week in November or anything like that, but an exact day and hour. Then by knowing how fast each kind of bird flies, he could calculate almost to a minute what time they should arrive at their destination, and if they were late in arriving, then he would know that bad weather had delayed them on the way, or that they had put off their starting till storms died down. The doctor, the gull, one eye, dab-dab, cheap side, Speedy the skimmer, and Tutu the mathematician, put their heads together and discussed far into the night, working out a whole lot more arrangements

Starting point is 01:56:02 and particulars for running a good weather bureau, and a few weeks later a brand-new notice board appeared on the walls of the doctor's post office, beside the one for outgoing and incoming mails. The new notice was marked at the top weather report and would read something like this. The green herons were one day three hours and nine minutes late in their arrival at Cape Horn from the Sandwich Islands, wind coming south-southeast. Blustery weather can be expected along the west coast of Chile and light gales in the Antarctic Sea. And then the land birds, particularly Those living on berries were very helpful to the doctor in telling him by letter if the winter was going to be a hard one or not in their particular countries.

Starting point is 01:56:50 And he used to write to farmers all over the world advising them whether they could expect a sharp frost, a wet spring, or a dry summer, which, of course, helped them in their farming tree tremendously. And then the Fantipians, who so far had been very timid about going far out to sea on account of storms, now that they had a good weather bureau and knew what weather to expect, began building larger sailboats instead of their little frail canoes. And they became what is called a mercantile nation, traded up and down the shores of West Africa, and even went as far as the Cape of Good Hope, and entered the Indian Ocean to trafficking goods

Starting point is 01:57:32 with people of foreign lands. This made the kingdom of Fantipo much richer and more. important than it had been before, of course. And a large grant of money was given by the King to Foreign Males post office, which was used by the doctor in making the houseboat better and bigger. And soon the No Man's Land Weather Bureau began to get known abroad. The farmers in England, who had received such good weather reports by letter from the doctor, went up to London and told the government that their own reports were no good, that a certain

Starting point is 01:58:08 Dr. Doolittle, MD, was writing them much better reports from some place in Africa. And the government got quite worked up about it, and they sent a royal meteorologist, an old gray-haired weatherman, down to Fantipo to see how the doctor was doing it. John Doolittle saw him one day snooping around the post office, looking at the notice boards and trying to find out things. But he found out nothing. And when he got back to England, he said to the government, He hasn't any new instruments at all.

Starting point is 01:58:44 The man's a fake. All he has down there is an old barge and a whole lot of messy birds flying around. End of Part 2, Chapter 6. Part 2, Chapter 7 of Dr. Doolittle's post office by Hugh Lofting. This Libre-Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 2 Chapter 7 Teaching by Mail The educational side of the doctor's post office was a very important one, and it grew all the time. As he had said to the skimmer at the beginning, as soon as the birds and animals realized the

Starting point is 01:59:29 helpfulness of having a post office of their own, they used it more and more. And, of course, as Speedy had foretold, they wrote most of their letters to the doctor, Doctor. Soon the poor man was swamped with mail asking for medical advice. The Eskimo sleigh dogs wrote all the way from the Arctic continent to know what they should do about their hair falling out. Hair, which was all the poor creatures had to keep them warm against the polar winds, was of course very important to them.

Starting point is 02:00:03 And John Doolittle spent a whole Saturday and Sunday experimenting with hair tonics on Chip, to find a way to cure their trouble. Jip was very patient about it, knowing that the doctor was doing it for the good of his fellow dogs, and he did not grumble, although he did mention to Dab-Dab, that he felt like a chemist's shop from all the different hair oils the doctor had used on him. He said they ruined his keen nose entirely for two weeks, so he couldn't smell straight. And beside the letters asking for medical advice, the doctor got all sorts of requests from animals all over the world for information about food for their babies, nesting materials,

Starting point is 02:00:47 and a thousand other things. In their new thirst for education, the animals asked all manner of questions, some of which neither the doctor nor anyone else could answer. What were the stars made of? Why did the tide rise and fall? And could it be stopped? then in order to deal with this wide demand for information which had been brought about by his post-office john doolittle started for the first time in history courses by correspondence for animals and he had printed forms made called things a young rabbit should know the care of feet in frosty weather etc etc these he sent out by mail in thousands

Starting point is 02:01:36 And then, because so many letters were written him about good manners and proper behavior, he wrote, A Book of Etiquette for Animals. It is still a very famous work, though copies of it are rare now. But when he wrote it, the doctor printed a first edition of fifty thousand copies and sent them all out by mail in one week. It was at this time, too, that he wrote and circulated another very well-known book of his called One Act Plays for Penguins. But alas, instead of making the number of letters he had to answer less, the doctor found that by sending out books of information he increased a hundred-fold

Starting point is 02:02:22 the already enormous mail he had to attend to. This is a letter he received from a pig in Patagonia. Dear doctor, I have read your book of etiquette for animals, and like to it very much. I am shortly to be married. Would it be proper for me to ask the guests to bring turnips to my wedding instead of flowers? In introducing one well-bred pig to another, should you say Miss Virginia ham or meet Mr. Frank footer or get acquainted? Yours truly, Bertha Bacon. P.S. I have always worn my engagement ring in my nose. Is this the right place? and the doctor wrote back dear bertha in introducing one pig to another i would avoid using the word meat get acquainted is quite all right remember that the object of all etiquette and manners should be to make people comfortable not uncomfortable i think turnips at a wedding quite proper you might ask the guests to leave the tops on then they will look more like a bouquet sincerely yours john

Starting point is 02:03:36 Doolittle. End of Port 2, Chapter 7. Port 3, Chapter 1 of Dr. Doolittle's post office by Hugh Lofting. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 3, Chapter 1, The Animals Magazine. The next thing I must tell you about is the prize story competition. The fame of the Puddly Fireside Circle, where the doctor had a mused his pets with so many interesting tales, had become quite a famous institution.

Starting point is 02:04:17 Tutu had gossiped about it, Gub, Gub, Gip, and the White Mouse had boasted of it. You see, they were always proud that they could say they were part of the great man's regular household. And before long, through this new post office of their own, creatures all over the world were speaking of it and discussing it by letter. Next thing, the doctor began to receive requests for stories by mail. He had become equally famous as an animal doctor, an animal educator, and an animal author. From the far north, letters came in by the dozen from polar bears and walruses and foxes, asking that he send them some light, entertaining reading as well as his medical pamphlets and books of etiquette. The winter nights, weeks and weeks long up there,

Starting point is 02:05:08 grew frightfully monotonous, they said, after their own supply of stories had run out. Because you couldn't possibly sleep all the time, and something had to be done for amusement on the lonely ice flows and in the dens and layers beneath the blizzard-swept snow. For some time the doctor was kept so busy with more serious things that he was unable to attend to it, but he kept it in his mind until he should be able to think out the best way of the best way of dealing with the problem. Now his pets, after the post-office work got sort of settled in regular, often found it somewhat hard to amuse themselves in the evenings.

Starting point is 02:05:51 One night they were all sitting around on the veranda of the houseboat, wondering what game they could play when Chip suddenly said, I know what we can do. Let's get the doctor to tell us a story. Oh, you heard all my stories, said the doctor. "'Why don't you play Hunt the Slipper?' "'The houseboat isn't big enough,' said Dab-Dab. "'Last time we played it, Gub-Gub got stuck by the push-me-pull-use horns.'

Starting point is 02:06:19 "'You've got plenty of stories. Tell us one, Doctor. Just a short one.' "'Well, but what shall I tell you a story about?' asked John Doolittle. "'About a turnip-field,' said Gub-gub. "'No, that won't do,' said Jip. Doctor, why don't you do what you did sometimes by the fire in Puddleby? Turn your pockets out upon the table till you come to something that reminds you of a story. You remember? All right, said the doctor, but—

Starting point is 02:06:53 And then an idea came to him. Look here, he said. You know I've been asked for stories by mail. The creatures around the North Pole wanted some light reading for the long winter night. I'm going to start an animal's magazine for them. I'm calling it the Arctic Monthly. It will be sent by mail and be distributed by the Nova Zembla Branch Office. So far so good.

Starting point is 02:07:21 But the great problem is how to get sufficient stories and pictures and articles and things to fill a monthly magazine. No easy matter. Now listen. If I tell you animals a story tonight, You'll have to do something to help me with my new magazine. Every night when you want to amuse yourselves, we'll take it in turns to tell a story. That will give us seven stories right away. There will be only one story printed every month, each month.

Starting point is 02:07:53 The rest of the magazine will be news of the day, a medical advice column, a babies and mother's page, and odds and ends. Then we'll have a prize story competition. the readers shall judge which is the best, and when they write to us here and tell us, we'll give the prize to the winner. What do you say? What a splendid idea, said Gub-Gub. I'll tell my story tomorrow night. I know a good one.

Starting point is 02:08:23 Now go ahead, Doctor. Then John Doolittle started turning his trousers' pockets out onto the table to try and find something that reminded him of a story. It was certainly a wonderful collection of objects that he brought forth. There were pieces of string and pieces of wire, stub ends of pencils, pocket knives with the blades broken, coat buttons, boot buttons, a magnifying glass, a compass, and a corkscrew. There doesn't seem to be anything very hopeful here, said the doctor.

Starting point is 02:09:00 Try in your waistcoat pockets, said Tutu. They were always the most interesting. You haven't turned them out since you left Puddleby. There must be lots in them." So the doctor turned out his waistcoat pockets. These brought forth two watches, one that went and one that didn't, a measuring tape, a piece of cobbler's wax, a penny with a hole through it, and a clinical thermometer. What's that? asked Gub-Gub pointing to the thermometer.

Starting point is 02:09:33 That's for taking people's temperature width, said the doctor. Oh, that reminds me. "'How a story?' cried Tutu. "'I knew it would,' said Jip. "'A thing like that must have a story to it. What's the name of the story, Doctor?' "'Well,' said the doctor, settling himself back in his chair, "'I think I'll call this story the invalids strike.'

Starting point is 02:09:58 "'What's a strike?' asked Gub-Gub. "'And what on earth is an invalid?' cried the push-me-pull you. A strike, said the doctor, is when people stop doing their own particular work in order to get somebody else to give them what they want. And an invalid, well, an invalid is a person who is always, or more or less ill. But what kind of work is invalid's work? asked the White Mouse. Their work is staying ill, said the doctor. Stop asking questions or I'll never get this story started. Wait a minute, said Gub-Gub.

Starting point is 02:10:36 My foot's gone to sleep. Oh, bother your feet, said Dab-Dab. Let the doctor get on with his story. Is it a good story? asked Gub-Gub. Well, said the doctor, I'll tell it. And then you can decide for yourself. Stop fidgeting now and let me begin. It's getting late.

Starting point is 02:10:56 End of Part 3, Chapter 1. Part 3, Chapter 2 of Dr. Doolittle's post office. By Hugh Lofting. This is a Librivox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. Part 3, Chapter 2. The Doctor's Story As soon as the doctor had lit his pipe and got it well going, he began.

Starting point is 02:11:28 Many years ago, at the time I bought this thermometer, I was a very young doctor, full of hope, just starting out in business. I fancied myself a very young doctor. I had myself a very good doctor, but I found that the rest of the world did not seem to think so. And for many months after I began I did not get a single patient. I had no one to try my new thermometer on. I tried it on myself quite often.

Starting point is 02:11:57 But I was always so frightfully healthy I never had any temperature anyway. I tried to catch a cold. I didn't really want a cold, you understand. But I did want to make sure that my new thermoomers. But I couldn't even catch a cold. I was very sad, healthy but sad. Well about this time I met another young doctor who was in the same fix as myself, having no patience, said he to me, I'll tell you what we'll do.

Starting point is 02:12:29 Let's start a sanitarium." What's a sanitarium? asked Gub-Gub. A sanitarium, said the doctor, is a sort of a sort of mixture between a hospital and a hotel where people stay who are invalids. Well, I agree to this idea. Then I and my young friend, his name was Phipps, Dr. Cornelius Q. Phipps, took a beautiful place way off in the country, and we furnished it with wheelchairs and hot water bottles and ear trumpets and the things that invalids like.

Starting point is 02:13:04 And very soon, patients came to us in hundreds, and our sanitarium was quite. full up, and my new thermometer was kept very busy. Of course, we made a lot of money because all these people paid us well, and Phipps was very happy. But I was not so happy. I had noticed a peculiar thing. None of the invalids ever seemed to get well and go away. And finally I spoke of this to Phipps.

Starting point is 02:13:35 My dear Doolittle, he said, go away. Of course not. We don't want them to go away. We want them to stay here, so they'll keep on paying us." Fips, I said. I don't think that's honest. I became a doctor to cure people, not to pamper them. Well, on this point we fell out and quarreled.

Starting point is 02:13:59 I got very angry and told him I would not be his partner any longer, that I would pack up and go the following day. As I left his room still very angry, I passed one of the invalid in his wheelchair. It was Sir Timothy Quisby, our most important and expensive patient. He asked me as I passed to take his temperature as he thought he had a new fever. Now I had never been able to find anything wrong with Sir Timothy and had decided that being an invalid was a sort of hobby with him. So still, very angry instead of a little.

Starting point is 02:14:39 of taking his temperature, I said quite rudely, Oh, go to the Dickens." Sir Timothy was furious. And calling for Dr. Phipps, he demanded that I apologize. I said I wouldn't. Then Sir Timothy told Phipps that if I didn't he would start an invalids strike. Phipps got terribly worried and implored me to apologize to this very special

Starting point is 02:15:06 patient. I still refused. Then a peculiar thing happened. Sir Timothy, who had always so far seemed too weak to walk, got right out of his wheelchair, and waving his ear-trumpet wildly, ran around all over the sanitarium, making speeches to the other invalids, saying how shamefully he had been treated and calling on them to strike for their rights. And they did strike, and no mistake.

Starting point is 02:15:37 At night at dinner they refused to take their medicine, either before or after meals. Dr. Phipps argued with them, prayed with them, implored them to behave like proper invalids, and carry out their doctor's orders. But they wouldn't listen to him. They ate all the things they had been forbidden to eat, and after dinner those who had been ordered to go for a walk stayed at home, and those who had been ordered to stay quiet, went outside and ran up and down the street. They finished the evening, having a pillow fight with their hot water bottles when they should have been in bed. The next morning they all packed their

Starting point is 02:16:16 own trunks and left, and that was the end of our sanitarium. But the most peculiar thing of all was this. I found out afterward that every single one of those patients had got well. Getting out of their wheelchairs and going on strike, had done them so much good they stopped being invalids altogether. As a sanitarium doctor, I suppose I was not a success. Still, I don't know. Certainly I cured a great many more patients by going out of the sanitarium business than Phipps ever did by going into it.

Starting point is 02:16:54 End of Part 3, Chapter 2. Part 3, Chapter 3 of Dr. Doolittle's Post. Post Office by Hugh Lofding. This Libri-Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 3, Chapter 3, Gob-Gub's Story. The next night, when they were again seated around the veranda after supper, the doctor asked, Now who's going to tell us a story tonight? Didn't Gub-Gubb say he had one for us?

Starting point is 02:17:29 Oh, don't let him tell one doctor, said Jip. It's sure to be stupid. He is an old-in-law. enough to tell a good story," said Dab Dab. He hasn't had any experience." "'His only interest in life is food, anyway,' said Tutu. Let someone else tell a story." "'No, now, wait a minute,' cried the doctor.

Starting point is 02:17:52 "'Don't all be jumping on him this way. We were all young once. Let him tell his story. He may win the prize. Who knows?' "'Come along, Gub-Gub. Tell us your story. What's the name of it?'

Starting point is 02:18:06 Gub Gub fidgeted his feet, bushing up to his ears, and finally said, "'This is a kind of a crazy story, but it's a good one. It's a piggish fairy tale. It's called the magic cucumber.' "'Glosh!' growled Jip. "'More food,' murmured Tutu. "'What did I tell you?' "'Tee-he-he,' tittered the white mouse.

Starting point is 02:18:32 "'Go on, Gub-gub,' said the doctor. Don't take any notice of them. I'm listening. Once upon a time, Gub-Gub began, a small pig went out into the forest with his father to dig for truffles. The father was a very clever truffle-digger,

Starting point is 02:18:50 and just by smelling the ground he could tell with great sureness the places where truffles were to be found. Well, this day they came upon a place beneath some big oak trees, and they started digging. Presently, after the father pig had dug up an enormous truffle and they were both eating it, they heard, too, their great astonishment, the sound voices coming from the hole out

Starting point is 02:19:16 of which they had dug the truffle. The father pig hurried away with his child because he did not like magic. But that night the baby pig, when his mother and father were fast asleep, crept out of his stye and went off into the woods. He wanted to find out the mystery of those voices coming from under the ground. So, reaching the hole where his father had dug up the truffle, he set to work digging for himself. He had not dug very long when the earth caved right in underneath him, and he felt himself falling and falling and falling.

Starting point is 02:19:56 At last he came to a stop, upside down in the middle of a dining-table. The table was all set for dinner, and he felt. he had fallen into the soup. He looked about him and saw, seated around the table, many tiny little men, none of them more than half as big as himself, and all a dark green in color. "'Where am I?' asked the baby pig. "'You're in the soup,' said the little men. The baby pig was at first terribly frightened. But when he saw how small were the men around him, his fear left him. And before he got out of the soup tourine on the table, he drank up all the soup.

Starting point is 02:20:37 He then asked the little men who they might be, and they said, We are the cook goblins. We live under the ground, and we spend half our time inventing new things to eat, and the other half in eating them. The noise you heard coming out of the hole was us singing our food hymns. We always sing food hymns whenever we are preparing particularly fine dishes. Good," said the pig. I've come to the right place.

Starting point is 02:21:05 Let us go on with the dinner." But just as they were about to begin on the fish, the soup was already gone, you see. There was a great noise outside the dining-hall, and in rushed another lot of little men, a bright red in color. These were the toad-stool sprites, ancient enemies of the cook-goblins. A tremendous fight began. side using toothpicks for spears and the other using nutcrackers for clubs. The pig took the side of his friends, the Cook Goblins, and being as big as any two of

Starting point is 02:21:42 the enemy put together, he soon had the Toadstool sprites running for their lives. When the fight was over and the dining hall cleared, the Cook Goblins were very grateful to the Baby Pig for his valuable assistance. They called him a conquering hero, and crowning him with a wreath of parsley, they invited him to the seat of honor at the dining table and went on with the meal. Never had the baby pig enjoyed a meal so much in all his life as he did that one. He found that the cook goblins, as well as inventing new and marvelous tasty dishes, had also thought out a lot of new things in the way of table furnishings.

Starting point is 02:22:26 For instance, they served pin cushions with the fish. These were to stick your fish bones in instead of leaving them to clutter up your plate. Pudding fans were another of their novelties. Fans for cooling off your pudding with instead of blowing on it. Then they had cocoa skin clotheslines, little toy clotheslines to hang the skin off your cocoa on neatly. You know what a nasty mess it makes draped over the rim of your own cup. And when the fruit came on, tennis rackets were handed around also. and if any one at the other end of the table asked you for an apple instead of going to all the work of handing down a heavy bowl of fruit you just took an apple and served it at him like a tennis ball and he would catch it at the other end of the table on the point of a fork

Starting point is 02:23:16 these things added a good deal of jolliness to the meal and some of them were very clever inventions why they even had a speaking-to for things you are not allowed to mention at table A speaking tube, the White Mouse interrupted. How is it used? I don't understand. Well, said Gub-Gub, you know how people are always telling you, you mustn't speak about those things at the table. Well, the cook-goblins had a speaking tube in the wall, which led at the other end to the open air outside. And whenever you wanted to talk about any of the things forbidden at the table,

Starting point is 02:23:56 you left the table and went and set it into the same. speaking tube, then you came back to your seat. It was a very great invention. Well, as I was saying, the baby pig enjoyed himself tremendously, and when the meal was over he said he must be going back because he wanted to get into the sty before his mother and father should be awake. The cook-goblins were very sorry to see him go, and as a farewell present in return for the help he had given them against their enemies, they gave him the magic cucumber. Now this cucumber, if you cut off even the smallest part of it and planted it, it would grow immediately into a whole field of any fruit or vegetable you wished.

Starting point is 02:24:43 All you had to do was to say the name of the vegetable you wanted. The baby pig thanked the cook goblins, kissed them all goodbye, and went home. He found his mother and father still asleep when he got back. So after carefully hiding his magic cucumber under the floor of the cow-born, he crept into the sty and went fast asleep. Now it happened that a few days later a neighboring king made war upon the king that owned the country where the pig family lived. Things went very badly for the pig's king, and seeing that the enemy were close at hand he

Starting point is 02:25:22 He gave orders that all cattle and farm animals and people should be brought inside the castle walls. The pig family was also driven into the castle grounds, but before he left the baby pig went and bit off a piece of his magic cucumber and took it along with him. Soon after, the enemy's army closed about the castle and tried to storm it. Then for many weeks they remained there, knowing that sooner or later the king and the people in the castle would run short of food and have to give in. Now it happened that the queen had noticed the baby pig within the castle grounds, and being

Starting point is 02:26:03 a princess of Irish blood, she took a great fancy to him, and had a piece of green ribbon tied about his neck and made a regular pet of him, much to the disgust of her husband, the king. Well, the fourth week after the enemy came, the food in the castle was all gone. and the king gave orders that the pigs must be eaten. The queen raised a great outcry and begged that her pet should be spared, but the king was very firm. My soldiers are starving, said he, your pet madam must be turned into sausages.

Starting point is 02:26:42 Then the baby pigs saw that the time to use the goblin's magic gift had come, and rushing out into the castle garden, he dug a hold and planted his piece of cucumber right in the middle of the king's best rosebed. Parsnips, he grunted as he filled in the hole, may they blossom acres wide. And sure enough, he had hardly said the words, before all over the king's garden, Parsnips began springing up thick and fast. Even the gravel walks were covered with them. Then the king and his army had plenty of food.

Starting point is 02:27:20 and growing strong on the nutritious parsnips. They sallied forth from the castle, smote the enemy, hip and thigh, and put them to flight. And the queen was allowed to keep her pet pig, which rejoiced her kind heart greatly, she being of Irish blood royal, and he became a great hero at the court, and was given a sty studied with jewels in the center of the castle garden, on the very spot where he had planted the magic cucumber. and they all lived happily ever after and that is the end of the piggish fairy tale end of part three chapter three part three chapter four of dr do littles post office by hugh lofting this librivox recording is in the public domain part three chapter four dab-dab's story the animals now began to look forward to the evening storytelling the way people do

Starting point is 02:28:28 to regular habits that are pleasant, and for the next night they arranged among themselves beforehand that it should be Dab Dab's turn to tell a tale. After they were all seated on the veranda, the housekeeper preened her feathers, and in a very dignified voice began. On the outskirts of Puddleby on the marsh there lives a farmer who swears to this day that his cat can understand every word he says. It isn't true, but both the farmer and his wife think it is, and I'm now going to tell you how they came to get that idea.

Starting point is 02:29:07 Once when the doctor was away in Scotland looking for fossils, he left me behind to take charge of the house. The old horse in the stable complained me one night that the rats were eating up all his corn while I was walking around the stable trying to think out what I should do about it. I spied an enormous white Persian cat stalking about the premises. Now, I myself have no love for cats. For one thing, they eat ducklings, and for another they always seem to me sort of sneaky things. So I ordered this one to get off the doctor's property.

Starting point is 02:29:47 To my surprise, she behaved very politely, said she didn't know she was trespassing and turned to leave. Then I felt sort of guilty knowing the doctor liked to be hospitable to every kind of animal, and after all the cat wasn't doing any harm there. So I overtook her and told her that if she didn't kill anything on the place, she could come and go as she pleased. Well, we got chatting the way people do, and I found out that the cat lived at a farmer's house about a quarter of a mile down the Uxanthorpe Road.

Starting point is 02:30:21 Then I walked part of the way home with her, still chatting, and I found that she was a very agreeable individual. I told her about the rats in the stable, and the difficulty I had in making them behave, because the doctor wouldn't allow anyone to kill them, and she said if I wished, she'd sleep in the stable a few nights, and the rats would probably leave as soon as they smelled her around. This she did, and the results were excellent. The rats departed in a body, and the old horse's corn-bin was left undisturbed. Then she disappeared, and for several nights I saw nothing of her.

Starting point is 02:31:01 So one evening I thought it would be only decent of me to call at her farm down the Oxenthorpe Road to thank her. I went to the farm and found her in the farmyard. I thanked her for what she had done and asked her why she hadn't been around to my place of late. I've just had kittens, she said, six, and I have a little. been able to leave them a moment. They are in the farmer's parlor now. Come in and I'll show them to you." So we went in. And on the parlor floor, in a round basket, there were six of the prettiest kittens you ever saw. While we were looking at them we heard the farmer and his wife coming downstairs, so thinking they might not like to have a duck in the parlor. Some folks are so snobbish and

Starting point is 02:31:49 persnickety, you know, not like the doctor. I hid myself behind a closet door just as the farmer and his wife came into the room. They leaned over the basket of kittens, stroked the white cat, and started talking. Now the cat didn't understand what they said, of course, but I, being round the doctor so much and discussing with him the differences between duck grammar and people's grammar understood every word they uttered. And this is what I heard the farmer say to his wife. We'll keep the black and white kitten, Liza.

Starting point is 02:32:26 I'll drown the other five tomorrow morning. Won't never do to have all them cats running around the place. His grammar was atrocious. As soon as they had gone, I came out of the closet and I said to the white cat, I shall expect you to bring up these kittens to leave ducklings alone. Now listen. Tonight, after the farmer and his wife are in bed, take all your kittens except the black and white one and hide them in the eddick.

Starting point is 02:32:58 The farmer means to drown them and is going to keep only one. The cat did as I bade her, and next morning when the farmer came to take the kittens away, he found only the black and white one, the one he meant to keep. He could not understand it. Some weeks later, however, when the farmer's wife was spring cleaning, she came upon the others in the attic, where the mother cat had hidden them and nursed them secretly. But they were now grown big enough to escape through the window, and they went off to find new homes for themselves.

Starting point is 02:33:33 And that is why, to this day, that farmer and his wife swear their cat can understand English, because they say she must have heard them when they were talking over the basket. And whenever she's in the room, and they are gossiping about the neighbors, They always speak in whispers, lest she overhear. But between you and me, she doesn't really understand a single word they say. End of Part 3, Chapter 4. Part 3, Chapter 5 of Dr. Doolittle's post office by Hugh Lofting. This Libre V recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 02:34:17 Part 3, Chapter 5, The White Mouses Story. "'Whose turn is it to give us a story now?' asked the doctor. "'When the supper things were cleared away the following evening.' "'I think the white mouse ought to tell us one,' said Jip. "'Very well,' said the white mouse. "'I will tell you one of the days of my youth.' The doctor knows this story, but the rest of you have never heard it.' And smoothing back his white whiskers and curling his pink tails snugly around,

Starting point is 02:34:51 his small sleek body, he blinked his eyes twice and began. When I was born, I was one of seven twins. But all my brothers and sisters were ordinary mouse color, and I alone, out of the whole family, was white. My color worried my mother and father a great deal. They said I was so conspicuous and would certainly, as soon as I left the nest, get caught by the first owl or cat that came along. We were city folk, my family were, and proud of it.

Starting point is 02:35:27 We lived under the floor of a miller's shop. Across the street from our place was a butcher's shop, and next door to us was a dyer's, with a dyed cloth different colors before it went to the tailors to be made into suits. Now when we children grew up big enough to go off for ourselves, our parents gave us all sorts of careful instructions about escaping cats and ferrets and weasels and dogs. But over poor me they shook their heads. They really felt that there was not much hope of my leading a peaceful life with white fur that could be seen a mile off. Well, they were quite right. My color got me into trouble the first week that I set out to seek my fortune, but not in

Starting point is 02:36:15 the way they thought it would. the son of the miller who owned the shop where we lived found me one morning in a bin of oats aha he cried a white mouse the very thing i've been wanting and he caught me in a fishing net and put me in a cage to keep as a pet i was very sad at first but after a while i got sort of used to the life the boy he was only eight years old treated me kindly and fed me regularly each day and fed me regularly each day and he was always each day and he was only eight years old treated me kindly and fed me regularly each day I grew almost fond of the funny snub-nosed lad, and became so tame that he would let me out of my cage sometimes, and I would run up and down his sleeve, but I never got a chance to escape. After some months I began to grow weary of the silly life I was leading, and then, too, the wild mice were so mean to me.

Starting point is 02:37:11 They used to come around at night and pointed me through the wire of my cage, saying, Look at the tame white mouse, tee-he-he, a plaything for children. Good little mousey. Come and have him's face he washed, the stupid little idiots. Well, finally I set to work and thought of a clever plan of escape. I gnawed a hole through the wooden floor of my cage and kept it covered with straw, so the boy couldn't see it. And one night, when I heard him safely snoring, he always kept my cage at the head.

Starting point is 02:37:46 head of his bed. I slipped out of the hole and got away. I had many adventures with cats. It was wintertime, and the snow lay thick upon the ground. I started off to explore the world, rejoicing in my liberty. Going around to the back of the house, I passed from the miller's yard into the dyer's yard next door. In the yard was a dying shed, and I noticed two owls sitting on the top of it in the moonlight. Entering the miller's yard, entering the yard. Entering the yard, the shed. I met a rat, very old and very thin, said he to me. I am the oldest rat in the town, and I know a great deal. But tell me, why do you come here into the dying shed? I was looking for food, I said. The old rat left a crack and

Starting point is 02:38:39 and quavering laugh, with no joy in it at all. There's no food here, he said, only dyes of different colors. And he pointed to the big divats all in a row that towered in the half-darkness above our heads. Any food there was here I've eaten, he went on sadly. And I dare not go out for more because the owls are waiting on the roof. They'd see my dark body. against the snow, and I stand no chance of escape. I am nearly starved, and he swayed weakly on his old feet.

Starting point is 02:39:26 But now you come is different. Some good fairy must have sent you to me. I have been sitting here for days and nights on end, hoping a white mouse might come along. With your white fur, you understand, The owls can't see you so well against the snow. That's what's called protective coloration. I know all about natural history.

Starting point is 02:39:55 I'm very old, you see. That is why you managed to get in here without being caught. Go out now, for pity's sake, and bring me the first food of any kind that you find. The owls by night and the cats by day. have kept me shut in here since the snow came without a bite to eat. You are only just in time to save my life." So off I went across the moonlit snow, and the blinking owls on the roof of the dying

Starting point is 02:40:29 shed never spotted me. Against the whiteness I was nearly invisible. I felt quite proud. At last my white fur was coming in handy. I found a garbage can and, picking. out some bacon rinds, I carry them back to the starving rat. The old fellow was ever so grateful. He ate and ate. My whiskers how he ate. Finally he said, ah, now I feel better. You know, said I, I have only just escaped from captivity. I was kept as a pet by a boy.

Starting point is 02:41:08 So far being right has only been a great inconvenience to me. Cats could see me so well life wasn't worth living. Well, now I'll tell you what we'll do, said he. You come and live in this dying shed with me. It isn't a bad place, quite warm and snug under the floors, and the foundations are simply riddled with holes and corridors and hiding places. And while the snow is here, you can go out and get the food for both of us, because you can't be seen so well against the snow.

Starting point is 02:41:50 And when the winter is over and the earth is black again, I will do the food hunting outside and you can do the staying at home. You see, this is a good place to live in another way. There is nothing for rats and mice to destroy here, so people don't bother about you. Other places, like houses and food shops and meals, folks are always setting traps and sending ferrets after you. But no one minds rats living in a dying shed, see?

Starting point is 02:42:30 Foolish young rats and mice go and live where there's lots of food. But not for me. I'm a wise one I am. Well, we agreed upon this arrangement, and for a whole year I lived at the dyers with the old wise rat, and we lived high no mistake. Not a soul ever bothered us. In the winter days I did the foraging, and when summer came my old partner, who knew where to get the choicest foods in town, kept our larder stocked with the daintiest delicacies.

Starting point is 02:43:06 Ah, minnie's the jolly meal I've had under the floor of the dye-shed, with that old veteran, chuckling and whispers as we heard the diers overhead, mixing the dyes in the great big vats and talking over the news of the town. But none of us are ever content for a long, you know, foolish creatures that we are. And by the time the second summer was coming, I was longing to be a free mouse, to roam the world and all that sort of thing. And then, too, I wanted to get buried. Maybe the spring was getting into my blood. So one night I said to the old rat. Rat, I said, I'm in love. All winter, every night I went out to gather fodder.

Starting point is 02:43:53 I've been keeping company with a lady mouse. Well, bread she is with elegant manners. I've a mind to settle down and have a family of my own. Now, here comes the summer again, and I've got to stay shut. up in this miserable shed on account of my beastly color. The old rat gazed at me thoughtfully a moment, and I knew that he was going to say something particularly wise. Young man, says he at last.

Starting point is 02:44:24 If you've a mind to go, I reckon I can't stop you. Foolish young madcap, though I think you. And how I'll ever shift for myself after you've gone, goodness only knows. But, seeing you have been so useful to me this past year and more, I'll help you." So saying, he takes me upstairs to where the dive-at stood. It was twilight, and the men were gone. But we could see the dim shapes of the big vats towering above our heads. Then he takes a string that lay upon the floor, and, scaling up the middle bat, he lets

Starting point is 02:45:03 the string down inside. What's that for? "'That's for you to climb out by after you've taken a bath, "'for you to go abroad in summer with a coat like yours would mean certain death. "'So I'm going to die you black.' "'Chumping cheese,' I cried. "'Dye me black?' "'Just that,' says he.

Starting point is 02:45:29 "'It's quite simple. "'Scale up the middle of that now, onto the edge and dive right in. Don't be afraid. There's a string there for you to climb out by. Well, I was always adventurous by nature, and plucking up my courage. I scrambled up the vat onto the edge of it. It was awful dark, and I could just see the dye glimmering murkily and dim far down inside. Go ahead, said the old rat.

Starting point is 02:46:04 Don't be afraid. And be sure you dip your... head and all under. Well, it took an awful lot of nerve to take that plunge. And if I hadn't been in love, I don't suppose I'd ever have done it. But I did. I dove right down into the die. I thought I'd never come up again, and even when I did I nearly drowned before I found

Starting point is 02:46:29 the string in the dark and scrambled, gasping for breath out of the vat. Fine, says the old rat. Now run around the shed a few times so you won't take a chill, and then go to bed and cover up. In the morning when it's light, you'll find yourself very different. Well, tears come to my eyes when I think of it. The next day when I woke up, expecting to find myself a smart, decent black, I found instead that I had dyed myself a bright and gaudy, blue. That stupid old rat had made a mistake in the vats.

Starting point is 02:47:11 The White Mouse paused a moment in his story as though overcome with emotion. Presently he went on. Never have I been so furious with anyone in my life as I was with that old rat. Look! Look what you've done to me now, I cried. It isn't even a navy blue. You've made me just hideous. I can't understand it, he murmured. The middle of that used to be the black one, I know. They must have changed them.

Starting point is 02:47:42 The blue one was always the one on the left. You're a stupid old duffer, I said. And I left the dyeshed in great anger and never went back to it again. Well, if I had been conspicuous before, now I was a hundred times more so. Against the black earth or the green grass or the white snow or, brown floors my loud sky blue coat could be seen as plain as a pike staff the minute I got outside the shed a cat jumped for me I gave her the slip and got out into the street there some wretched children spotted me and calling to their friends that

Starting point is 02:48:24 they had seen a blue mouse they hunted me along the gutter at the corner of the street two dogs were fighting they stopped their fight and joined the chase after me. And very soon I had the whole blessed town at my heels. It was awful. I didn't get any peace till after night had fallen, and by that time I was so exhausted with running, I was ready to drop. About midnight I met the Lady Mouse with whom I was in love beneath a lamp-post, and would you believe it, she wouldn't speak to me. Cut me dead, she did. It was a For your sake I got myself into this beastly mess, I said as she stalked by me with her nose in the air. You're an ungrateful woman, that's what you are?

Starting point is 02:49:15 Oh, la, la, la, said she, smirking. You wouldn't expect any self-respecting person to keep company with a blue mouse, would you? Later, when I was trying to find a place to sleep, all the mice I met, wherever there was any light at all, made fun of me and pointed to me and cheered. I was nearly in tears. Then I went down to the river, hoping I might wash to die off and so get white again. That at least would be better than the way I was now. But I washed and I swum and I rinsed all to no purpose. Water made no impression on me.

Starting point is 02:49:56 So I sat there, shivering on the riverbank in the depths of despair. And presently I saw the sky in the east growing pale, And I knew that morning was coming, daylight. That for me meant more hunting and running and jeering, as soon as the sun should show my ridiculous color. And then I came to a very sad decision, probably the saddest decision that a free mouse ever made. Rather than be hunted and jeered at any more,

Starting point is 02:50:29 I decided that I would sooner be back in a cage, a pet mouse. Yes, there at least I was well treated and well fed by the snub-nosed miller lad. I would go back and be a captive mouse. Was I not spurned by my lady-love and jeered at by my friends? Very well then. I would turn my back upon the world and go into captivity, and then my lady-love would be sorry, too late.

Starting point is 02:51:01 So, picking myself up wearily, I started off for the Miller's shop. On the threshold I paused a moment. It was a terrible step I was about to take. I gazed miserably down the street, thinking about the hardness of life and the sadness of love, and there, coming toward me with a bandage around his tail, was my own brother. As he took a seat beside me on the doorstep, I burst out of him. I burst into tears and told him all that it happened to me since we left our parents home. I'm terribly sorry for your bad luck, said he when I had ended,

Starting point is 02:51:41 but I'm glad I caught you before you went back into captivity, because I think I can guide you to a way out of your troubles. What way is there? I said. For me, life is over. Go and see the doctor, said my brother. What doctor? I asked. There is only one doctor, he answered. You don't mean to say you've never heard of him. And then he told me all about Dr. Doolittle.

Starting point is 02:52:11 This was around the time when the doctor first began to be famous among the animals. But I, living alone with the old rat at the dyer shed, had not heard the news. I've just come from the doctor's office, said my brother. I got my tail caught in a trap, and he bandaged it up for me. He's a marvelous man, kind and honest, and he talks animals' language. Go to him and I'm sure he'll know some way to clean blue dye off a mouse. He knows everything." So that is how I first came to John Doolittle's house in Puddly.

Starting point is 02:52:49 The doctor, when I told my troubles to him, took a very small pair of scissors and cut off all my fur, so I was bald and pink as a pig. Then he rubbed me with some special hair restorer for mice, a patent invention of his own, and very soon I grew a brand new coat of fur as white as snow. And then, hearing what difficulty I had had keeping away from cats, the doctor gave me a home in his own house, in his own piano, in fact, and no mouse could wish for more than that. He even offered to send for the lady I was in love with, who would no doubt think differently about me, now that I was white again, but I said, no, doctor, let her be. I'm through with women for good.

Starting point is 02:53:42 End of Port 3, Chapter 5. Part 3, Chapter 6 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office. By Hugh Lofting. This Libre-Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 3, Chapter 6, Jip's Story The next night Jip was called upon for a story, and after thinking a moment he said, All right, I'll tell you the story of the beggar's dog. And the animals all settled down to listen attentively, because Jip had often told them stories before, and they liked his way of telling them.

Starting point is 02:54:26 Some time ago, Jip began. i knew a dog who was a beggar's dog we meant by chance one day when a butcher's cart had an accident and got upset the butcher's boy who was driving the cart was a stupid boy whom all the dogs of that town heartily disliked so when his cart hit a lamp-post and overturned spilling mutton chops and joints all over the street weed-dogs were quickly on the scene and ran off with all his meat before he had time to pick himself up out of the gutter It was on this occasion, as I said, that I fell in with the beggar's dog. I found him bolting down the street beside me with a choice-steak flapping merrily around his ears. Myself, I had pinched a string of sausages, and the beastly things kept getting tangled up in my legs, till he came to my rescue and showed me how to curl them neatly so I could run with them without getting tripped.

Starting point is 02:55:26 After that, the beggars dog and I became great friends. I found that his master had only one leg and was very, very old. He's most frightfully poor, said my friend, and he's too old to work, you see, even if he had two legs to get around on. And now he has taken to pavement art. You know what that is. You draw pictures on the pavement in colored chalk, and you write under them all my own work.

Starting point is 02:55:55 And then you sit by the side of them with your cap in your hand, waiting for the people to give you pennies. Oh, yes, I said, I know. I've seen pavement artists before." Well, said my friend, my beggar doesn't get any pennies, and I know the reason why. His pictures aren't good enough, not even for pavement art. Myself, I don't pretend to know much about drawing, but his pictures are just awful, awful. One kind old lady the other day stopped before our stand, wanting to encourage him, you know,

Starting point is 02:56:31 and pointing to one picture she said, Oh, what a lovely tree! The picture was meant to be a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean, with a storm raging around it. That's the kind of an artist my man is. I don't know what to do about him. Well, look here, I said I have an idea. Since your man can't work for himself, suppose you and I go into the bone hiring business." "'What on earth is that?' he asked.

Starting point is 02:57:02 "'Well, I said. People hire out bicycles and pianos for rent, don't they? So why can't you and I rent out bones for dogs to chew?' They won't be able to pay us in money, of course, so we'll get them to bring us things instead. Then the beggar can sell the things and get money. That's a good notion," said he. Let's start tomorrow. So the following day we found an empty lot where people used to dump rubbish, and dug an enormous

Starting point is 02:57:33 hole which was to be our bone shop. Then we went around the back doors of all the richest people's houses early in the morning and picked out the best bones from the garbage cans. We even snatched a few from other dogs who were tied to kennels and couldn't run after us. a dirty trick, but we were working in a good cause and were not particular. Then we took all these bones and put them in the hole we had dug. By night we kept them covered up with earth, because we didn't want them stolen. And besides, some dogs prefer their bones buried a few days before they chew them.

Starting point is 02:58:10 It gets them seasoned like. And then by day we stood over our wares calling out to all the dogs that pass by. for hire, beef bones, ham bones, mutton bones, chicken bones. All juicy, step up, gentlemen, and take your choice. Bones for hire. Well, right from the start, we did a roaring trade. All the dogs from miles around hurt us, and came to hire bones. And we would charge them according to the length of time they wanted to hire them.

Starting point is 02:58:45 For instance, you could rent a good ham bone for one day for a day for a candle-stick or a hairbrush, for three days for a violin or an umbrella, and if you wanted your bone for a whole week you had to bring us a suit of clothes in payment." Well, for a while our plan worked splendidly. The beggar sold the things that we got in payment from the dogs and he had money to live on. But we never thought where the dogs might be getting all these things they brought us. The truth is we didn't bother very much, I'm afraid.

Starting point is 02:59:18 Anyway, at the end of our first week of brisk trade, we noticed a great many people going through the streets as though they were looking for something. And presently these people, seeing our shop in the empty lot, gathered around us talking to one another, and while they were talking a retriever came up to me with a gold watch and chain in his mouth, which he wanted to exchange for a ham bone. Well, you should have seen the excitement among the people there. The owner of the watch and chain was there, and he raised a terrible row. And then it came out that these dogs had been taking things from their master's homes to hire bones with.

Starting point is 02:59:57 The people were dreadfully annoyed. They closed up our bone shop and put us out of business. But they never discovered that the money we had made had gone to the beggar. Of course, we hadn't made enough to keep him in comfort for long, and very soon he had to become a pavement artist again. and was as badly off as he had ever been, and the pictures he drew were worse, if anything, than before. Now it happened one day when I was wondering around the country outside the town that I met a conceited

Starting point is 03:00:30 spaniel. He passed me with his nose turned up in the air in such a cheeky manner that I said to him, I said, What makes you so stuck up? My master has been ordered to paint the portrait of a prince, he said, he said, he said, he's, he said, putting on no end of elegance. "'Who is your master?' I said. "'Anybody would think you were going to paint the portrait yourself.' "'My master is a very famous artist,' said he.

Starting point is 03:00:59 "'What's his name?' I asked. "'George Morland,' said the Spaniel. "'George Morland,' I cried. "'Is he in these parts now?' "'Yes,' said the Spaniel. We are staying at the Royal George. My master is painting some pictures of the country, and next week he is going back to London to commence on the portrait of the Prince.

Starting point is 03:01:26 Now, it happened that I had met this George Morland, who was, and still is, perhaps the most famous painter of farm-life pictures the world has ever known. I am proud to be able to say that I knew him. He was especially good at painting horses and stables, pigs and styes, roosters and dogs hanging around kitchen doors and things like that. So without letting the spaniel see that I was following him, I went after him to see where he was going.

Starting point is 03:01:57 He led me to a lonely old farm out on the hills, and there, concealing myself in some bushes, I watched the great Moreland painting one of his famous form scenes. Presently he laid down his paintbrush and muttered to himself. I need a dog by the watering trough there to fill out the picture. I wonder if I could get that fool spaniel to lie still for five minutes. Here, spot, spot, come here. His spaniel spot came up to him, and George, leaving his painting for a moment, placed the spaniel beside the watering trough,

Starting point is 03:02:34 and flattened him out and told him to keep still. I could see that George's idea was to have him look as though he were asleep in the sun. George simply loved to paint animals asleep in the sun. Well, that blockhead of a spaniel never kept still one minute. First he was snapping at the flies that bit his tail, then he was scratching his ear, then barking at the cat, never still. And of course George couldn't paint him at all, and at last he got so angry he threw the paintbrush at him.

Starting point is 03:03:09 Then an idea came to me, one of the best ideas. I had. I left the bushes and came trotting up to charge, wagging my tail, and how I thrilled with pride as the great Morland recognized me, for mind you, he had met me only once before back in the autumn of eighteen o two. Why, it's Jip, he cried. Good dog! Come here! You're the very fellow I want." Then, while he gathered up the things he had thrown at the Spaniel, he went on talking to me. The way people do talk to dogs, you know. Of course he didn't expect me to understand what he said, but I did every word.

Starting point is 03:03:51 I want you to come over here by the trough, Jep," said he. All you've got to do is to keep still. You can go to sleep if you like, but don't move or fidget for ten minutes. Think you can do that?" And he led me over to the trough where I lay down and kept perfectly still while he painted me into the picture. That picture now hangs in the National Gallery. It's called Evening on the Farm.

Starting point is 03:04:19 Hundreds of people go to see it every year, but none of them know that the smart-looking dog sleeping beneath the watering trough is none other than myself, except the doctor, whom I took in to see it one day when we were up in London shopping. Well, now as I told you, I had an idea in all this. I hoped that if I did something for George Moreland, perhaps I could get him to do something for me. But of course, with him not knowing dog-talk, it was a bit difficult to make him understand. However, while he was packing up his painting things, I disappeared for a while, just as though

Starting point is 03:04:56 I was going away. Then I came rushing back to him in a great state of excitement, barking, trying to show him something was wrong, and that I wanted him to follow me. What's the matter, Jip?" said he. House on fire or something. Then I barked some more and ran a little way in the direction of the town, looking back at him to show him I wanted him to come with me. "'What ails the dog?' he murmured to himself.

Starting point is 03:05:22 "'Can't be anybody drowning because there's no river near. Oh, all right, Chip, I'll come. Wait a second till I get these brushes cleaned.' Then I let him into the town. On the way there every once in a while he would say to himself, I wonder what can be the matter. wrong, that's sure, or the dog wouldn't carry on so." I took him down the main street of the town till we came to the place where the beggar had his pictures.

Starting point is 03:05:50 And as soon as George saw the pictures, he knew what was wrong. "'Heaven, preserve us!' he cried. What a dreadful exhibition! No wonder the dog was excited. Well, it happened that as we came up, the one-legged beggar with his own dog beside him was at work on a new drawing. He was sitting on the pavement making a picture on canvas with a piece of chalk of a cat drinking milk. Now, my idea was that the great Morland, who no matter what people say about him, was always a most kind-hearted man, should make some good pictures

Starting point is 03:06:28 for the beggar to show, instead of the dreadful messes that he made himself. And my plan worked. "'Man alive,' said George, pointing to the picture the beggar was doing. "'A cat's spine doesn't curve that way. Here, give me the chalk and let me do it.' Then rubbing out the whole picture, George Morland redrew it in his way. And it was so lifelike you could nearly hear the cat lapping up the milk. "'My, I wish I could draw that way,' said the beggar. And so quick and easy you do it like it was nothing at all. Well, it comes easy, said George.

Starting point is 03:07:10 Maybe there's not so much credit in it for that. But tell me, do you make much money at this game? Awful little, said the beggar. I've taken only two pence the whole day. I suppose the truth is I don't draw good enough. I watched Morland's face as the beggar said this. And the expression that came into it told me I had not brought the great man here in vain.

Starting point is 03:07:35 Look here, he said to the beggar. Would you like me to redraw all your pictures for you? Of course, those done on the pavement you couldn't sell, but we can rub them out, and I've got some spare canvases in my satchel here. Maybe you could sell a few. I can sell pictures in London any day in the week, but I've never been a pavement artist before. It would be rather a lark to see what happens.

Starting point is 03:08:01 Then Morland, all busy and excited like a schoolboy, took the beggar's chalk pictures from against the wall, and, rubbing them out, did them over the way they should be done. He got so occupied with this that he didn't notice that a whole crowd of people was gathering around watching. His work was so fine that the people were spellbound with the beauty of the cats and dogs and cows and horses that he drew. And they began asking one another in whispers. who the stranger could be who was doing the pavement artist pictures for him.

Starting point is 03:08:36 The crowd grew bigger and bigger, and presently someone among the people who had seen Morland's pictures before recognized the work of the great artist. And then whispers went through the crowd. It's Morland, the great Morland himself! And somebody went off and told a picture dealer, that is, a man who buys and sells pictures, who had a shop in the high street,

Starting point is 03:09:01 that George Morland was drawing in the marketplace for a lame beggar. And the dealer came down, and the mayor came down, and all the rich folk and poor folk. So when the whole town was gathered around, the people began offering to buy these pictures, asking the beggar how much he wanted for them. The old duffer was going to sell them at sixpence apiece, but Marlon whispered to him, "'Twenty guineas! Don't sell a blessed one under twenty guineas!' you'll get it and sure enough the dealer and a few of the richer town folk bought the whole lot at twenty guineas apiece and when i went home that night i felt i had done a good day's work for my friend's master the one-legged beggar was now rich enough to live in comfort for the rest of his life End of Part 3, Chapter 6.

Starting point is 03:10:00 Part 3, Chapter 7 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office, by Hugh Lofting. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Port 3, Chapter 7, Tutu's story. All the animals had now told a story except Tutu the owl, and they push-me-pull you. And the following night, a Friday, it was agreed that they should toss a coin, the Dr. penny that had a hole through it, to see which of these two should tell a tail. If the penny came down heads it was to be the push-me-po-you, and if it came down tails, it was to be Tutu's turn.

Starting point is 03:10:41 The doctor spun the coin, and it came down tails. All right, said Tutu, then that makes it my turn, I suppose. I will tell you a story of the time, the only time in my life, that I was taken for a fairy. Fancy me a fairy, chuckled a little round owl. Well, this is how it happened. One October day toward evening I was wandering through the woods. There was a wintry tang in the air, and the small furred animals were busy among the dry rustling leaves, gathering nuts and seeds for food against the coming snow. I was out after shoemice myself, a delicacy I was extremely fond of at that time.

Starting point is 03:11:27 and while they were busy foraging they made easy hunting. In my travels through the woods I heard children's voices and the barking of a dog. Usually I would have gone further into the forest away from such sounds, but in my young days I was a curious bird, and my curiosity often led me into many adventures. So instead of flying away, I went toward the noises I heard, moving cautiously from tree to tree so that I could see, without being seen.

Starting point is 03:12:00 Presently, I came upon a children's picnic, several boys and girls having supper in a grove of oak trees. One boy, much larger than the rest, was teasing a dog, and two other children a small girl and a small boy were objecting to his cruelty and begging him to stop. The bully wouldn't stop, and soon the small boy and girl set upon him with their fists and feet, and gave him a fine drubbing, which greatly surprised him. The dog then ran off home, and presently the small boy and girl, I found out afterwards they were brother and sister, wandered off from the rest of the picnicking party to look for

Starting point is 03:12:40 mushrooms. I had admired their spirit greatly in punishing a boy so much bigger than they were, and when they wandered off by themselves, again out of curiosity I followed them. Well, they traveled quite a distance for such small folk, and presently the sunset and darkness began to creep over the woods. Then the children thought to join their friends again and started back. But being poor woodsman, they took the wrong direction. It grew darker still, of course, as time went on, and soon the youngsters were tumbling and

Starting point is 03:13:17 stumbling over roots they could not see, and getting pretty thoroughly lost and tired. All this time I was following them secretly and noiselessly overhead. At last the children sat down, and the little girl said, "'Willie, we're lost. Whatever shall we do? Night is coming on, and I'm so afraid of the dark.' "'So am I,' said the boy. Ever since Aunt Emily told us that spooky story of the bogey in the cupboard, I've been scared to death of the dark.

Starting point is 03:13:50 Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Of course you must realize that was the first time I had ever heard of anyone's being afraid of the dark. It sounds ridiculous enough to all of you, I suppose, but to me, who had always preferred the cool, calm darkness to the glaring, vulgar daylight, it seemed then an almost unbelievable thing that anyone could be afraid merely because the sun had gone to bed. now some people have an idea that bats and owls can see in the dark because we have some peculiar kind of eyes it's not so peculiar ears we have but not eyes we can see in the dark because we practice it it's all a matter of practice the same as the piano or anything else we get up when other people go to bed and go to bed when other people get up because we prefer to the dark, and you'd be surprised how much nicer it is when you get used to it. Of course, we owls are specially trained by our mothers and fathers to see on very dark nights

Starting point is 03:15:01 when we are quite young, so it comes easier to us. But anybody can do it, to a certain extent, if they only practice. Well, to return to the children, there they were, all fussed and worried and scared, sitting on the ground, weeping and wondering what they could do. Then, remembering the dog and knowing that they were kind to animals, I thought I would try to help them. So I popped across into the tree over their heads and said, in the kindliest, gentlest sort of voice,

Starting point is 03:15:36 to-who, which means in owl language, as you know, it's a fine night. How are you? Then you should have seen those poor children jump. Oh, said the little girl, clutching her brother around the neck. What was that a smoke? I don't know, said the little boy. Gosh, but I'm scared. Isn't the dark awful?

Starting point is 03:15:59 Then I made two or three more attempts to comfort them, talking kindly to them in our language. But they only grew scarter and scareder. First they thought I was a bogey. Then an ogre. Then a giant in the forest. me, whom they could put in their pockets. Golly, but these human creatures do bring up their children in awful ignorance.

Starting point is 03:16:26 If there ever was a bogey or a giant or an ogre in the forest or out of it, I've yet to see one. Then I thought maybe if I went off through the woods to witting and to-hooing all the way, they would follow me, and I could then lead them out of the forest and show them the way home, So I tried it, but they didn't follow me the stupid little beggars, thinking I was a witch or some evil nonsense of that kind. And all I got from my two-witting and two-hooing all over the place was to wake up another owl some distance off who thought I was calling to him.

Starting point is 03:17:04 So since I wasn't doing the children any good I went off to look up this other owl and see if he had any ideas to suggest. I found him sitting on the stump of a hollow birch. rubbing his eyes, having just got out of bed. "'Good evening,' says I. "'It's a fine night.' "'It is,' says he. "'Only it's not dark enough.

Starting point is 03:17:27 "'What were you making all that racket over there for just now?' "'Waking a fellow out of his sleep before it got properly dark.' "'I'm sorry,' I said. "'But there's a couple of children over in the hollow there who've got lost. "'The silly little duffers are sitting on the ground, bawling because the daylight's gone and they don't know what to do. My gracious, says he. What a quaint notion!

Starting point is 03:17:53 Why don't you lead them out of the woods? They probably live over in one of those farms near the crossroads. I've tried, I said, but they're so scared they won't follow me. They don't like my voice or something. They take me for a wicked ogre and all that sort of rot. Well, says he. then you'll have to give an imitation of some other kind of creature, one they're not scared of. Are you any good at imitations? Can you bark like a dog?"

Starting point is 03:18:23 "'No,' I said. But I can make a noise like a cat. I learned that from an American cat-bird that lived in a cage in the stable where I spent last summer. "'Fine,' says he. Try that and see what happens.' So I went back to the children and found them weeping harder than ever. Then, keeping myself well hidden down near the ground among the bushes, I went, meao, meao, real cat-like. Oh, Willie, says the little girl to her brother. We're saved.

Starting point is 03:19:00 Saved, mark you, when neither of the boobies was in the slightest danger. We're saved, says she. There's a toughie, our cat come for us. She'll show us the way home. Cats can always find their way home. can't they willie let's follow her for a moment tutu's plump sides shook with silent laughter as she recalled the scene he was describing then says he I went a little further off still taking great care that I shouldn't be seen and I meowed again there she is said the little girl she's calling to us come along Willie well in

Starting point is 03:19:42 that way, keeping ahead of them and calling like a cat, I finally led the children right out of the woods. They did a good deal of stumbling, and the girl's long hair often got caught in the bushes, but I always waited for them if they were lagging behind. At last, when we gained the open fields we saw three houses on the skyline, and the middle one was all lighted up, and people with lanterns were running around it, hunting in all directions. When I brought the children right up to this house, their mother and father made a tremendous fuss weeping over them, as though they'd been saved from some terrible danger.

Starting point is 03:20:23 In my opinion, grown-up humans are even more stupid than the young ones. You think, from the way that mother and father carried on, that those children had been wrecked on a desert island or something instead of spending a couple of hours in the pleasant woods. "'However did you find your way, Willie?' asked the mother, wiping away her tears and smiling all over. "'Tuffy brought us home,' says the little girl. She came out afterwards and let us here by going ahead of us and meowing.

Starting point is 03:20:52 "'Tuffy,' says the mother, puzzled. "'Why, the cat's asleep in the parlor in front of the fire. Been there all evening.' "'Well, it was some cat,' says the boy. "'He must be right around here somewhere because he led us almost up to the door.' then the father swings his lantern around looking for a cat and before i had time to hop away he throws the light full on me sitting on a sage-bush why it's an owl cries the little girl mea-o says i just to show off to it to it meao meow and with a farewell flip of the wing i disappeared into the night over the barn roof But as I left I heard the little girl saying in tremendous excitement.

Starting point is 03:21:44 Oh, mother, a fairy! It was a fairy that brought us home. It must have been, disguised as an owl. At last, at last I've seen a fairy! Well, that's the first and last time I ever expect to be taken for a fairy. But I got to know those children quite well. They were a real nice couple of kitties. if the little girl did keep on insisting that I was a fairy in the skies.

Starting point is 03:22:15 I used to hang around their barn nights looking for mice and rats, but if those youngsters ever caught sight of me, they'd follow me everywhere. After bringing them safely home that evening, I could have led them across the Sahara Desert and they'd follow, certain in their minds that I was the best of all good fairies and would keep them out of harm. They used to bring me mutton chops and shrimps and all but the best tidbits from their parents' table, and I lived like a fighting cock. God so fat and lazy I couldn't have caught a mouse on crutches. They were never afraid of the dark again, because, you see, as I said to the doctor one

Starting point is 03:22:57 day when we were talking over the multiplication tables, another philosophy, fear is usually ignorance. Once you know a thing, you're no longer afraid of it. And those youngsters got to know the dark, and then they saw, of course, that it was just as harmless as the day. I used to take them out into the woods at night and across the hills, and they got to love it, like the adventure, you know, and thinking it would be a good thing if some humans, anyway, had sense enough to travel without sunlight, I taught them how to see in the dark.

Starting point is 03:23:32 They soon got on to it, when they saw how I always shaded my eyes in the light of a lantern, as not to get the habit of strong light. Well, those young ones became real expert, not so good as an owl or a bat of course, but quite good at seeing in the dark for anyone who has not been brought up that way. It came in handy for them, too. That part of the country got flooded one springtime in the middle of the night, and there wasn't a dry match or a light to be had anywhere. Then those children who had traveled all that country school.

Starting point is 03:24:08 of times in the dark with me, saved great many lives. They acted as guides, you understand, and took the people to safety because they knew how to use their eyes and the others didn't. Tutu yawned and blinked up sleepily at the lantern hanging above his head. Seeing in the dark, he ended, is all a matter of practice, same as the piano or anything else. End of Port III, Chapter 7. Part 3, Chapter 8 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofning. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 3, Chapter 8, The Push Me Pull You's story.

Starting point is 03:25:00 And now it came at last to the Push Me Pull You's turn for a story. He was very shy and modest, and when the animals asked him the following night, he said, in his very well-bred manner, I'm terribly sorry to disappoint you, but I'm afraid I don't know any stories. At least none good enough to entertain you with. Oh, come on, push, said Jip. Don't be so bashful. We've all told one.

Starting point is 03:25:28 You don't mean to say you've lived all your life in the African jungle without seeing any adventures? There must be lots of yarns you could tell us. But I've mostly led such a quiet life, you see, said the push-me pull you. Our people have always kept very much to themselves. We mind our own business and don't like getting mixed up in scandals and rouse and adventures. Oh, just think a minute, said Dab-Dab. Something will come to you. Don't pester him, she whispered to the others.

Starting point is 03:26:03 Just leave him alone and let him think. He's got two heads to think with, you know. Something will come to him. But don't get him embarrassed whatever you do. for a moment or two the pushmipo you pawed the deck of the veranda with his dainty hoofs as if wrapped in deep thought then looking up with one of his heads he began speaking in a quiet voice while the other coughed apologetically below the level of the tea-table uh this isn't much of a story not really but perhaps it will serve to pass the time i will tell you about the badamoshi ashtra hunters. You must know, then, that the black peoples have various methods of hunting wild animals, and the way they go about it depends on the kind of animal they mean to hunt. For example,

Starting point is 03:26:56 if they want giraffes, they dig deep holes and cover them up with light boughs and grass. Next they wait until the giraffe comes along and walks over the hole and falls in. Then they run up and catch him. For certain kinds of rather stupid deer, they make a little screen of branches and leaves about the size of a man, and the hunter, holding the screen in front of him like a shield, creep slowly forward until he is close to the deer, and then fires his spear or arrow. Of course the stupid deer thinks the moving leaves are just trees,

Starting point is 03:27:33 being swayed by the wind and takes very little notice if the hunter is careful to approach quietly enough. They have various other dodges, more or less underhand, and deceitful for getting game. But the one invented by the Batamoshi ostrich hunters was perhaps the meanest of them all. Briefly, this was it. Ostriches, you know usually, go about in small herds, like cattle. And they're rather stupid.

Starting point is 03:28:03 You've heard the story about their sticking their heads in the sand when a man comes along, thinking that because they can't see the man, the man can't see them. That doesn't speak very well for their intelligence, does it? No. Very well, then. Now, in the Batamoshi country, there wasn't much sand for the ostriches to stick their heads in, which in a way was a good thing for them, because there, when a man came along, they ran away instead, I suppose, to look for sand.

Starting point is 03:28:33 Anyhow, the running away saved their lives. So the hunters of Batamoshi had to think out some dothes. of coming near enough to the ostriches to get among the herd and kill them. And the way they thought out was quite clever. As a matter of fact, I by chance came upon a group of these hunters in the woods one day, practicing their new trick. They had the skin of an ostrich and were taking it in turns, putting it over their heads and trying to walk and look like a real ostrich,

Starting point is 03:29:06 holding up the long neck with a stick. Keeping myself concealed, I watch. them and saw at once what their game was. They meant to disguise themselves as ostriches and walk among the herd and kill them with axes which they had hidden inside the skin. Now, the ostriches of those parts were great friends of mine, had been ever since they put the bottomoshe's tennis court out of business. The chief of the tribe some years before, finding a beautiful meadow of elephant grass,

Starting point is 03:29:39 which happened to be my favorite grazing ground, had the fine hay all burnt off, and made the place into a tennis court. He had seen the white men playing that game and thought he'd like to play it too. But the ostriches took the tennis balls for apple and ate them. You know they're dreadfully unparticular about their food.

Starting point is 03:30:02 Yes, they used to sneak around in the jungles on the edge of the tennis court, and whenever a ball was knocked out of the course, court, they'd run off with it and swallow it. By eating up all the chief's tennis balls in this way, they put the tennis court out of business, and my beautiful grazing ground soon grew its long grass again, and I came back to it. That is how the ostriches happened to be friends of mine. So, seeing they were threatened by a secret danger, I went off and told the leader of the herd about it. He was frightfully stupid, and I had the hardest work getting it into his head.

Starting point is 03:30:43 Now remember, I said as I was leaving. You can easily tell the hunter when he comes among your herd from the color and shape of his legs. Ostridge legs are a sort of gray as you see from your own, and the hunter's legs are black and thicker. You see, the skin which the bottomoshes were going to use did not cover the hunter's 's legs. Now, I said, you must tell all your birds when they see a black-legged ostrich trying to make friends with them to set on him and give him a good hiding. That will teach the Bottomoshi hunters a lesson. Well, you think after that everything should have gone smoothly, but I had not counted on the extraordinary stupidity of the ostriches. The leader, going home that

Starting point is 03:31:34 night, stepped into some marshy, boggy place, and got his stupid long legs all over black mud, caked with it thick. Then before he went to bed he gave all the ostriches the careful instructions which I had given him. The next morning he was late in getting up, and the herd was out ahead of him feeding in a pleasant place on the hillside. Then the numb skull of a leader, the stupidest cock ostrich of them, without bothering to brush the black mud off his legs, which he has stepped into the night before, come stalking out into the open space like a king, expecting a grand reception.

Starting point is 03:32:18 And he got a grand reception, too, the ignoramus. As soon as the others saw his black legs, they passed the word around quickly, and at a given signal they set on the poor leader and nearly beat the life out of him. The Batamoshi, who had not yet appeared at all, arrived upon the scene at this moment, and the silly ostriches were so busy beating their leader, whom they took for a hunter in disguise, that the black men came right up to them and would have caught the whole lot

Starting point is 03:32:49 if I hadn't shouted in time to warn them of their danger. So, after that I saw that if I wanted to save my good but foolish friends from destruction, I had better do something on my own account. And this was what I thought I'd do. When the Bottomoshi hunters were asleep, I would go and take that ostrich skin, the only one they had, away from them, and that would be the end of their grand new hunting trick. So in the dead of night I crept out of the jungle and came to the place where the hunter's huts were.

Starting point is 03:33:24 I had to come up from the leeward's side because I didn't want to have the dogs get my scent on the wind. I was more afraid of the hunter's dogs you see than I was of the hunters themselves. From the men, I could escape quite easily being much swifter than they were. But dogs, with their sense of smell, are much harder to get away from, even when you can reach the cover of the jungle. Well, then, coming up from the leeward side, I started searching around the huts for the ostrich skin.

Starting point is 03:33:56 At first, I couldn't find it anywhere. And I began to think they must have hit. It didn't it someplace. Now, the Batamoshi, like a good many black races, when they go to bed for the night, always leave one of their number outside the huts to watch and keep guard. I could see this night watchman at the end of the row of huts, and of course I was careful not to let him see me. But after spending some time hunting for this ostrich skin, I noticed that the watchman had not moved at all, but stayed in the same place squatting on a stool. then i guessed he had probably fallen asleep so i moved closer and i found to my horror that he was wearing the ostrich skin as a blanket for the night was cool how to get it without waking him was now the problem on tiptoe hardly breathing i went up and began to dry gently off his shoulders but the wretched man had tucked part of it under him and i could

Starting point is 03:35:01 couldn't get it free while he was sitting down. Then I was in despair and I almost gave up. But, thinking of the fate that surely awaited my poor foolish friends, if I didn't get that skin, I decided on desperate measures. Suddenly and swiftly I jabbed the watchman in a tender spot with one of my horns. With an ouch you could hear a mile off, he sprang in the air, then snatching the bird-skin from under him, I sped off into the jungle while the Batamoshi, their wives, the dogs,

Starting point is 03:35:36 and the whole village woke up in an uproar and came after me like a pack of wolves. Well, the push-me-pull you sighed as he balanced his graceful body to the slight rolling of the houseboat. I hope never again to have such a race for my life as I had that night. Cold shivers run down. my spine still whenever I think of it. The barking of the dogs and the shouting of the men and the shrieking of the women, and the crashing of the underbrushes my pursuers came tearing through the jungle, hot upon my trail. It was a river that saved me. The rainy season

Starting point is 03:36:16 was on and the streams were in flood. Panting with terror and fatigue, I reached the banks of a swirling torrent. It was fully twenty-five feet wide. The water was simply raging down it. To try and swim it would be madness, looking back where I could see and hear my pursuers close upon my heels. Again I had to take desperate measures, drying back a little to get space for a run and still clutching that wretched ostrich skin firmly in my mouth.

Starting point is 03:36:48 I rushed at the river at full speed and leaped, as I have never leaped in my life, clear across to the further bank. As I came down in a heap, I realized I had only been just in time, for my enemies had already come up to the river on the side that I had left. Shaking their fists at me in the moonlight, they were trying to find a way to get across to me. The dogs, eagerness of all, tried some of them to swim, but the swift and raging waters swept them down the stream like corks, and the hunters were afraid to follow their example. With a thrill of triumph, I dropped the precious ostrich skin before their very eyes into the swirling river where it quickly disappeared from view.

Starting point is 03:37:37 A howl of rage went up from the Batamoshi. Then I did something I've been very sorry for all my life. You know how my people have always insisted on good manners and politeness. Well, I blush to recall it, in the exhal. excitement of the moment I stuck out both my tongues at the baffled foe across the river. There was no excuse for it. There never is for deliberate rudeness. But it was only moonlight, and I trust the Batamoshi didn't see it.

Starting point is 03:38:12 Well, though I was safe for the present, my troubles were not over by any means. For some time the Batamoshi now left the ostriches alone and turned their hold attention to hunting me. They badgered my life out. As soon as I had moved from one part of the country to get away from their pestering, they'd find out where I was and pursue me there. They laid traps for me. They set pitfalls. They sent the dogs after me. And although I managed for a whole year to keep away from them, the constant strain was very wearing. Now the bottom moshy, like most savage people, are very superstitious. And they are terribly afraid,

Starting point is 03:38:59 in the way that Tutu was speaking of last night, of anything that they can't understand. Nearly everything they can't understand, they think is a devil. Well, after I had been hunted and worried for a long time, I thought I would take a leaf out of their own book, so to speak and play something like the same trick on them as they had tried to play on the ostriches.

Starting point is 03:39:24 With this idea in mind, I set about finding some means to disguise myself. One day, passing by a tree, I found a skin of a wild ox spread out by some huntsman to dry. This I decided was just the thing I wanted. I pulled it down and lowering one of my heads. I laid one pair of my horns flat along my back, like this, and drew the cowhide over myself so that only one of my heads could be seen. It changed my appearance completely. Moving through the long grass, I looked like some ordinary kind of deer.

Starting point is 03:40:08 So, disguised in this manner, I sauntered out into an open meadow and gazed around till my precious monomoshes should appear, which they very shortly did. I saw them, though they didn't know it, creeping about among the trees on the edge of the meadow, trying to get near without scaring me. Now their method of hunting small deer is this. They get up into a tree and lie along a lower branch, keeping very still. And when the deer passes under the tree, they drop down upon his hindquarters and fell him to the ground. So, presently, picking out the tree where I'm not.

Starting point is 03:40:49 I had seen the chief himself go and hide, I browsed along underneath it, pretending I suspected nothing at all. Then when the chief dropped on what he thought was my hindquarters, I struck upward with my other horns, hidden under the cowhide, and gave him a jab he will remember the rest of his days. With a howl of superstitious fright, he called out to his men that he had been struck by the devil, and they all ran across the con. country like wildfire, and I was never hunted or bothered by them again.

Starting point is 03:41:27 Everybody had now told a tale, and the Arctic Monthlies Prize story competition was declared closed. The first number of the first Animals magazine ever printed was, shortly after that, issued and circulated by Swallow Mail to the inhabitants of the Frozen North. It was a great success. Letters of thanks and votes on the competition began pouring in from seals and sea lions and caribou and all manner of polar creatures. Tutsu, the mathematician, became editor. Dab-Dab ran the Mothers and Babies page, while Gub-Gub wrote the gardening notes and the Pure Foods column, and the Arctic Monthly continued to bring happiness to homes and dens and icebergs as long as the Doctor's Post Office existed.

Starting point is 03:42:20 End of Part 3, Chapter 8. Part 4, Chapter 1 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office. By Hugh Lofting. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 4, Chapter 1, Parcel Post. One day, Gubb came to the doctor and said, Doctor, why don't you start a parcel post? "'Great heavens, Gub-Gub!' the doctor exclaimed.

Starting point is 03:42:54 "'Don't you think I'm busy enough already? What do you want a parcel post for?' "'I'll bet it's something to do with food,' said Tutu, who was sitting on the stool next to the doctors, adding up figures. "'Well,' said Gub-gub, "'I was thinking of sending to England for some fresh vegetables.' "'There you are,' said Tutu. He has a vegetable mind.

Starting point is 03:43:18 But parcels would be too heavy for the birds to carry, Gub-Gub," said the doctor. Except perhaps these small parcels by the bigger birds. Yes, I know I had thought of that, said the pig. But this month the Brussels sprouts will be coming into season in England. They're my favorite vegetable, you know, after Parsonips. And I hear that a special kind of thrushes will be leaving England next week to come to Africa. It wouldn't be too much to ask them to bring a single Brussels sprout apiece, would it? There will be hundreds of birds in the flight, and if they each brought a sprout,

Starting point is 03:43:57 we'd have enough to last us for months. I haven't tasted any fresh English vegetables since last autumn, Doctor, and I'm so sick of these yams and ochres and African rubbish. All right, gub-gub, said the doctor. I'll see what I can do. We will send a letter to England by the next mail going out and ask the thrushes to bring you your Brussels sprouts." Well, that was how, still another department the parcel post, was added to the foreign

Starting point is 03:44:28 mail's office at Fentipo. Bub-Gub sprouts arrived. Tons of them be, because this was a very big flight of birds. And after that many kinds of animals came to the doctor and asked him to send for foreign foods for them when their own ran short. In this way, too, bringing seeds and plants from other lands by birds, the doctor tried quite a number of experiments in planting, and what is called acclimatizing, fruits and vegetables, and even flowers.

Starting point is 03:44:59 And very soon he had an old-fashioned window-box garden on the houseboat post office, blooming with geraniums and marigolds and zinias, raised from the seeds and cuttings his birds brought him from England. and that is why many of the same vegetables that grow in england can still be found in a wild state in africa they came there through gubgub's passion for the foods he had been brought up on a little while after that by using the larger birds to carry packages a regular parcel post every two months was put at the service of the phantipians and alarm clocks and all sorts of things from england were sent for king cocoa even sent for a new new bicycle. It was brought over in pieces, two stalks carrying a wheel each, an eagle the frame and crows the smaller parts, like pedals, the spanners, and the oil can. When they started to put it together again in the post office, a part one of the nuts was found to be missing.

Starting point is 03:46:03 But that was not the fault of the parcel post. It had been left out by the makers who shipped it from Birmingham. But the doctor wrote a letter of complaint by the the next mail, and a new nut was sent right away. Then the king rode triumphantly through the streets of Fantipo on his new bicycle, and a public holiday was held in honor of the occasion. And he gave his old bicycle to his brother, Prince Wallabala, and the parcel post, which had really been started by Gub-Gub, was declared a great success. Some weeks later the doctor received this letter from a farmer in Lincolnshire. Dear sir, thank you for your excellent weather reports.

Starting point is 03:46:49 By their help I managed to raise the finest crop of Brussels sprouts this year ever seen in Lancashire. But the night before I was going to pick them for market, they disappeared from my fields, every blessed one of them. How I don't know! Maybe you could give me some advice about this. Your obedient servant, Nicholas Scroggins. "'Great Heaven,' said the doctor.

Starting point is 03:47:14 "'I wonder what happened to them.' "'Gub, gob-gob ate them,' said Tutu. "'Those are the sprouts, no doubt, that the thrush is brought here.' "'Dear me,' said the doctor, "'that's too bad. "'Well, I dare say I'll find some way to pay the farmer back.' "'For a long time, Dab-Dab, the motherly housekeeper, "'had been trying to get the doctor to take a holiday from his post-office business. "'You know, doctor,' said you.

Starting point is 03:47:41 you're going to get sick that's what's going to happen to you as sure as you're alive no man can work the way you've been doing for the last few months and not pay for it now you've got the post office going properly why don't you hand it over to the king's postman to run and give yourself a rest and anyway aren't you ever going back to puddleby oh yes said john doolittle all in good time dab dab but you must take a high holiday, the doctor insisted. Get away from the post office for a while, go up to the coast in a canoe for a change of air, if you won't go home. Well, the doctor kept saying that he would go, but he never did, until something happened in the natural history line of great enough importance to take him from his post office work. This is how it came about. One day the doctor was opening the mail address to him when he came upon a package about the size and shape of a large egg.

Starting point is 03:48:43 He undid the outer wrapper, which was made of seaweed. Inside, he found a letter and a pair of oyster shells tied together like a box. Somewhat puzzled the doctor first read the letter, while Dab-Dab, who was still badgering him about taking a holiday, looked over his shoulder. The letter said, Dear Doctor, I am sending you enclosed some pretty pebbles which I found the other day while cracking open oysters. I never saw pebbles of this color before, though I live by the seashore and have been opening shellfish all my life.

Starting point is 03:49:20 My husband says they're oyster eggs, but I don't believe it. Would you please tell me what they are? And be careful to send them back, because my children use them as playthings, and I have promised them they shall have them to keep. Then the doctor put down the letter end, taking his penknife, cut the seaweed strings that neatly tie the oyster shells together. And when he opened the shells, he gave a gasp of astonishment. Oh, dab-dab, he cried.

Starting point is 03:49:51 How beautiful! Look! Look! Pearls, whispered dab-dab in an odd voice, gazing down into the doctor's poem. Pink pearls! My, aren't they handsome? murmured the doctor. And did you ever see such large? large ones? Each one of those pearls, Dab-Dab is worth a fortune.

Starting point is 03:50:15 Who the Dickens is this that sent them to me anyhow?" And he turned to the letter again. "'It's from a spoon-bill,' said Dab-Dab. I know they're writing. They are a sort of cross between a curlew and a snipe. They like messing around lonely sea-coast places, hunting for shellfish and sea-worms and stuff like that." "'Well, where is it written from?' asked the doctor.

Starting point is 03:50:41 "'What do you make that address out to be at the top of the page there?' Dab-Dab screwed up her eyes and peered at it closely. "'It looks to me,' she said. "'Like the harmatan rocks.' "'Where is that?' asked the doctor. "'I have no idea,' said Dab-d. "'But Speedy will know.' "'And she went off to fetch the skimmer.'

Starting point is 03:51:06 "'Speedy said, Yes, he knew. The Harmatan rocks were a group of small islands off the coast of West Africa, about sixty miles further to the northward. That's curious, said the doctor. I wouldn't have been so surprised if they had come from the South Sea Islands. But it is rather unusual to find pearls of any size or beauty in these waters. Well, these must be sent back to the spoonbill's children by registered parcel post, of course. Though to tell you the truth I hate to part with them, they are so lovely. They can't go before tomorrow, anyway. I wonder where I can keep them in the meantime.

Starting point is 03:51:47 One has to be frightfully careful with gems as valuable as these. You had better not tell anyone about them, dab-dab, except Chip the watchman and the push-me-pull-you. They must take it in turns to mount guard at the door all night. Men will do all sorts of things for, for pearls. We'll keep it a secret and send them right back first thing tomorrow morning." Even while the doctor was speaking, he noticed a shadow fall across the desk at which he was standing. He looked up. And there, at the information window, was the ugliest man's face he had ever seen, staring in at the beautiful pearls that still lay on the palm of his hand. The doctor, annoyed and embarrassed, forgot for the first.

Starting point is 03:52:35 first time in his post office career to be polite." "'What do you want?' he asked, thrusting the pearls into his pocket. "'I want a postal order for ten shillings,' said the man. "'I am going to send some money to my sick wife.' The doctor made out the postal order and took the money which the man handed through the window. "'Here you are,' he said. Then the man left the post office and the doctor watched him go. That was a queer-looking customer, wasn't he?

Starting point is 03:53:05 he said to dab-dab. He was indeed, said the duck. I'm not surprised his wife is sick, if she has a husband with a face like that. I wonder who he is, said John Doolittle. It isn't often we have white men coming in here. I don't much like the looks of him. The following day the pearls were wrapped up again the way they had arrived, and after a letter had been written by the doctor,

Starting point is 03:53:32 explaining to the spoonbill what the pebbles really were, they were sent off by registered parcel post to the harmatine rocks the bird chosen to take the package happened to be one of the thrushes that had brought the brussels sprouts from england these birds were still staying in the neighborhood and though a thrush was a somewhat small bird to carry parcel post the package was a very little one and the doctor had nobody else to send so after explaining to the thrush that registered mail should be guarded very carefully by post the doctor sent the pearls off. Then he went to call on the king, as he did every so often, and in the course of conversation John Doolittle asked his majesty if he knew who the white stranger might be that had called at the houseboat for a postal order.

Starting point is 03:54:23 After he had listened to the description of the man's cross-eyed, ugly face, the king said, yes, he knew him very well. He was a pearl fisherman who spent most of his time in the Pacific Ocean where fishing for pearls was more common. But the king said he often came hanging around these parts, where he was known to be a great villain who would do anything to get pearls or money. Jack Wilkins was his name.

Starting point is 03:54:49 The doctor on hearing this felt glad that he had already got the pink pearls safely off to their owner by registered mail. Then he told the king that he hoped shortly to take a holiday because he was overworked and needed a rest. The king asked where he was going, and the doctor said he thought he would take a week's canoe trip up the coast toward the harmatan rocks. Well, said his majesty, if you are going in that direction, you might call on an old friend of mine, Chief Niam-Yem-Yem. He owns the country in those parts, and the harmatan rocks themselves. He and his people are frightfully poor, though, but he is honest, and I think you will like him.

Starting point is 03:55:32 All right, said the doctor, I'll call on him with your comrade. compliments. The next day, leaving speedy, cheapside, and Jip in charge of the post office, the doctor got into his canoe with dab-dab and paddled off to take his holiday. On the way out, he noticed a schooner, the ship of Jack Wilkins, the pearl fisherman, at anchor near the entrance to Fantipo Harbor. Toward evening the doctor arrived at a small settlement of straw huts, the village of Chief Yamm-Yam-Yam, calling on the chief with an introduction from King's. King Coco, the doctor was well received. He found, however, that the country over which this chief ruled was indeed a very poor state.

Starting point is 03:56:15 For years, powerful neighbors on either side had made war on the old chief and robbed him of his best farming lands, till now his people were crowded onto a narrow strip of rocky shore, where very little food could be grown. The doctor was particularly distressed by the thinned. of the few chickens pecking about in the streets. They reminded him of old broken-down cab-horses, he said. While he was talking to the chief, who seemed to be a kindly old man, Speedy swept into the chief's hut in a great state of excitement.

Starting point is 03:56:52 Doctor, he cried. The mail has been robbed. The thrush has come back to the post office and says his package was taken from him on the way. The pearls are gone. on end of part four chapter one part four chapter two of dr doolittle's post office by hugh lofting this libri vox recording is in the public domain part four chapter two the great mail robbery great heavens cried the doctor springing up the pearls gone and they were registered too yes said speedy here's the thrush himself. He'll tell you all about it. And going to the door, he called in the

Starting point is 03:57:44 bird who had carried the registered package. "'Doctor?' said the thrush, who was also very upset and breathless. "'It wasn't my fault. I never let those pearls out of my sight. I flew straight off for the Hermat and rocks. But part of the trip I had to go over land if I took the shortest cut, and on the way I saw a sister of mine whom I hadn't met in a long long, time, sitting in a tree in the jungle below me. And I thought it would be no harm if I went and talked to her a while. So I flew down, and she was very glad to see me. I couldn't talk properly with the string of the package in my mouth, so I put the parcel down on the

Starting point is 03:58:24 bow of the tree behind me, right near me, you understand, and went on talking to my sister. And when I turned around to pick it up again, it was gone. Perhaps it slipped off the tree, said the doctor, and fell down into the underbrush. It couldn't have, said the thrush. I put it into a little hollow in the bark of the bow. It just couldn't have slipped or rolled. Somebody must have taken it. Dear me, said John Doolittle, robbing the mails, that's a serious thing.

Starting point is 03:58:58 I wonder who could have done it. I'll bet it's Jack Wilkins, the cross-eyed pearl fisherman, whispered dab-dab. a man with a face like that would steal anything and he was the only one besides us and speedy who knew the pearls were going through the mails it's wilkins sure is you're alive i wonder said the doctor they do say he is a most unscrupulous customer well there's nothing for it i suppose but that i should paddle back to fantipo right away and try to find him the post office is responsible for the loss of registration mail, and if Mr. Wilkins took those pearls, I'm going to get them back again. But after this, we will make it a post-office rule that carriers of registered mail may not talk to their sisters or anyone else while on duty. And in spite of the lateness of the hour, John Doolittle set a hasty farewell to Chief Yam-Yam

Starting point is 03:59:57 and started off by Moonlight for Fantipo Harbor. In the meantime, Speedy and the Thrush flew over the land by the land by the first of the first of the shortcut to the post office." "'What are you going to say to Wilkins, Doctor?' asked Dab-Dab as the canoe glided along over the moonlit sea. "'It's a pity you haven't got a pistol or something like that. He looks a desperate character, and he isn't likely to give up the pearls without a fight.' "'I don't know what I'll say to him.

Starting point is 04:00:27 I'll see when I get there,' said John Doolittle. But we must be very careful how we approach so that he doesn't see us coming, if he should pull up his anchor and sail away, we would never be able to overtake him by canoe. "'I tell you what, Doctor,' said Dab-Dab. "'Let me fly ahead and do a little spying on the enemy. Then I'll come back and tell you anything I can find out. Maybe he isn't on his schooner at all at present, and we ought to be hunting him somewhere else.' "'All right,' said the doctor.

Starting point is 04:00:59 "'Do that. It will take me another four hours at least to reach Fantipo at this pace.' So Dab-Dab flew away over the sea, and John Doolittle continued to paddle his canoe bravely forward. After about an hour, he heard a gentle sort of whispered quacking high overhead, and he knew that his faithful housekeeper was returning. Presently with a swish of feathers, Dab-dab settled down at his feet, and on her face was an expression which meant great news.

Starting point is 04:01:32 He's there, doctor, and, and he's got the pearls all right, said she. I peeked through the window, and I saw him counting them out from one little box into another by the light of a candle. The villain, grunted the doctor, putting on all the speed he could. Let's hope he doesn't get away before we reach Fantipo. Dawn was beginning to show before they came in sight of the ship they sought. This made approaching the schooner without being seen extremely difficult.

Starting point is 04:02:02 and the doctor went all the way around the island of no man's land, so as to come upon the ship from the other side where he would not have to cross so large an open stretch of sea. Paddling very, very softly, he managed to get the canoe right under the bow of the ship. Then, tying his own craft so it wouldn't float away, he swarmed up the schooner's anchor chain and crept onto the boat on hands and knees.

Starting point is 04:02:30 Full daylight had not yet come, and the light from a lamp could be seen palely shining up the stairs which led to the cabin. The doctor slid forward like a shadow, tiptoed his way down the stairs, and peered through the partly opened door. The cross-eyed Wilkins was still seated at the table, as Dab-Dab had described, counting pearls. Two other men were asleep in bunks around the room. The doctor swung on. opened the door and jumped in. Instantly Wilkins sprang up from the table, snatched a pistol from his belt, and leveled it at the doctor's head. Move an inch and you're a dead man, he snarled.

Starting point is 04:03:16 The doctor, taken aback for a moment, gazed at the pistol muzzle, wondering what to do next. Wilkins, without moving his eyes from the doctor for a second, closed the pearl box with his left hand and put it into his pocket. While he was doing this, however, Dab-Dab sneaked in under the table unseen by anyone, and suddenly she bit the pearl fisherman in the leg with her powerful beak. With a howl Wilkins bent down to knock her off, "'Now's your chance, Doctor!' yelled the duck.

Starting point is 04:03:50 And in the second, while the pistol was lowered, the doctor sprang onto the man's back, gripped him around the neck, and with a crash, the two of them went rolling on the floor of the cabin. Then a tremendous fight began. Over and over and over, they rolled around the floor, upsetting things in all directions. Wilkins fighting to get his pistol hand free,

Starting point is 04:04:14 the doctor struggling to keep it bound to his body. Dab-dab hopping and flying and jumping and flopping to get a bite in on the enemy's nose whenever she saw a chance. At last, John Doolittle, who, for his size, was a very powerful wrestler, got the pearl fisherman in a grip of iron where he couldn't move at all. But just as the doctor was forcing the pistol out of his enemy's hand, one of the other men, who had been aroused by the noise of the fight, woke up,

Starting point is 04:04:45 and leaning out of his bunk from behind the doctor's back, he hit him a tremendous blow on the head with a bottle. Stunned and senseless, John Doolittle fell over in a heap and lay still, upon the floor. Then all three men sprang on him with ropes, and in a minute his arms and legs were tied and the fight was over. When he woke up, the doctor found himself lying at the bottom of his own canoe, with dab-dab tugging at the ropes which bound his wrists to get him free. "'Where is Wilkins?' he asked in a dazed, sleepy kind of way.

Starting point is 04:05:21 "'Gone,' said dab-dab, and the pearls with him, the scoundrel, as As soon as they had dumped you in the canoe, they pulled up the anchor, hoisted sail, and got away. They were in an awful hurry, and kept looking out to sea with telescopes and talking about the revenue cutter. I guess they are wanted by the government for a good many bad deeds. I never saw a tougher-looking crowd of men in all my life. See, I've got the rope around your hands free now. You can do the rest better yourself.

Starting point is 04:05:52 Does your head hurt much? It's a bit dizzy still. said the doctor, working at the rope about his ankles, but I'll be all right in a little. Presently, when he had undone the cord that tied his feet, John Doolittle stood up and gazed over the ocean, and there on the skyline he could just see the sails of Wilkins' schooner disappearing eastward.

Starting point is 04:06:18 Villain was all he said between his clenched teeth. End of Part four, Chapter 2. Part 4, Chapter 3 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 4, Chapter 3, Pearls and Brussels Spouts. Disappointed and sad, Dab-Dab and the doctor started to paddle their way back. I think I'll stop in at the post office before I return to Chief Yam-Yam's country, said the doctor. There's nothing more I can.

Starting point is 04:07:00 can do about the pearls, I suppose, but I like to see if everything else is going all right. Wilkins may get caught yet by the government, said Dab-Dab. And if he does, we might get the pearls back after all. Not much chance of that, I'm afraid, said John Doolittle. He will probably sell them the first chance he gets. That's all he wants them for, for the money they'll bring in, whereas the young spoonbills appreciated their beauty. It's a shame they should love lose them. And when they were in my care, too, well, it's no use crying over spilt milk. They're gone, that's all. As they were approaching the houseboat, they noticed a large number of canoes collected about it. Today was not one of the outgoing or incoming mail-days,

Starting point is 04:07:49 and the doctor wondered what the excitement could be. Fastening up his own canoe, he went into the post office, and inside was quite a crowd. He made. made his way through it with dab-dab, and in the registered mail booth he found all the animals gathered around a small black squirrel. The little creature's legs were tied with post-office red tape, and he seemed very frightened and miserable. Speedy and Cheapside were mounting guard over him, one on each side. What's all this about? asked the doctor.

Starting point is 04:08:24 We've caught the fellow who stole the pearls, Doctor, said Speedy. "'And we've got the pearls, too,' cried Tutu. "'They're in the stamp drawer, and Jip is guarding them.' "'But I don't understand,' said John Doolittle. "'I thought Wilkins had made off with them.' "'Those must have been some other's stolen pearls, Doctor,' said Dab. "'Let's take a look at the ones Jip has.' The doctor went and opened the stamp drawer.

Starting point is 04:08:51 And there, inside, sure enough, were the three pink beauties he had sent by registered mail. How did you find them? he asked, turning to Speedy. Well, after you had set off in the canoe, said the skimmer, I and the thrush stopped on our way back here at the tree where he had lost the package. It was too dark then to hunt for it, so we roosted in the tree all night, intending to look in the morning. Just as dawn was breaking, we saw this wretched squirrel here flirting about in the branches with an enormous pink pearl in his mouth. I had once pounced on him and held him down, while the thrush took the pearl away from him.

Starting point is 04:09:32 Then we made him tell us where he had hidden the other two. And after we had got all three of them we put the squirrel under arrest and brought him here. "'Dear me,' said the doctor, looking at the miserable culprit who was all tied up with red tape. What made you steal the pearls?' At first the squirrel seemed too frightened to speak. So the doctor took a pair of scissors and cut the bonds that held him. Why did you do it? he repeated. I thought they were brussels sprouts, said the squirrel timidly.

Starting point is 04:10:05 A few weeks ago when I and my wife were sitting at a tree, we suddenly smell the smell of brussels sprouts awful strong all about us. I and my wife were very fond of this vegetable, and we wondered where the smell was coming from. And then, looking up, we saw thousands of flowers. thrushes passing overhead, carrying brussels sprouts in their mouths. We hoped they would stop so we could get a few, but they didn't. So we agreed that perhaps more would be coming over in a few days, and we arranged to stay

Starting point is 04:10:38 around that same tree and wait. And sure enough, this morning I saw one of these same thrushes a light in the tree carrying a package. Pss, I whispered to my life, more brussels-sprouts. Let's bag this parcel while he's not looking. And bag yet I did. But when we opened it we found nothing but these wretched gee-jaws. I thought they might be some new kind of rock candy,

Starting point is 04:11:06 and I was on my way to find a stone to crack them with. When this bird grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and arrested me, I didn't want the beastly pearls. Well, said the doctor, I'm sorry you've been put to such inconvenience. I'll have Dab-Dab carry you back to your family. But you know, robbing the registered mail is a serious thing. If you wanted some Brussels sprouts you should have written to me. After all, you can't flame the birds for putting you under arrest."

Starting point is 04:11:38 "'Stolen fruits the sweetest, doctor,' said Cheapside. And if you had given him a ton of out-house grapes, he wouldn't have enjoyed him as much as something he pinched. I'd give him a couple of years' ar' labor if I was you. to learn him to leave the males alone." Well, never mind, we'll forget it," said the doctor. It's only a boyish escapade. Boyish fiddlesticks, growled Cheapside, is the father of a large family and a natural-born pickpocket.

Starting point is 04:12:10 All squirrels are like that. Don't I know him in the city parks, with their mince and ways that the folks call cute? Cheekiest beggars that ever was. Pinch a crumb from under your own. nose and pop into an old with it before you could get your breath. Boyish hescapade." "'Come along,' said Dab-Dab, picking the wretched culprit up in her big webbed feet. I'll take you back to the mainland.

Starting point is 04:12:35 Now you can thank your lucky stars that it's the doctor who's in charge of this post office. It's the jail you really ought to go." Oh, and hurry back, Dab-Dab, the doctor called after her as she flapped her way through the open window and set off across the sea with her burden. I'm going to start right away for Chief Yam Yam's country as soon as you are ready. I'll take the pearls myself this time, he said to Speedy, and hand them over to the spoon bill in person. We don't want any more accidents happening to them.

Starting point is 04:13:10 About noon the doctor started out a second time upon his holiday trip, and as Gub-Gub, Jip and the White Mouths begged to be taken along, the canoe was well loaded. They reached Yam-Yam's village about the time. six o'clock in the evening, and the old chief prepared a supper for his guests. There was very little to eat at it, however, and the doctor was again reminded how poor these people were. While talking with the old chief the doctor found out that the worst enemy his country had was the kingdom of Dahomey. This big and powerful neighbor was, it seemed, always making

Starting point is 04:13:47 war upon chief yam-yam, and cutting off parts of his land and making the people poorer still. now the soldiers of dahomey were amazons that is they were women soldiers and although they were women they were very big and strong and there were a terrible lot of them so whenever they attacked the small country next to them they easily won and took what they wanted as it happened they made an attack that night while the doctor was staying with the chief and about ten o'clock everybody was awakened out of his sleep with cries of, whar, war, the Amazons are here. There was terrible confusion, and until the moon had risen, people were hitting and falling over one another everywhere in the darkness, not knowing friend from enemy. When it was possible to see, however, the doctor found that most of Chief Yam-Yam's people had fled off into the jungle, and the Amazons in thousands were just going through the village

Starting point is 04:14:50 taking anything they fancied. The doctor tried to argue with him, but they merely laughed at him. Then the white mouse, who was watching the show from the doctor's shoulder, whispered in his ear, "'If this is an army of women, doctor, I think I know of a way to deal with them. Women are terribly afraid of mice, you know. I'll just go off and collect a few in the village and see what we can do.' So the white mouse went off and gathered an army of his own, about two hundred mice, which lived in the grass walls and floors of the huts.

Starting point is 04:15:24 And then suddenly they attacked the Amazons and began nipping them in the legs. With shrieks and howls, the fat women soldiers dropped the things they had been stealing and ran helter-skelter for home. And that was one time the famous Amazons of Dahomey didn't have it all their own way. The doctor told his pet he could be very proud of himself,

Starting point is 04:15:49 for he was surely the only one of the only one of the same. mouse in the world that ever won a war." End of Part 4, Chapter 3. Part 4, Chapter 4 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Part 4, Chapter 4 Pearl Divers The next morning the doctor was up early. After a light breakfast, it was impossible to get any other kind in that poverty-stricken.

Starting point is 04:16:27 country. He asked Yam Yam the way to the Hermatin rocks, and the chief told him they were just beyond sight from here, about an hour and a half's paddle straight out into the ocean. So the doctor decided that he had better have a seabird to guide him, and Dab-Dab went and got a curlew who was strolling about on the beach, doing nothing in particular. This bird said he knew the place quite well and would consider it an honor to act as a guide to John Doolittle. Then with Jip, Dab-Dab, Gub, and the White Mouse, the doctor got into his canoe and started off for the Hermatine Rocks. It was a beautiful morning, and they enjoyed the paddle, though Gub-Gub came very near to upsetting

Starting point is 04:17:13 the canoe more than once, leaning out to grab for passing seaweed, which he had noticed the curlew eating. Finally, for safety's sake, they made him lie down at the bottom of the canoe where he couldn't see anything. about eleven o'clock a group of little rocky islands were cited, which their guide said were the Hormatan rocks. At this point in their journey, the mainland of Africa was just disappearing from view on the skyline behind them.

Starting point is 04:17:41 The rocks they were coming to seemed to be the home of thousands of different kinds of seabirds. As the canoe drew near, gulls, turns, Gannets, albatrosses, comerants, oculets, petrels, wild ducks, while geese came out full of curiosity to examine the stranger. When they learned from the curlew that this quiet little fat man was none other than the great Dr. Doolittle himself, they passed word back to the rocks, and soon the air about the canoe was simply thick with wings flashing in the sunlight. And the welcome to their home that the seabird screeched to the doctor was so hearty and noisy you couldn't hear yourself speak.

Starting point is 04:18:24 It was easy to see why this place had been chosen for a home by the seabirds. The shores all around were guarded by half-sunkened rocks, on which the waves roared and broke dangerously. No ship was ever likely to come here to disturb the quiet life of the birds. Indeed, even with a light canoe that could go in shallow water, the doctor would have had hard work to make a landing. But the welcoming birds guided him very skillfully around to the back of the biggest island, a bay with deep water formed a pretty sort of toy harbor.

Starting point is 04:18:58 The doctor understood now why these islands had been left in the possession of the poor chief. No neighbors would consider them worth taking. Hard to approach, with very little soil in which crops could be grown, flat and open to all the winds and gales of heaven, barren and lonesome, they tempted none of the chief's enemies, and so for many, many years there remained the property of Yashire. and his people, though indeed they hardly ever visited them. But in the end the Hormatin rocks proved to be of greater value than all the rest of the lands of this tribe had lost.

Starting point is 04:19:35 Oh, I think this is an awful place," said Gub-Gub as they got out of the canoe. Nothing but waves and rocks. What have you come here for, Doctor?" I hope to do a little pearl fishing, said John Doolittle. But first I must see the spoon-bill and give her the this registered package. Dab-Dab, would you please try to find her for me? With so many millions of seabbirds around, myself I wouldn't know how to begin to look for her.

Starting point is 04:20:06 All right, said Dab-Dab, but it may take me a little time. There are several islands and quite a number of spoonbills. I shall have to make inquiries and find out which one sent you the pearls. So Dab-Dab went off upon her errand, and in the meantime the doctor talked and chatted with various seabird leaders, who had already made his acquaintance at the great conference in the hollow of no man's land. These kept coming up to him, anxious to show off before their fellows the fact that they knew the great man personally, and once more the doctor's notebook was kept busy with new discoveries

Starting point is 04:20:43 to be jotted down about the carriage of mail by birds that live upon the sea. The birds, who at first followed the doctor in droves around the main island, wherever he he went, presently returned to their ordinary doings when the newness of his arrival had worn off. And after Dab Dab had come back from her hunt and told him the Spoon Bill lived on one of the smaller islands, he got back into his canoe and paddled over to the rock she pointed out. Here the Spoon Bill was waiting for him at the water's edge. She apologized for not coming in person to welcome him, but said she was afraid to leave

Starting point is 04:21:19 her babies when there were sea-eagles around. The little ones were with her, two scrubby, greasy youngsters who could walk but not fly. The doctor opened the package and gave them back their precious toys, and with squawks of the light they began playing marbles on the flat rocks with the enormous pink pearls. What charming children you have, said the doctor to the mother's Spoon Bill, who was watching them proudly. I'm glad they got their plaything safely back. I wouldn't have had them lose them for anything.

Starting point is 04:21:52 "'Yes, they are devoted to those pebbles,' said the Spoonbill. "'By the way, were you able to tell me what they are? I found them as I wrote you inside an oyster.' "'They are pearls,' said the doctor, "'and worth a tremendous lot. Ladies in cities wear them around their necks.' "'Oh, indeed,' said the bird. "'And why don't the ladies in the country wear them too?'

Starting point is 04:22:17 "'I don't just know,' said the doctor. I suppose because they're too costly. With any one of those pearls you could buy a house and garden. Well, wouldn't you like to keep them thin, said the spoon-bill? I could get the children something else to play with, no doubt. Oh, no, said the doctor, thank you. I have a house and garden. Yes, doctor, dab-dab put in, but you wouldn't be bound by a second one with the money you would get for the pearls. It would come in real handy for something.

Starting point is 04:22:50 else, you know?" The baby spoonbills want them," said John Doolittle. Why should I take them away from them?" Balls of pink putty would suit them just as well," snorted dab-dab. Puddy is poisonous, said the doctor. They appreciate the beauty of the pearls. Let them have them. But," he added to the mother spoon-bill, if you know where any more are to be found,

Starting point is 04:23:15 I should be glad to know. I don't, said she. I don't even know. how these came to be in the possession of the oyster I ate?" Pearls always grow in oysters, where they grow at all," said the doctor. "'But they are rare. This is the point that most interests me, the natural history of pearls. They are said to form around a grain of sand that gets into the oyster shell by accident. I had hoped that if you were in the habit of eating oysters, you could give me some information.'

Starting point is 04:23:47 "'I'm afraid I can't,' said the spoonbill. to tell you the truth i got those oysters from a pile which some other bird had left on a rock here he had eaten his fill i suppose and gone away there are a good many left still let's go over to the pile and crack a few maybe they've all got pearls in them so they went across to the other side of the little island and started opening oysters but not another pearl did they find where are the oyster beds around here asked the doctor between the other side of the little island and started opening oysters but not another pearl did they find where are the oyster beds around here asked the doctor between this island and the next said the spoon bill i don't fish for them myself because i'm not a deep diver but i've seen other kinds of sea birds fishing in that place just about half-way between this island and that little one over there i'll go out with her doctor said dab-dab and do a little fishing on my own account i can dive pretty deep though i'm not a regular diving duck maybe i can get some pearls for you So Dab-Dab went out with the spoon-bill and started pearl fishing. Then for a good hour and a half the faithful housekeeper fished up oyster after oyster and brought them to the doctor on the island.

Starting point is 04:25:00 He and the animals found opening them quite exciting work, because you never knew what you might discover. But nothing was found in the shells but fat oysters and thin oysters. I think I'd like to try my hand to diving myself, said the doctor. if the water is not too deep. I used to be quite good at fishing up six pences from the bottom of the swimming pool when I was a boy, and he took off his clothes, got into the canoe, and paddled out with the animals, so he was over the oyster beds.

Starting point is 04:25:31 Then he dove right down into the clear green water, while Jip and Gub-Gub watched him with intense interest. But when he came up blowing like a seal, he hadn't even got an oyster. All he had was a mouth full of seaweed. "'Let's see what I can do,' said Jip, and out of the canoe jumped another pearl fisherman. Then Gub-Gub got all worked up, and before anybody could stop him, he had to take a plunge.

Starting point is 04:26:00 The pig went down so quick and so straight, he got his snout stuck in the mud at the bottom, and the doctor, still out of breath, had to go down after him and get him free. The animals by this time were at such a pitch of excitement that even the white mouse would have jumped in if Gub Gubb's accident hadn't changed his mind. Jip managed to bring up a few small oysters, but there were no pearls in them. I'm afraid we're pretty poor fishers, said John Doolittle.

Starting point is 04:26:31 Of course it's possible that there may not be any more pearls there. No, I'm not satisfied yet, said Dab-Dab. I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of pearls there. The beds are enormous. I think I'll go around among the seabirds and try to find out who it was, got those oysters our spoonbill found the pearls in. The bird that fished up that pile was an expert oyster diver. So while the doctor put his clothes on and Gub-Gub washed the mud out of his ears, Dab-Dab

Starting point is 04:27:02 went off on a tour of inquiry around the islands. After about twenty minutes he brought back a black duck-like bird with a tuft on his head. The Comeront, doctor, said she, fished up that pile of oysters. Ah, said Dr. Doolittle. Perhaps we shall find out something now. Can you tell me, he asked the Comerant how to get pearls? Pearls? What do you mean?

Starting point is 04:27:31 said the bird. Then Dab-Dab went and borrowed the playthings from the Spoonbill's children to show him. Oh, those things, said the Comerant. They come in bad oysters. When I go oyster fishing, I never pick up that kind except once in a while by accident, and then I never bother to open them." But how do you tell oysters of that kind from the others?" asked the doctor. By sniffing them, said the camarant.

Starting point is 04:28:00 The ones that have those things in them don't smell fresh. I'm frightfully particular about my oysters. Do you mean to say that even when you are right down under the water, you could tell an oyster that had pearls in it from one that didn't, just by sniffing it?" Certainly, so could any comerant." "'There you are, Doctor,' said Dab-Dab. The trick's done. Now you can get all the pearls you want."

Starting point is 04:28:28 But these oyster beds don't belong to me," said John Doolittle. Oh dear!" sighed the duck. Did anyone ever see a man who could find so many objections to getting rich? Who do they belong to, then? To Chief Yam-Yam-Yam, and his people, of course. He owns the Harmaton rocks. Would you mind, the doctor asked, turning to the Comeront, getting me a few oysters of this kind to look at?

Starting point is 04:28:56 With the greatest pleasure, said the Comerant. And he flew out over the oyster-beds and shot down into the sea like a stone. In a minute he was back again with three oysters, two in his feet and one in his mouth. The animals gather around with baited breath while the doctor opened them. In the first was a small gray pearl, in the second a middle-sized pink pearl, and in the third two enormous black ones. Gosh, how lovely, murrowed gub-gub. Pearls before swine, giggle the white mouse, tee-he.

Starting point is 04:29:36 How uneducated you are, snorted the pig, turning up his snout. and gentlemen swine before pearls. End of Part 4, Chapter 4. Part 4, Chapter 5 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 4, Chapter 5, Obambo's Rebellion. Late that same afternoon, the doctor returned to Chief Yam-Yam's village, and with him he took the Comerant as well as Dab-Dab and his animals. As he arrived at the little group of straw houses,

Starting point is 04:30:22 he saw that there was some kind of a commotion going on. All the villagers were gathered about the chief's hut. Beaches were being made, and everyone seemed in a great state of excitement. The old chief himself was standing at the door, and when he saw his friend the doctor approaching on the edge of the crowd, he signaled him to come into the hut. This the doctor, did. And as soon as he was inside, the chief closed the door and began to tell him what the trouble was. Great trials have overtaken me in my old age, O white man, said he. For fifty years I have been head of this tribe, respected, honored, and obeyed. Now my young son-in-law, Obambo, clamors to be made chief, and many of the people support him. Bread, we have none. Food of any kind

Starting point is 04:31:13 is scanty. And Obambo tells the tribesmen that the fault is mine, that he, if he is made chief, will bring them luxury and prosperity. It is not that I am unwilling to give up the chieftaincy, but I know this young upstart who will take my place means to lead the people into war. What can he do by going to war? Can he fill the people's stomachs? In wars we have always lost.

Starting point is 04:31:40 Our neighbors are large peoples, while we are the smallest strength. in all West Africa. So we have been robbed and robbed till now the mothers and children clamber at my door for bread. Alas! Alas that I should ever see this day!" The old chief sank into his chair as he ended and burst out weeping. The doctor went up and patted him on the shoulder.

Starting point is 04:32:04 Chief Yam! said he. I think I have discovered something today which should make you and your people rich for the remainder of your lives. Go out now and address the tribes people, promise them in my name, and remind them that I come recommended by King Coco, promise them from me that if they will abide peaceably under your rule for another week, the country of Chief Yam Yam will be made famous for its riches and prosperity. Then the old chief opened the door and made a speech to the clamoring crowd outside.

Starting point is 04:32:40 And when he had ended, Obambo the son-in-law, got up. and began another speech calling on the people to drive the old man out into the jungle. But before he had got half-way through, the crowd began to murmur to one another. Let us not listen to this forward young man. It is far better that we abide the white man's promise since he would come. He is a man of deeds, not words. Did he not put the Amazons to flight with his magic mouse that lives in his pocket? Let us side with the white man and the venerable Yam-Yam who has ruled

Starting point is 04:33:13 us with kindness for so long. Obambo would but lead us into war and bring us to greater poverty still. Soon hisses and groans broke out among the people, and picking up pebbles in mud, they began pelting Obambo so he could not go on with his speech. Finally, he had to run for the jungle himself to escape the fury of the people. Then, when the excitement had died down and the villagers had gone peacefully to their homes, the doctor told the old chief of the wealth that lay waiting for him in the oysters of the harmatin rocks. And the cormorant agreed to oblige John Doolittle by getting a number of his relatives to do pearl fishing for these people who were so badly in need of money and food.

Starting point is 04:34:00 And during the next week, the doctor paddled the old chief to the rocks twice a day. A great number of oysters were fished up by the cormorants, and the pearls were sordered by the doctor, put in little boxes and sent out to be sold. John Doolittle told the old chief to keep the matter a secret and only to entrust the carrying to reliable men. And soon money began to pour into the country from the pearl fishing business which the doctor had established, and the people were prosperous and had all the food they wanted.

Starting point is 04:34:34 By the end of that week the doctor had indeed made good his promise. The country of Chief Yam-Yam-Yam became famous all. along the coast of West Africa as a wealthy state. But whenever money is made in large quantities and business is good, there strangers will always come seeking their fortune. And before long the little village that used to be so poor and insignificant was full of traders from the neighboring kingdoms, buying and selling in the crowded busy markets. And of course questions were soon asked as to how this country had suddenly got so rich. and although the chief had carried out the doctor's orders and had only entrusted the secret of the fisheries to a few picked men folks began to notice that canoes frequently came and went between the harmattan rocks and the village of chief yam

Starting point is 04:35:27 then spies from those neighboring countries who had always been robbing and warring upon this land began to sneak around the rocks in canoes and of course very soon the secret was out and the emir of El-Bubu, who was one of the big, powerful neighbors, called up his army, and sent them off in war canoes to take possession of the Hermatan rocks. At the same time, he made an attack upon the village, drove everybody out, and carrying off the doctor and the chief, he threw them into prison in his own country. Then at last, Yam Yam's people had no land left at all. And in the jungle, where the frightened villagers had fled to hide, Obambo made whispered speeches to little scattered groups of his father-in-law's people, telling them what fools they had been

Starting point is 04:36:20 to trust the crazy white man, instead of listening to him who would have led them to greatness. Now, when the emir of El-Bubu had thrown the doctor into prison, he had refused to allow dab-dab, Jip or Gub-Gub to go with him. Jip put up a fight and bit the emir in the leg, but all he got for that was to be tied up on a short chain. The prison into which the doctor was thrown had no windows, and John Doolittle, although he had been in African prisons before, was very unhappy because he was extremely particular about having fresh air. And besides, his hands were firmly tied behind his back with strong rope. "'Dear me,' said he while he was sitting miserably on the floor in the darkness, wondering what on earth he was going to do without any of his animals to help him. What a poor holiday I am spending, to be sure. But presently he heard something stirring in his pocket.

Starting point is 04:37:21 And to his great delight, the white mouse, who had been sleeping soundly entirely forgotten by the doctor, ran out on his lap. "'Good luck!' cried John Doolittle. "'You're the very fellow I want. "'Would you be so good as to run around behind my back "'and gnaw this beastly rope? "'It's hurting my wrists.' "'Certainly,' said the white mouse, "'sitting to work at once.

Starting point is 04:37:46 "'Why is it so dark? "'I haven't slept into the night, have I?' "'No,' said the doctor. "'It's only about noon, I should say.' "'But we're locked up. "'That stupid old emir of El-Bou-boo made war on you.' yam, yam, and threw me into jail. Bother it.

Starting point is 04:38:04 I always seemed to be getting into prison. The worst of it was he wouldn't let Jip or Dab-Dab come with me. I'm particularly annoyed that I haven't got Dab-Dab. I wish I knew some way I could get a message to her. Well, just wait until I have your hands free, said the White Mouse. Then I'll see what can be done. There, I've bitten through one strand. Now wiggle your hands a bit and you can undo the whole rope.

Starting point is 04:38:30 The doctor squirmed his arms and wrists, and presently his hands were free. Thank goodness I had you in my pocket, he said. That was a most uncomfortable position. I wonder what kind of a prison old Yam-yam-Got. This is the worst one I was ever in. In the meantime, the emir, celebrating victory in his palace, gave orders that the Hermann Rocks, which were now to be called the Royal El-Bubu Pearl Fisheries,

Starting point is 04:38:59 would henceforth be his exclusive private property, and no trespassing would be allowed. And he sent out six special men with orders to take over the islands and to bring all the pearls to him. Now the cormorants did not know that war had broken out nor anything about the doctor's misfortune. And when the emir's men came and took the pearl oysters they had fished up, the birds supposed they were yam-yam's men and let them have them. However, it happened luckily that this first load of oysters had only very small and almost worthless pearls in them. Jip and Dab-Dab were still plotting to find some way to reach the doctor, but there seemed

Starting point is 04:39:41 to be nothing they could think of. Inside the prison the doctor was swinging his arms to get the stiffness out of them. You said something about a message you had for Dab-Dab, I think, peeped the White Mousses voice from the darkness of the corner. "'Yes,' said the doctor, "'and a very urgent one. "'But I don't see how on earth I'm going to get it to her. "'This place is made of stone, and the door is frightfully thick.

Starting point is 04:40:08 "'I noticed it as I came in.' "'Don't worry, doctor. I'll get it to her,' said the mouse. "'I've just found an old rat hole over there in the corner. "'I popped down it, and it goes under the wall, "'and comes out by the root of the tree on the other side of the road from the prison.' "'Oh!' How splendid, cried the doctor. Give me the message, said the White Mouse, and I'll hand it to Dab-Dab before you can say

Starting point is 04:40:33 Jack Robinson. She's sitting in the tree where the hole comes out. Tell her, said the doctor, to fly over to the Hermeton rocks right away, and give the Comeron's strict orders to stop all pearl fishing at once, and he slipped down the rat-hole. Dab-Dab as soon as she got the message, went straight off to the pearl-fishing. fisheries and gave the doctor's instructions to the Carmarons. She was only just in time, for the Emir six special men were about to land on the islands

Starting point is 04:41:06 to get a second load of pearls. Dab, dab, and the Carmarants swiftly threw back into the sea the oysters they had fished up, and when the emir's men arrived, they found nothing. After hanging around a while, they paddle back and told the emir that they could find no more pearl oysters on the rocks. He sent them out to look again, but they returned with the same report. Then the emir was puzzled and angry. If Yam Yam could get pearls on the harmatin rocks, why couldn't he? And one of his generals said that probably the white man had something to do with it since it was he who had discovered and started the fisheries. So the emir ordered his

Starting point is 04:41:50 hammock men and had himself carried to the doctor's prison. The door was unlocked, and the emir, going inside, said to the doctor, "'What monkey business have you done to my pearl fisheries, you white-faced villain?' "'They are not your pearl fisheries, you black-faced ruffian,' said the doctor. You stole them from poor old yam-jam. The pearls were fished far by diving birds, but the birds are honest and will work only for honest people. Why don't you have windows in your prisons?

Starting point is 04:42:22 You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Then the emir flew into a terrible passion. How dare you speak to me like that? I am the emir of El-Boubu, he thundered. You're an unscrupulous scoundrel, said the doctor. I don't want to talk to you. If you don't make the birds work for me, I'll give orders that you get no food, said the emir.

Starting point is 04:42:49 You shall be starved to death. I have told you, said the doctor. that I don't desire any further conversation with you. Not a single pearl shall you ever get from the Hermatin fisheries. And not a bite to eat shall you ever have till I do, the emir yelled. Then he turned to the prison guards, gave instructions that the doctor was not to be fed till further orders and stalked out. The door slammed shut with a doleful clang,

Starting point is 04:43:22 and after one decent breath of fresh air, the doctor was left in the darkness of his stuffy dungeon. End of Part 4, Chapter 5. Part 4, Chapter 6 of Dr. Doolittle's post office by Hugh Lofning. This Libre-Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 4, Chapter 6, The Doctor's Release. The emir of Elibou went back to his palace, feeling perfectly certain that after he had starved John Doolittle for a few days, he would be able to make him do anything he wanted.

Starting point is 04:44:10 He gave orders that no water should be served to the prisoner either, so as to make doubly sure that he would be reduced to obedience. But immediately the emir had left, the white mouse started out through the rat-hole in the corner, and all day and all night he kept busy coming and going bringing in crumbs of food which he had gathered from the houses of the town bread crumbs cheese crumbs yam crumbs potato crumbs and crumbs of meat which he pulled off bones all these he stored carefully in the doctor's hat in the corner of the prison and by the end of each day he had collected enough crumbs for one good square meal the doctor said he never had the slightest idea of what he was eating But, as the mealy mixture was highly digestible and nutritious, he did not see why he should mind. To supply his master with water, the mouse got nuts, and after gnawing a tiny hole in one end, he would chomp the nut inside into pieces and shake it out through the hole.

Starting point is 04:45:14 Then he would fill the empty shell with water and seal up the hole with gum arabic, which he got from trees. The water-filled nuts were a little heavy for him to carry, so Dab-Dab would bring them from the river as far as the outside end of the rat-hole, and the white mouse would roll them down the hole into the prison. By getting his friends the village mice to help him in the preparation of these nuts, he was able to supply them in hundreds. Then all the doctor had to do when he wanted a drink was to put one in his mouth, crack it with his teeth, and after the cool water had run down his throat, spit the broken shells out. The white mouse

Starting point is 04:45:54 also provided crumbs of soap so that his master could shave, for the doctor even in prison, was always very particular about this part of his appearance. Well, when four days had passed, the emir of Elibou, sent a messenger to the prison to inquire if the doctor was now willing to do as he was told. The guards, after talking to John Doolittle, brought word to the emir, that the white man was as obstinate as ever, and had no intention of giving in. very well said the emir stamping his foot then let him starve in ten days more the fool will be dead then i will come and laugh over him so perish all wretches who oppose the wishes of the emir of elibou and in ten days time he went to the prison as he had said to gloat over the terrible fate of the white man many of his ministers and generals came with him to help him gloat

Starting point is 04:46:54 But when the prison door was opened, instead of seeing the white man's body stretched upon the floor, the emir found the doctor smiling on the threshold, shaved and hearty and all spruced up. The only difference in his appearance was that with no exercise in prison he had grown slightly stouter and rounder. The emir stared at the prisoner open-mouthed, speechless with astonishment. Now, the day before this he had heard for him. the first time the story of the rout of the Amazons. The Emir had refused to believe it,

Starting point is 04:47:30 but now he began to feel that anything might be true about this man. "'See?' one of the ministers whispered in his ear. "'The sorcerer has even shaved his beard without water or soap. Your Majesty, there is surely evil magic here. Set the man free before harm befall. Let us be rid of him.' And the frightened minister moved back among the crowd so the doctor's evil gaze could not fall upon his face. Then the emir himself began to get panicky, and he gave orders that the doctor should be released right away. I will not leave here, said John Doolittle, standing squarely in the door, till you have windows put in this prison.

Starting point is 04:48:19 It's a disgrace to lock anyone in a place without windows. Bill windows in the prison at once, the emir said to the guards. And after that I won't go, said the doctor. Not till you have set Chief Yam-jam-frey, not till you have ordered all your people to leave his country and the Hermann Rocks, not till you have returned to him the farming lands you robbed him of. It shall be done, muttered the emir, grinding his teeth. Only go!

Starting point is 04:48:52 I go, said the doctor. But if you ever molest your neighbors again, I will return. Beware." Then he strode through the prison door out into the sunlit street, while the frightened people fell back on either side and covered their faces, whispering, "'Magic, do not let his eye fall on you!' And in the doctor's pocket the white mouse had to put his paws over his face to keep from laughing. and now the doctor set out with his animals and the old chief to return to yam yam's country from the land where he had been imprisoned on the way they kept meeting with groups of the chiefs people who were still hiding in the jungle these were told the glad tidings of the emir's promise when they learned that their land was now free and safe again the people joined the doctor's party for the return journey

Starting point is 04:49:49 and long before he came in sight of the village john doolittle looked like a conquering general coming back at the head of an army so many had gathered to him on the way that night grand celebrations were made in the chief's village and the doctor was hailed by the people as the great great greatest man who had ever visited their land. Two of their worst enemies need now no longer be feared. The emir had been bound over by a promise, and Dahomey was not likely to bother them again after the fright the Amazons got on their last attack. The pearl fisheries were restored to their possession, and the country should now proceed prosperously and happily. The next day the doctor went out to the Hermatan rocks, to visit the cormorants, and to thank them for the help they had given. The old chief came along on this trip, and with him four trustworthy men of his, in order that there should be no mistake in future. These men were shown to the cormorants, and the birds

Starting point is 04:50:53 were told to supply them and no others with pearl oysters. While the doctor and his party were out at the rocks, an oyster was fished up that contained an enormous and very beautiful pearl, by far the biggest and handsomest yet found. It was perfect in shape, flawless, and a most unusual shade in color. After making a little speech, the chief presented this pearl to the doctor as a small return for the services he had done him and his people. Thank goodness for that, dab-dab whispered to Jip. Do you realize what that pearl means to us?

Starting point is 04:51:32 The doctor was down to his last shilling, as poor as a church mouse. We should have had to go circus traveling with the Pushmeepo you again, if it hadn't been for this. I'm so glad. For my part, I shall be glad enough to stay at home and settle down a while once we get there. Oh, I don't know, said Gub-Gub. I love circuses.

Starting point is 04:51:57 I wouldn't mind traveling so long as it's in England and with the circus. Well, said Jip, whatever happens it's nice the doctor got the pearl. He always seemed to be in need of money, and, as you say, Dab-Dab, that should make anybody rich for life." But while the doctor was still thanking the chief for the beautiful present, Quip the carrier flew up with a letter for him. It was marked urgent in red letter, doctor, said the swallow, so Speedy thought he had better send it to you by special delivery. John Doolittle tore open the envelope.

Starting point is 04:52:31 Who's it from, doctor? asked Dab-Dab. "'Dear me,' muttered the doctor reading, "'it's from that farmer in Lincolnshire, "'whose brussels we imported for Gub-Gub. "'I forgot to answer his letter. "'You remember?' "'He wrote asking me if I could tell him "'what the trouble was.

Starting point is 04:52:50 "'And I was so busy it went clean out of my mind. "'Dear me! "'I must pay the poor fellow back somehow. "'I wonder. "'Oh, but there's this. "'I can send him the pearl. "'That will pay for his sprouts send something to spare. What a good idea! And to Dab-Dab's horror, the doctor tore a clean piece

Starting point is 04:53:13 off the farmer's letter, scribbled a reply, wrapped the pearl up in it, and handed it to the swallow. Tell Speedy, said he, to send that off right away, registered. I am returning to Fantipo tomorrow. Goodbye and thank you for the special delivery. As Quip the carrier disappeared into the distance with the doctor's priceless pearl. Dab, dab, turned to Chip, and muttered, "'There goes the do-little fortune. My, but it is marvelous how money doesn't stick to that man's fingers.' "'Hi-ho,' sighed Jip.

Starting point is 04:53:49 "'It's circus for us all right.' "'Easy comes, easy goes,' murmured Gub-Gub. "'Never mind. I don't suppose it's really such fun being rich. Wealthy people have to behave so unnaturally.' End of Part 4, Chapter 6. Part 4, Chapter 7 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 04:54:21 Part 4, Chapter 7, A Mysterious Letter We are now come to an unusual event in the history of the doctor's post office, to the one which was, perhaps, the greatest of all the curious things that came about through the institution of the swallow mail. On arriving back at the houseboat from his short and very busy holiday, the doctor was greeted joyfully by the push-me-pull you, to-to, cheap side, and speedy the skimmer. King Coco also came out to greet his friend when he saw the arrival of the doctor's canoe through a pair of opera glasses, priced ten shillings and sixpence, which he had recently got

Starting point is 04:55:02 from London by parcel post. and the prominent Fantipians who had missed their afternoon tea and social gossip terribly during the postmaster's absence got into their canoes and followed the king out to the foreign males office. So for three hours after his arrival, in fact until it was dark, the doctor did not get a chance to do a thing besides shake hands and answer questions about how he had enjoyed his holiday, where he had been and what he had done. The welcome he received on his return and the sight of the comfortable houseboat, gay with flowering window-boxes, made the doctor, as he afterwards said to Dab-Dab, feel as though he were really coming home. "'That's true,' said the doctor. "'I suppose I must be getting on to England soon.

Starting point is 04:55:52 But the Fantipians were honestly pleased to see us, weren't they?' "'And, after all, Africa is a nice country now, isn't it?' "'Yes,' said Dab-dab. a nice enough country for short holidays and long drinks after supper had been served and eaten and the doctor had been made to tell the story of the pearl fisheries all over again for the benefit of his own family circle he at last turned to the enormous pile of letters which were waiting for him they came as usual from all parts of the world from every conceivable kind of animal and bird for hours he waited patiently through them answering them as they came Speedy acted as his secretary and took down in bird and animal scribble the answers that the doctors reeled off by the dozen. Often John Doolittle dictated so fast that the poor skimmer had to get Tutu, who had a wonderful

Starting point is 04:56:48 memory, to come and help listen, so nothing should be missed through not writing it down quick enough. Toward the end of the pile the doctor came across a very peculiar thick envelope all over mud. For a long time, none of them could make out a single word of the letter inside, not even who it was from. The doctor got all his notebooks out of the safe, compared and peered and poured over the writing for hours. Mud had been used for ink.

Starting point is 04:57:18 The signs were made so clumsily they might almost be anything. But at last, after a tremendous lot of work, copying out of fresh, guessing and discussing, The meaning of the extraordinary letter was pieced together, and this is what it said. Dear Dr. Doolittle, I have heard of your post office, and am writing this as best I can, the first letter I ever wrote. I hear you have a weather bureau in connection with your post office, and that a one-eyed albatross is your chief weather prophet. I am writing to tell you that I am the oldest of the oldest.

Starting point is 04:58:00 weather profit in the world. I prophesied the flood, and it came true to the day and the hour. I said it would. I am a very slow walker, or I would come and see you, and perhaps you could do something for my gout, which in the last few hundred years has bothered me a good deal. But if you will come to see me, I will teach you a lot about weather, and I will tell you the story of the flood, which I saw with my own eyes. from the deck of Noah's Ark.

Starting point is 04:58:33 Yours very truly, Mudface. P.S. I am a turtle. At last, on reading the muddy message through, the doctor's excitement and enthusiasm knew no bounds. He began at once to make arrangements to leave the following day for a visit to the turtle. But alas, when he turned again to the letter to see where the turtle lived,

Starting point is 04:58:59 he could find nothing to give a clue to his whereabouts. The mysterious writer who had seen the flood, Noah, and the Ark, had forgotten to give his address. "'Look here, Speedy,' said John Doolittle, "'we must try and trace this. Let us leave no stone unturn to find where this valuable document came from. First, we will question everyone in the post office to find out who it was delivered it.

Starting point is 04:59:27 Well, everyone in turn, the push-me-pull-you, cheapside, two-to, quip the carrier, all the swallows, any stray birds who were living in the neighborhood, even a pair of rats who had taken up their residence in the houseboat were cross-examined by the doctor or speeding. But no one had seen the letter arrive. No one could tell what day or hour it had come. No one could guess how it got into the pile of the doctor's mails. No one knew anything about it. It was one of those little post-office mysteries that are always cropping up even in the best-run mail systems.

Starting point is 05:00:09 The doctor was positively heartbroken. Often in his natural history meditations, he had wondered about all sorts of different matters connected with the ark, and he had decided that Noah, after his memorable voyage was over, must have been a great naturalist. now had come most unexpectedly a chance to hear the great story from an eyewitness from someone who had actually known and sailed with Noah. And just because of a silly little slip like leaving out an address, the great chance was to be lost. All attempts to trace the writer having failed, the doctor, after two days, gave it up and went back to his regular work. This kept him so busy for the next week that he finally forgot all about the turtle and his mysterious letter.

Starting point is 05:01:03 But one night, when he was working late to catch up with the business which had multiplied during his absence, he heard a gentle tapping on the houseboat window. He left his desk and went and opened it. Instantly, in popped the head of an enormous snake with a letter in its mouth, a thick, muddy, letter. Great heavens, cried the doctor. What a start you gave me. Come in, come in and make yourself at home.

Starting point is 05:01:32 Slowly and smoothly the snake slid in over the window-sill and down onto the floor of the houseboat. Yards and yards and more yards long he came, curling himself up neatly at John Dolittle's feet, like a mooring rope on a ship-deck. Pardon me, but is there much more? of you outside still?" asked the doctor. "'Yes,' said the snake. "'Only half of me is in yet.'

Starting point is 05:02:01 "'Then I'll open the door,' said the doctor, so you can coil part of yourself in the passage. This room is a bit small. When at last the great serpent was all in. His thick coils entirely covered the floor of the doctor's office and a good part of him overflowed into the passage outside. "'Now,' said the doctor, closing the window, "'what can I do for you for?' for you." "'I've brought you this letter,' said the snake.

Starting point is 05:02:28 "'It's from the turtle. He is wondering why he got no answer to his first.' "'But he gave me no address,' said John Doolittle, taking the muddy envelope from the serpent. I've been trying my hardest ever since to find out where he lived.' "'Oh, was that it?' said the snake. "'Well, old mud-face isn't much of a letter-writer. I suppose he didn't know he had to give his address.

Starting point is 05:02:56 I'm awfully glad to hear from him again, said the doctor. I had given up all hope of ever seeing him. You can show me how to get to him? Why, certainly, said the big serpent. I live in the same lake as he does, Lake Jong Ganjika. You're a water snake, then I take it, said the doctor. Yes. You look rather worn out from your journey.

Starting point is 05:03:21 Is there anything I can get you? I'd like a saucer of milk, said the snake. I only have wild goat's milk, said John Doolittle, but it's quite fresh. And he went out into the kitchen and woke up the housekeeper. What do you think, Dab? He said breathless with excitement. I've got a second letter from the turtle, and the messenger is going to take us to see him. When Dab Dabab entered the postmaster's office with the milk, she found John Doolittle,

Starting point is 05:03:51 reading the letter. Looking at the floor, she gave a squawk of disgust. It's a good thing for you Sarah isn't here, she cried. Look at the state of your office. It's full of snake. End of Part 4, Chapter 7. Part 4, Chapter 8 of Dr. Doolittle's post office by Hugh Lofting. This Libre-Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 4 Chapter 8 The Land of the Mangrove Swamps It was a long but a most interesting journey that the doctor took from Fantipo to Lake Junganyika.

Starting point is 05:04:36 It turned out that the turtle's home lay many miles inland in the heart of one of the wildest, most jungly parts of Africa. The doctor decided to leave GubGub home this time and he took with him only Jip Dabab Tutu and Cheapside, who said he wanted a holiday, and that his sparrow friends could now quite well carry on the city deliveries in his absence. The great water snake began by taking the doctor's party down the coast south for some forty or fifty miles. There they left the sea, entered the mouth of a river, and started to journey inland. The canoe, with the snake swimming alongside it, was quite the best thing for this kind of travel so long as the river had water

Starting point is 05:05:20 in it. But presently, as they went up it, the stream grew narrower and narrower. Till at last, like many rivers in tropical countries, it was nothing more than the dry bed of a brook or a chain of small pools with long sandbars between. Overhead, the thick jungle arched and hung like a tunnel of green. This was a good thing by daytime as it kept the sun off better than a parasol. And in the dry stretches of riverbed, where the doctor had to carry or dragged the canoe on homemade runners, the work was hard, and shade was something to be grateful for.

Starting point is 05:06:01 At the end of the first day, John Doolittle wanted to leave the canoe in a safe place and finish the trip on foot. But the snake said they would need it further on, where there was more water and many swamps across. As they went forward, the jungle around them seemed to grow thicker and thicker all the time, but there was always this clear alleyway along the riverbed. And though the stream's course did much winding and twisting, the going was good. The doctor saw a great deal of new country, trees he had never met before, gay-colored orchids, butterflies, ferns, birds, and rare monkeys.

Starting point is 05:06:42 So his notebook was kept busy all the time with sketching and jotting and adding to his already great knowledge of natural history. On the third day of travel, this riverbed led them into an entirely new and different kind of country. If you have never been in a mangrove swamp, it is difficult to imagine what it looks like. It was mournful scenery. Flat bog land full of pools and streamlets dotted with the land. with tufts of grass and weed, tangled with gnarled roots and brambling bushes, spread

Starting point is 05:07:18 out from miles and miles in every direction. It reminded the doctor of some huge shrubbery that had been flooded by heavy rains. No large trees were here, such as they had seen in the jungle lower down. Seven or eight feet above their heads was as high as the mangroves grew, and from their thin boughs, long streamers of moss hung like gray fluttering rags. The life, too, about them, was quite different. The gaily-colored birds of the true forest did not care for this damp country of half-water and half-land.

Starting point is 05:07:54 Instead, all manner of swamp birds, big-billed and long-necked for the most part, peered at them from the sprawling saplings. Many kinds of herons, egresses, ibises, grebes, Bitterens, even stately and hingas, who can fly beneath the water, were waiting in the swamp or nesting on the little tuffy islands. In and out of the holes about the gnarled roots, strange and wondrous water creatures, things half fish and half lizard, scuttled and quarreled with brightly colored crabs.

Starting point is 05:08:30 For many folks, it would have seemed a creepy, nightmarry sort of country, this land of the mangrove swamps. but to the doctor, for whom any kind of animal life was always companionable and good-intentioned, it was a most delightful new field of exploration. They were glad now that the snake had not allowed them to leave the canoe behind, for here, where every step you took you were liable to sink down in the mud up to your waist, Jip and the doctor would have had hard work to get along at all without it. And even with it, the going was slow and hard enough.

Starting point is 05:09:07 the mangroves spread out long twisting crossing arms in every direction to bar your passage as though they were determined to guard the secrets of this silent gloomy land where men could not make a home and seldom ever came indeed if it had not been for the giant water-snake to whom mangrove swamps were the easiest kind of traveling they would never have been able to make their way forward but their guide went on ahead of them for hundreds of yards to lead the way through the best openings and to find the passages where the water was deep enough to float a canoe. And although his head was out of sight most of the time in the tangled distance, he kept, in the worst stretches, a firm hold on the canoe by taking a turn about the bow-post with his tail. And whenever they were stuck in the mud, he would contract that long muscular body of his with a jerk

Starting point is 05:10:02 and yanked the canoe forward as though it had been no more than a can tied to the the end of a string. Dab-Dab, Tutu, and Cheapside did not, of course, bother to sit in the canoe. They found flying from tree to tree a much easier way to travel. But in one of those jerky pulls which the stake gave on his living tow-line, the doctor and Chip were left sitting in the mud as the canoe was actually yanked from under them. This so much amused the vulgar cheapside who was perched in a mangrove tree above. their heads that he suddenly broke the solemn silence of the swamp by bursting into noisy laughter.

Starting point is 05:10:44 Lord bless us, doctor, but you do get yourself into some comical situations. Who would think to see John Doolittle, MD, imminent physician of Puddleby on the Marsh, being pulled through a mud swamp in darkest Africa by a couple hundred yards of fat worm? You've no idea how funny you look. "'Oh, close your silly face,' growled jip, "'black mud from head to foot scrambling back into the canoe. "'It's easy for you. You can fly through the mess.' "'It didn't make a nice football ground this,' murmured Cheapside.

Starting point is 05:11:21 "'I'm surprised the Africans haven't took to it. "'I didn't know there was this much mud anywhere outside of Hampstead Heath "'after a wet bank holiday. "'I wonder when we're going to get there. "'Seems to me we're coming to the end. of the world, or the middle of it. Haven't seen a woman face since we left the shore. He's an exclusive kind of gin, our Mr. Turtle, ain't he?

Starting point is 05:11:45 Myself, I wouldn't be surprised if we ran into old Noah, sitting on the wreck of the hark any minute. Help the doctor up, Chip. Look, he's got his chin caught under a root. The snake, hearing cheap sides chatter, thought something must be wrong. He turned his head in the round and came back to see what the matter was. then a short halt was made in the journey while the doctor and jip cleaned themselves up and the precious notebooks which had also been jerked out into the mud were rescued and stowed in a safe place do no people at all live in these parts the doctor asked the snake none whatever said the guide we left the lands where men dwell behind us long ago nobody can live in these bogs but swamp birds marsh creatures and water snakes

Starting point is 05:12:35 how much further have we got to go asked the doctor rinsing the mud off his hat in a pool about one more day's journey said the snake a wide belt of these swamps surrounds the secret lake of jung and yika on all sides the ghan will become freer as we approach the open water of the lake we are really on the shores of it already then yes said the serpent but properly speaking the secret lake cannot be said to have shores at all or certainly as you see no shores where a man can stand why do you call it the secret lake asked the doctor because it has never been visited by man since the flood said the giant reptile you will be the first to see it we who live in it boasts that we bathe daily in the original water of the flood for before the forty days rain came it was not there they say but when the flood passed away this part of the world never dried up and so it has remained guarded by these wide mangrove swamps ever since what was here before the flood then asked the doctor. They say rolling fertile country waving corn and sunny hilltops, the snake replied. That is what I have heard. I was not there to see it. Mudface the turtle will tell you all about it. How wonderful! exclaimed the doctor. Let's push on. I am most anxious to see him and the secret lake. End of Part four, chapter eight. Part four, chapter nine of Dr. Doolittle's post office

Starting point is 05:14:16 by Hugh Lofning. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Part 4, Chapter 9. The Secret Lake During the course of the next day's travel, the country became, as the snake had foretold, freer and more open. Little by little the islands grew fewer,

Starting point is 05:14:36 and the man grows not so tangly. In the dreary views, there was less land and more water. The going was much easier now. For miles at a stretch the doctor could paddle without the help of his guide in water that seemed to be quite deep. It was indeed a change to be able to look up and see a clear sky overhead once in a while instead of that everlasting network of swamp trees. Across the heavens the travelers now occasionally saw flights of wild ducks and geese swinging their way eastward.

Starting point is 05:15:09 That's the sign we're near open water, said dab-dab. Yes, the snake agreed. They're going to Jung Kenyika. It is the feeding ground of great flocks of wild geese. It was about five o'clock in the evening when they came to the end of the little islands and mud banks. And as the canoe's nose glided easily forward into entirely open water, they suddenly found themselves looking across a great inland sea. The doctor was tremendously impressed by his first sight of the secret lake.

Starting point is 05:15:41 If the landscape of the swamp country had been mournful, this was even more so. No eye could see across it. The edge of it was like the oceans, just a line where the heavens and the water meet. Ahead to the eastward, the darkest part of the evening sky, even this line barely showed, for now the murky waters and the frowny night blurred together in an inky mass. To the right and left the doctor could see. the fringe of the swamp trees running around the lake, disappearing in the distance north and south.

Starting point is 05:16:18 Out in the open great banks of gray mist rolled and joined and separated as the wailing wind pushed them fretfully hither and thither over the face of the waters. My word, the doctor murmured in a quiet voice. Here one could almost believe that the flood was not over yet. Jolly place ain't it? cheapside's cheeky voice from the stern of the canoe. Give me London any day, in the worst fog ever. This is a bloomin' eels country.

Starting point is 05:16:49 Look at them Miss Shadows skating around the lake. Might be old Noah and his family playing wring a-ring of Rosie in their night-shirts. They had that lifelike. The mists are always there, said the snake. Always have been. In them the first rainbow shone. Well, said the sparrow, I'd sell the whole. whole place cheap if it was mine, mists and all. How many hundred miles of this bonny blue ocean

Starting point is 05:17:15 have we got to cross before we reach our Mr. Mudface?' "'Not very many,' said the snake. He lives on the edge of the lake a few miles to the north. Let us hurry and try to reach his home before darkness falls. Once more with the guide in front, but this time at a much better pace, the party set off. As the light grew dimmer, the calls of several night birds sounded from the mangroves on the left. Tutu told the doctor that many of these were owls, but of kinds that he had never seen or met with before. Yes, said the doctor,

Starting point is 05:17:51 I imagine there are lots of different kinds of birds and beasts in these parts that could be found nowhere else in the world. At last, while it was still just light enough to see, the snake swung into the left and once more entered the outskirts of the mangrove swamps. following him was difficult in the fading light. The doctor was led into a deep lady cove. At the end of this the nose of the canoe suddenly bumped into something hard. The doctor was about to lean out to see what it was

Starting point is 05:18:21 when a deep, deep, deep bass voice spoke out of the gloom quite close to him. Welcome, John Doolittle. Welcome to Lake John Ganyika. Then looking up, the doctor saw on a mound-like, the shape of an enormous turtle, fully twelve feet across the shell, standing outlined against the blue-black sky. The long journey was over at last. Dr. Doolittle did not at any time believe in traveling with very much baggage, and all that

Starting point is 05:18:56 he had brought with him on this journey was a few things rolled up in a blanket, and, of course, the little black medicine bag. Among these things, luckily, however, were a couple of of candles, and if it had not been for them he would have had hard work to land safely from his canoe. Getting them lighted in the wind that swept across the lake was no easy matter, but to protect their flame to-to wove a couple of little lanterns out of thin leaves, through which the light shone dimly green but bright enough to see you way by. To his surprise, the doctor found that the mound or island on which the turtle lived was not made of mud,

Starting point is 05:19:36 though muddy footprints could be seen all over it. It was made of stone, of stones cut square with a chisel. While the doctor was examining them with great curiosity, the turtle said, These are the ruins of a city. I used to be content to live and sleep in the mud. But since my gout has been so bad I thought I ought to make myself something solid and dry to rest on, those stones are pieces of a king's house. Pieces of a house, of a city?

Starting point is 05:20:09 The doctor exclaimed, peering into the wet and desolate darkness that surrounded the little island. But where did they come from? From the bottom of the lake, said the turtle, out there. Mudface nodded toward the gloomy, wide-stretching waters. There stood thousands of years ago, the beautiful sea. of Shalba. Don't I know, when for long enough I lived in it. Once it was the greatest and fairest city ever raised by men and King Mushto of Shalba, the proudest

Starting point is 05:20:47 monarch in the world. Now I, Mudface the Turtle, make a nest in the swamp out of the ruins of his palace. Ha! ha! You sound bitter, said the doctor. King Mush to do you any harm?" "'I should say he did,' growled Mudface. "'But that belongs to the story of the flood. You have come far.

Starting point is 05:21:14 You must be weary and in need of food.' "'Well,' said the doctor, "'I am most anxious to hear the story. Does it take long to tell?' "'About three weeks would be my guess,' whispered cheapside. "'Turtles do everything slow. "'Something tells me that story is the longest story in the world, Doctor.' Let's get a nap and a bite to eat first.

Starting point is 05:21:35 We can hear it just as well tomorrow. So in spite of John Doolittle's impatience, the story was put off till the following day. For the evening meal, Dab Dab managed to scout around and gathered together quite a nice mess of freshwater shellfish, and Tutu collected some marsh berries that did very well for dessert.

Starting point is 05:21:55 Then came the problem of how to sleep. This was not so easy, because although the foundations of the tree, turtle's mound were of stone, there was hardly a dry spot on the island left where you could lie down. The doctor tried the canoe, but it was sort of cramped and uncomfortable for sleeping, and now even there too the mud had been carried by Dabdab's feet and his own. In this country the great problem was getting away from the mud.

Starting point is 05:22:24 When Noah's family first came out of the ark, said the turtle, they slept in little beds which they strung up between the stumps of the drowned trees. Ah, hammocks, cried the doctor. Of course the very thing. Then, with gyps and dab-dabs help, he constructed a very comfortable basket-work hammock out of willow-wans and fastened it between two larger mangroves. Into this he climbed and drew the blanket over him. Although the trees leaned down toward the water with his weight, they were quite strong

Starting point is 05:22:59 and their bendiness acted like good bedsprings. The moon had now risen, and the weird scenery of Zhang Kenyika was all green lights and blue shadows. As the doctor snuffed out his candles and Jip curled himself up at his feet, the turtle suddenly started humming a tune in his deep bass voice, waving his long neck from side to side in the moonlight. What is that tune you are humming? asked the doctor. That's the elephant. March," said the turtle.

Starting point is 05:23:31 They always played it at the Royal Circus of Shelba for the elephant's procession. "'Let's open as in many verses,' grumbled cheap sighed, sleepily putting his head under his wing. The sun had not yet risen on the gloomy waters of Lake Jung and Yika, before Jip felt the doctor stirring in his hammock, preparing to get up. Presently, Dab-Dab could be heard, messing about in the mud below, bravely trying to get breakfast ready under difficult conditions. Next, Cheapside, grumbling in a sleepy chirp, brought his head out from under his wing, gave the muddy scenery one look, and popped it back again.

Starting point is 05:24:11 But it was of little use to try to get more sleep now. The camp was a stir. John Doolittle bent on the one idea of hearing the story, had already swung himself out of his hammock, and was now washing his face noisily in the lake. Cheapside shook his feathers, swore a few words in Cockney, and flew off his tree down to the doctor's side. "'Look here, doctor,' he whispered, "'this ain't an awesome place to stay at all. I'm all full of cramp from the damp-night air. You'd get web-footed if you loitered in this country long. Listen, you want to be careful about getting old mud-faced started on his yarn spinning. Do you know what he reminds me of? Them old cry me a war, veterans. Once they begin telling their reminiscences, there's no stopping him. He looks

Starting point is 05:25:03 like one too with that long, scrawny necker is. Tell him to make it short and sweet, just to give us the outline of his troubles like, see? The sooner we can shake the motto of this place off our feet and make tracks for Fantipo the better it'll be for all of us. Well, when breakfast had been disposed of, the doctor sharpened his pencil, got out a notebook, and, telling two-toes will listen carefully in case he should miss anything, he asked the turtle to begin the story of the flood. Cheap's side had been right. Although it did not take a fortnight to tell, it did take a very full day.

Starting point is 05:25:43 Slowly and evenly the sun rose out of the east, passed across the heavens, and sank down into the west. And still, Mudface went murmuring on, telling of all the wonders he had seen in days, long ago, while the doctor's pencil wiggled untiringly over the pages of his notebook. The only interruptions were when the turtle paused to lean down and moisten his long throat with the muddy water of the lake, or when the doctor stopped him to ask a question on the natural history of antediluvian times. Dab-Dab prepared lunch and supper and served them as silently as she could, so as not to interrupt,

Starting point is 05:26:21 but for the doctor they were very scrappy meals. into the night the story went. And now John Doolittle wrote by candlelight, while all his pets, with the exception of Tutu, were already nodding or dozing. At last, about half-past ten, to Cheapside's great relief, the turtle pronounced the final words. And that John Doolittle is the end of the story of the flood by one who saw it with his own eyes. For some time after the turtle finished, no one spoke. Even the irreverent sheep's side was silent. Little bits of stars dimmed by the light of a half-full moon,

Starting point is 05:27:06 twinkled like tiny eyes in the dim blue dome that arced over the lake. Away off somewhere among the tangled mangroves, an owl hooted from the swamp, and Tutu turned his head quickly to listen. Dab-dab the economical housekeeper, seeing the doctor, closed his notebook and put away his pencil, blew out the candle. At last the doctor spoke. Mudface, I don't know when in all my life I have listened to a story that interested me so much. I, I'm glad I came. I am glad to, John Doolittle. You are the only one in the world now who understands the speech of animals. And if you had not come, my son,

Starting point is 05:27:54 story of the flood could not have been told. I'm getting very old, and do not ever move far away from Zhang Ganyika. Would it be too much to ask you, said the doctor, to get me some souvenir from the city below the lake? Not at all, said the turtle. I'll go down and try to get you something right away. Slowly and smoothly, like some unbelievable monster of former days, The turtle moved his great bulk across his little island and slid himself into the lake without splashing or disturbance of any kind.

Starting point is 05:28:35 Only a gentle swirling in the water showed where he had disappeared. In silence they all waited. The animals now for the moment reawakened and full of interest. The doctor had visions of his enormous friend moving through the slime of centuries at the bottom of the lake, for some souvenir of the great civilization that passed away with the flood. He hoped that he would bring a book or something with writing on it. Instead, when at last he reappeared, wet and shining in the moonlight, he had a carved stone window-sill on his back, which must have weighed over a ton.

Starting point is 05:29:13 "'Lord bless us!' muttered the cheap side. What a wonderful piano mover he would make to be sure. Great Carter Patterson! Does he think the doctor's going to hang down his watch-chain?" It was the lightest thing I could find," said the turtle, rolling it off his back with a thud that shook the island. I had hoped I could get a vase or a plate or something you could carry, but all the smaller objects are now covered in fathoms of mud.

Starting point is 05:29:48 This I broke off from the second story of the palace, from the Queen's bedrored. window. I thought perhaps you'd like to see it anyway, even if it was too much for you to carry home. It's beautifully carved. Wait till I wash some of the mud off it. The candles were lighted again, and after the carvings had been cleaned, the doctor examined them with great care and even made sketches of some of them in his notebook. By the time the doctor had done, all his party, excepting Tutu, had fallen

Starting point is 05:30:23 asleep. It was only when he heard Jip suddenly snore from the hammock that he realized how late it was. As he blew out the candles again he found that it was very dark, for now the moon had set. He climbed into bed and drew the blankets over him. End of Part 4, Chapter 9. Part 4, Chapter 10 of Dr. Doolittle's Post Office by Hugh Lofting. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Part 4, Chapter 10, The Postmaster General's Last Order When dab-dab roused the party next morning, the sun was shining through the mist upon the lake, doing its best to brighten up the desolate scenery around them.

Starting point is 05:31:18 Poor mud face awoke with an acute attack of gout. He had not been bothered by this ailment since the doctor, his arrival, but now he could scarcely move at all without great pain. And Dab-Dab brought his breakfast to him where he lay. John Doolittle was inclined to blame himself for having asked him to go hunting in the lake for souvenirs the night before. I'm afraid that was what brought on the attack, said the doctor, getting out his little black bag from the canoe and mixing some medicines.

Starting point is 05:31:51 But you know you really ought to move out of this damn country to. some drier climate. I'm aware that turtles can stand an awful lot of wet, but at your age one must be careful, you know." "'There isn't any other place I like as well,' said Mudface. "'It's so hard to find a country where you're not disturbed these days.' "'Here, drink this,' the doctor ordered, handing him a teacup full of some brown mixture. I think you will find that will soon relieve the stiffness in your front legs.' the turtle drank it down and in a minute or two he said he felt much better and could now move his legs freely without pain it's wonderful medicine that said he

Starting point is 05:32:38 you are surely a great doctor have you got any more of it i will make up several bottles of the mixture and leave them with you before i go said john do little but you really ought to get on high ground somewhere this muddy little hammock is no one place for you to live. Isn't there a regular island in the lake where you could make your home, if you're determined not to leave the Juncanyika country? No, not one, said the turtle. It's all like this, just miles and miles of mud and water. I used to like it. In fact, I do still.

Starting point is 05:33:21 I wouldn't wish for anything better if it weren't for this wretched gout of it. mine." "'Well,' said the doctor, "'if you haven't got an island, we must make one for you.' "'Make one?' cried the turtle. "'How would you go about it?' "'I'll show you very shortly,' said John Doolittle, and he called Cheapside to him. "'Will you please fly down to Fantipo?' he said to the city manager, and give this message to Speedy the skimmer, and ask him to send it out to

Starting point is 05:33:55 all the postmasters of the branch offices. The swallow mail is very shortly to be closed at all events for a considerable time. I must now be returning to Puddly, and it will be impossible for me to continue the service in its present form after I have left no man's land. I wish to convey my thanks to all the birds, postmasters, clerks, and letter carriers who have so generously helped me in this work. The last favor which I'm going to ask of them is a large one, and I hope they will give me their united support in it.

Starting point is 05:34:34 I want them to build me an island in the middle of Lake Jungenjika. It is for Mudface the Turtle, the oldest animal living, who in days gone by did a very great deal for man and beast, for the whole world, in fact, when the earth was passing through the darkest chapters in all its history. Tell Speedy to send word to all bird leaders throughout the world. Tell him, I want as many birds as possible right away to build a healthy home where this brave turtle may end his long life and peace. It is the last thing I ask of the post office staff,

Starting point is 05:35:13 and I hope they will do their best for me. Cheapside said that the message was so long, he was afraid he would never be. able to remember it by heart. So John Doolittle told him to take it down in bird scribble, and he dictated it to him all over again. That letter, the last circular order issued by the great postmaster General to the staff of the Swallow's Mail, was treasured by Cheapside for many years. He hid it under his untidy nest in St. Edmund's left ear on the south side of the Chapel of St. Paul's Cathedral. He always hoped that the pigeons who lived in the front porch

Starting point is 05:35:56 of the British Museum would someday get it into the museum for him. But one gusty morning when men were cleaning the outside of the cathedral, it got blown out of St. Edmund's ear, and before Cheapside could overtake it, it sailed over the housetops into the river and sank. The sparrow got back to Junkanjika late that afternoon. He reported that Speedy had immediately on receiving the doctor's message, forwarded it to the postmasters of the branch officers with orders to pass it on to all the bird leaders everywhere. It was expected that the first birds would begin to arrive here early the following morning. It was Speedy himself who woke the doctor at dawn the next day,

Starting point is 05:36:44 and while breakfast was being eaten, he explained to John Doolittle the arrangements that had been made. The work, the skimmer calculated, would take three days. All birds had been ordered to pick up a stone or a pebble or a pinch of sand from the seashore on their way, and bring it with them. The larger birds, who would carry stones, were to come first, then the middle-sized birds and then the little ones, with sand. Soon, when the sky over the lake was beginning to fill up with circling usprees, herons, and albatrosses, speedy left the doctor and flew off to join them. There, taking up a position in the sky right over the center of the lake, he hovered motionless as a marker for the stone droppers. Then the work began. All day long, a never-ending stream of big birds,

Starting point is 05:37:44 A dozen abreast flew up from the sea and headed across Lake Junganyika. The line was like a solid black ribbon. The birds dense, packed and close, beak to tail, and as each dozen reached the spot where speedy hovered, twelve stones dropped into the water. The procession was so continuous and unbroken that it looked as though the sky were raining stones. And the constant roar of them splashing into the water

Starting point is 05:38:13 out of the heavens could be heard a mile off. The lake in the center was quite deep, and of course tons and tons of stone would have to be dropped before the New Island would begin to show above the water surface. This gathering of birds was greater even than the one that the doctor had addressed in the hollows of no man's land. It was the biggest gathering of birds that had ever been seen.

Starting point is 05:38:42 For now, not only the last, leaders came, but thousands and millions of every species. John Doolittle got tremendously excited, and, jumping into his canoe, he started to paddle out nearer to the work. But Speedy grew impatient that the top of the stone pile was not yet showing above the water, and he gave the order to double up the line. Then double it again, as still more birds came to help from different parts of the world. and soon, with a thousand stones falling every fraction of a second, the lake got so rough that the doctor had to put back for the turtle's hammock, lest his canoe capsize.

Starting point is 05:39:25 All that day, all that night, and half the next day this continued. At last, about noon on the morrow, the sound of the falling stones began to change. The great mound of seething white water, like a fountain in the middle of the middle of the morning. the lake disappeared. And in its place, a black spot showed. The noise of splashing changed to the noise of stone rattling on stone. The top of the island had begun to show. It's like the mountains peeping out after the flood.

Starting point is 05:40:01 Mudface muttered to the doctor. Then Speedy gave the order for the middle-sized birds to join in, and soon the note of the noise changed again. shriller, as tons and tons of pebbles and gravel began to join the downpour. Another night and another day went by, and at dawned the gallant skimmer came down to rest his weary wings, for the workers did not need a marker any longer, now that a good-sized island stood out on the bottom of the lake for the birds to drop their burdens on. Bigger and bigger grew the homemade land, and soon Mudface's new estate was acres wide.

Starting point is 05:40:46 Still another order from Speedy, and presently the rattling noise changed to a gentle hiss. The sky was now simply black with birds. The pebble shower had ceased. It was raining sand. Last of all, the birds brought seeds. Grass seeds, the seeds of flowers, acorns, and the currants. kernels of palms. The turtle's new home was to be provided with turf, with wild gardens, with shady avenues to keep off the African sun. When Speedy came to the hummock and said,

Starting point is 05:41:21 Doctor, it's finished. Mud-faced, gazed thoughtfully out into the lake and murmured. Now proud Shalba is buried indeed. She has an island for a tombstone. It's a grand home you have given me, John Doolittle. Alas, poor Shalba. Mush to the king passes, but Mudface the turtle lives on. End of Part 4, Chapter 10. Part 4, Chapter 11 of Dr. Doolittle's post office by Hugh Lofning. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 05:42:10 Part 4, Chapter 11. The Last Chapter Goodbye to Fantipo Mud faces landing on his new home was quite an occasion. The doctor paddled out alongside him till they reached the island. Until he set foot on it, John Doolittle himself had not realized what a large piece of ground it was. It was more than a quarter of a mile across.

Starting point is 05:42:37 Round in shape, it rose gently from the shores to the flat center, which was a good hundred feet above the level of the lake. Mudface was tremendously pleased with it, climbing laboriously to the central plateau from where you could see great distances over the flat country around. He said he was sure his health would quickly improve in this drier air. Dab-Dab prepared a meal, the best she could in the circumstances,

Starting point is 05:43:05 to celebrate what she called the Turtle's housewarming, and everyone sat down to it and there was, was much gaiety, and the doctor was asked to make a speech in honor the occasion. Cheapside was dreadfully afraid that Mudface would get up to make a speech in reply, and that it would last into the following day. But to the Sparrow's relief, the doctor immediately he had finished set about preparations for his departure. He made up the six bottles of gout mixture and presented them to Mudface with instructions in how it should be taken. told him that although he was closing up the post office for regular service, it would always

Starting point is 05:43:46 be possible to get word to Puddleby. He would ask several birds of passage to stop here occasionally, and if the gout got any worse, he wanted Muntface to let him know by letter. The old turtle thanked him over and over again, and the parting was a very affecting one. When at last the goodbyes were all said, they got into the canoe and set out on the return journey. Reaching the mouth of the river at the southern end of the lake, they paused a moment before entering the mangrove swamps and looked back. And there in the distance, they could just see the shape of the old turtle standing on his new island watching them. They waved to him

Starting point is 05:44:28 and pushed on. He looks just the same as we saw him the night we arrived, said Dab-Dab. You remember? Like a statue on a pedestal against the sky. "'Poor old fellow,' murmured the doctor. "'I do hope he will be all right. "'What a wonderful life! "'What a wonderful history!' "'Didn't I tell you, Doctor?' said Cheapside, "'that it was going to be the longest story of the world,

Starting point is 05:44:57 "'took a day and half a night to tell.' "'Ah, but it's a story that nobody else could tell,' said John Doolittle. "'Good thing, too,' muttered the sparrow. "'It would never do if there's a story. was many of his kinds spread around this busy world. Of course, myself, I don't believe a word of the urn. I think he made it all up. He had nothing else to do, sitting there in the mud,

Starting point is 05:45:23 century after century, cogitating. The journey down through the jungle was completed without anything special happening. But when they reached the sea and turned the bow of the canoe westward, they came upon a very remarkable thing. It was an enormous hole in the sea. beach, or rather a place where the beach had been taken away bodily. Speedy told the doctor that it was here that the birds had picked up the stones and sand

Starting point is 05:45:51 on their way to Jungenjika. They had literally carried acres of the seashore nearly a thousand miles inland. Of course in a few months the action of the surf filled in the hole so that the place looked like the rest of the beach. But that is why, when many years later, some learned geologists visited Lake Juncanyika. They said that the seashore gravel on an island there was a clear proof that the sea had once flowed through that neighborhood, which was true in the days of the flood. But the doctor was the only scientist who knew that mud faces island

Starting point is 05:46:29 and the stones that made it had quite a different history. On his arrival at the post office, the doctor was given his usual warm reception by the king and dignitaries of Fantipo, who paddled out from the town to welcome him back. Tea was served at once, and His Majesty seemed so delighted at renewing this pleasant custom that John Doolittle was loath to break the news to him that he must shortly resign from the foreign mail service and sail for England. However, while they were chatting on the veranda of the houseboat, a fleet of quite large sailing vessels entered the harbor.

Starting point is 05:47:10 These were some of the new merchant craft of Fantipo, which plied regularly up and down the coast, trading with other African countries. The doctor pointed out to the king that mails intended for foreign lands could now be quite easily taken by these boats to the bigger ports on the coast, where vessels from Europe called every week.

Starting point is 05:47:31 From that the doctor went on to explain to the king that much as he loved Fantiope, and its people. He had many things to attend to in England, and must now be thinking of going home. And, of course, as none of the natives could talk bird language, the swallow-mail would have to be replaced by the ordinary kind of post-office. The doctor found that his majesty was much more distressed at the prospect of losing his good white friend and his afternoon tea on the houseboat than at anything else which the change would bring. But he saw that the doctor really felt he had to go, and it leant with tears falling into his teacup,

Starting point is 05:48:13 he gave permission for the postmaster General of Fantipo to resign. Great was the rejoicing among the doctor's pets and the patient swallows when the news got about that John Doolittle was really going home at last. Gub-Gub and Jip could hardly wait while the last duties and ceremonies of closing the house-spoke, to the public, and transferring the foreign mail service to the office in the town were performed. Dab-dab bustled cheerfully from morning to night, while Cheapside never ceased a chatter of the glories of London, the conference of a city life, and all the things he was going to do as soon as he got back to his beloved native haunts. There was no end to the complimentary ceremonies

Starting point is 05:49:01 which the good king, Coco, and his purteers performed to honor the departing doctor. For days and days previous to his sailing, canoes came and went between the town and the houseboat bearing presence to show the goodwill of the Fentippins. During all this, having to keep smiling the whole time, the doctor got sadder and sadder at leaving his good friends, and he was heartily glad when the hour came to pull up the anchor and put to sea. People who have written the history of the kingdom of Fantipo all devote several chapters to a mysterious white man, who, in a very short space of time, made enormous improvements in the mail, the communications,

Starting point is 05:49:45 the shipping, the commerce, the education, and the general prosperity of the country. Indeed, it was through John Doolittle's quiet influence that King Coco's reign came to be looked upon as the golden age, in Fentippin history. A wooden statue still stands in the marketplace to his memory. The excellent postal service continued after he left. The stamps with Coco's face on them were as various and as beautiful as ever. On the occasion of the first annual review of the Fantipo merchant fleet, a very fine two-shilling stamp was struck in commemoration,

Starting point is 05:50:27 showing his majesty inspecting his new ships through a very fine, a lollipop quizzing glass. The king himself became a stamp collector, and his album was as good as a family photo album, containing as it did so many pictures of himself. The only awkward incident that happened in the record of the post office, which the doctor had done so much to improve, was when some ardent stamp collectors,

Starting point is 05:50:53 wishing to make modern stamps rare, blotted to have the king assassinated in order that the current issues should go out of, date. But the plot was happily discovered before any harm was done. Years afterwards, the birds visiting Puddly told the doctor that the king still had the flowers in the window-boxes of his old houseboat, carefully tended and watered in his memory. His majesty, they said, never gave up the fond hope that someday his good white friend would come back to Fentipo, with his kindly smile, his instructive conversation and his jolly tea parties on the post office veranda end of part four chapter eleven end of dr doolittle's post office by hugh lofting

Classic Audiobook Collection - Doctor Dolittle’s Post Office by Hugh Lofting ~ Full Audiobook [fantasy]

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