TEXT: Chapter 1- Puddleby

THE STORY OF
DOCTOR DOLITTLE

THE FIRST CHAPTER

PUDDLEBY

ONCE upon a time, many years ago when our grandfathers were
little children--there was a doctor; and his name was Dolittle--
John Dolittle, M.D.  "M.D." means that he was a proper doctor
and knew a whole lot.

He lived in a little town called, Puddleby-
on-the-Marsh.  All the folks, young and old,
knew him well by sight.  And whenever he
walked down the street in his high hat everyone
would say, "There goes the Doctor!--He's
a clever man."   And the dogs and the children
would all run up and follow behind him; and
even the crows that lived in the church-tower
would caw and nod their heads.

The house he lived in, on the edge of the
town, was quite small; but his garden was very
large and had a wide lawn and stone seats and
weeping-willows hanging over.  His sister,
Sarah Dolittle, was housekeeper for him; but
the Doctor looked after the garden himself.

He was very fond of animals and kept many
kinds of pets.  Besides the gold-fish in the pond
at the bottom of his garden, he had rabbits in
the pantry, white mice in his piano, a squirrel
in the linen closet and a hedgehog in the cellar.
He had a cow with a calf too, and an old lame
horse-twenty-five years of age--and chickens,
and pigeons, and two lambs, and many other
animals.  But his favorite pets were Dab-Dab
the duck, Jip the dog, Gub-Gub the baby pig,
Polynesia the parrot, and the owl Too-Too.

His sister used to grumble about all these
animals and said they made the house untidy.
And one day when an old lady with rheumatism
came to see the Doctor, she sat on the hedgehog
who was sleeping on the sofa and never came
to see him any more, but drove every Saturday
all the way to Oxenthorpe, another town ten
miles off, to see a different doctor.

Then his sister, Sarah Dolittle, came to him
and said,

"John, how can you expect sick people to
come and see you when you keep all these animals
in the house?  It's a fine doctor would have
his parlor full of hedgehogs and mice!  That's
the fourth personage these animals have driven
away.  Squire Jenkins and the Parson say they
wouldn't come near your house again--no matter
how sick they are.  We are getting poorer
every day.  If you go on like this, none of the
best people will have you for a doctor."  

"But I like the animals better than the `best
people'," said the Doctor.

"You are ridiculous," said his sister, and
walked out of the room.

So, as time went on, the Doctor got more and
more animals; and the people who came to see
him got less and less.  Till at last he had no one
left--except the Cat's-meat-Man, who didn't
mind any kind of animals.  But the Cat's-meat
Man wasn't very rich and he only got sick once
a year--at Christmas-time, when he used to give
the Doctor sixpence for a bottle of medicine.

Sixpence a year wasn't enough to live on--
even in those days, long ago; and if the Doctor
hadn't had some money saved up in his money-
box, no one knows what would have happened.

And he kept on getting still more pets; and of
course it cost a lot to feed them.  And the money
he had saved up grew littler and littler.

Then he sold his piano, and let the mice live
in a bureau-drawer.  But the money he got for
that too began to go, so he sold the brown suit
he wore on Sundays and went on becoming
poorer and poorer.

And now, when he walked down the street
in his high hat, people would say to one another,
"There goes John Dolittle, M.D.!  There was a
time when he was the best known doctor in the
West Country--Look at him now--He hasn't
any money and his stockings are full of holes!"

But the dogs and the cats and the children
still ran up and followed him through the town
--the same as they had done when he was rich.