go along, we may come to know them even
better than if we went out hunting for them.

Another thing we should remember. By leaving them in the books, hundreds
and thousands of other boys and girls can enjoy them, too, sharing with us
the pleasures of the imagination, which after all is one of the greatest
things in the world. In gathering them together in a real menagerie, we
would be selfish both to Bumper, Bobby, Buster, White Tail and their
friends as well as to thousands of other little readers who could not
share them with us. So these books of Twilight Animal Stories are
dedicated to all little boys and girls who love wild animals. All others
are forbidden to read them! They wouldn't understand them if they did.

So come out into the woods with me, and let us listen and watch, and I
promise you it will be worth while.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

BUMPER THE WHITE RABBIT

STORY I

WHERE BUMPER CAME FROM

There was once an old woman who had so many rabbits that she hardly knew
what to do. They ate her out of house and home, and kept the cupboard so
bare she often had to go to bed hungry. But none of the rabbits suffered
this way. They all had their supper, and their breakfast, too, even if
there wasn't a crust left in the old woman's cupboard.

There were big rabbits and little rabbits; lean ones and fat ones; comical
little youngsters who played pranks upon their elders, and staid, serious
old ones who never laughed or smiled the livelong day; boy rabbits and
girl rabbits, mother rabbits and father rabbits, and goodness knows how
many aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, cousins, second cousins and distant
relatives-in-law! They all lived under one big roof in the backyard of the
good old woman who kept them, and they had such jolly times together that
it seemed a shame to separate them.

But once every day the old woman chose several of her pets, and carried
them away in a basket to a certain street corner of the city where she
offered them for sale. She was dreadfully poor, and often when she
returned home at night, counting her money, she would murmur: "It's a
cabbage for them or a loaf of bread for myself. I can't get both."

She didn't always get the loaf of bread, but the rabbits always had their
cabbage. They were all pink-eyed, white rabbits, and people were willing
to pay good prices for them. But the whitest and pinkest-eyed of them all
was Bump