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 lef