ise, and of course he couldn't eat his
barber-pole crutch. If the crutch had had a hole in it, like in the
elephant's trunk, then the old gentleman rabbit could have carried along
some sandwiches. But, as it was, he had nothing for breakfast, and he
hadn't had much supper either, the night before.

"Oh, how hungry I am!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "If only I had a piece of
cherry pie now, or an ice cream cone, or a bit of bread and butter and jam
I would be all right."

Well, he just happened to open his valise, and there on the very bottom,
among some papers he found a few crumbs of the honey sandwiches the bumble
bee had given him. Well, you never can imagine how good those few crumbs
tasted to the old gentleman rabbit, which shows you that it is a good
thing to be hungry once in a while, because even common things taste good.

But the crumbs weren't enough for Uncle Wiggily. As he walked along he
kept getting hungrier and hungrier and he didn't know how he was going to
stand it.

Then, all of a sudden, as he was passing by a hollow stump, he saw a whole
lot of little black creatures crawling around it. They were going up and
down, and they were very busy.

"Why, these are ants," said the rabbit. "Well, I s'pose they have plenty
to eat. I almost wish I was an ant."

"Well! Well!" exclaimed a voice all at once. "If here isn't Uncle Wiggily.
Where did you come from?" and there stood a second cousin to the ant for
whom Uncle Wiggily had once carried home a pound of beefsteak with
mushrooms on it.

"Oh, I am traveling about seeking my fortune," said the rabbit. "But I
haven't been very successful. I couldn't even find my breakfast this
morning."

"That's too bad!" exclaimed the ant who wore glasses. "We can give you
something, however. Come on! everybody, help get breakfast for Uncle
Wiggily."

So all the ants came running up, and some of them brought pieces of
boiled eggs, and others brought oatmeal and others parts of oranges and
still others parts of cups of coffee. So take it altogether, with
seventeen million, four hundred and seventeen thousand, one hundred and
eighty-five ants and a baby ant to wait on him, Uncle Wiggily managed to
make out a pretty fair sort of a breakfast.

Well, after the old gentleman rabbit had eaten all the breakfast he could,
he thanked the kind ants and said good-by to them. Then he started off
again. He hadn't gone on very far through the woods, before, all of a
sudden he saw so