ONCE upon a time, many years ago—when our grandfathers were littlechildren—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 thestreet in his high hat everyone would say, “There goes the Doctor!—He’sa clever man.” And the dogs and the children would all run up andfollow behind him; and even the crows that lived in the church-towerwould 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 seatsand weeping-willows hanging over. His sister, Sarah Dolittle, washousekeeper for him; but the Doctor looked after the garden himself.
He was very fond of animals and kept many kinds of pets. Besides thegold-fish in the pond at the bottom of his garden, he had rabbits inthe pantry, white mice in his piano, a squirrel in the linen closetand a hedgehog in the cellar. He had a cow with a calf too, and an oldlame horse—twenty-five years of age—and chickens, and pigeons, and twolambs, and many other animals. But his favorite pets were Dab-Dab theduck, Jip the dog, Gub-Gub the baby pig, Polynesia the parrot, and theowl Too-Too.
“And she never came to see him any more”]
His sister used to grumble about all these animals and said they madethe house untidy. And one day when an old lady with rheumatism came tosee the Doctor, she sat on the hedgehog who was sleeping on the sofaand never came to see him any more, but drove every Saturday allthe way to Oxenthorpe, another town ten miles off, to see a differentdoctor.
Then his sister, Sarah Dolittle, came to him and said,
“John, how can you expect sick people to come and see you when youkeep all these animals in the house? It’s a fine doctor would havehis parlor full of hedgehogs and mice! That’s the fourth personagethese animals have driven away. Squire Jenkins and the Parson say theywouldn’t come near your house again—no matter how sick they are. Weare getting poorer every day. If you go on like this, none of the bestpeople 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 thepeople who came to see him got less and less. Till at last he hadno one left—except the Cat’s-meat-Man, who didn’t mind any kind ofanimals. But the Cat’s-meat-Man wasn’t very rich and he only got sickonce a year—at Christmas-time, when he used to give the Doctor sixpencefor 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, noone knows what would have happened.
And he kept on getting still more pets; and of course it cost a lot tofeed 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. Butthe money he got for that too began to go, so he sold the brown suit hewore on Sundays and went on becoming poorer and poorer.
And now, when he walked down the street in his high hat, people wouldsay to one another, “There goes John Dolittle, M.D.! There was a timewhen he was the best known doctor in the West Country—Look at himnow—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 followedhim through the town—the same as they had done when he was rich.