PUDDLEBY

 

ONCE upon a time, 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.

 

1 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.

 

2 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.

 

3 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.

 

4 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 anymore, 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,

 

5 “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 hedge hogs and mice! That’s the fourth personage these animals have driven away. 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.

 

6 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—but one man, who wasn’t very rich and 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.

 

7 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.

 

Excerpt from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman 

 

1

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. 

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. 

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death. 

Creeds and schools in abeyance ,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy. 

 

2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. 

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me. 

The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the

passing of blood and air through my lungs, 

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and

dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind,

A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,

The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,

The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

 

3

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?

Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? 

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor

look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. 

 

 

i Loafe – remain idle; do nothing 

ii Abeyance – suspension; a temporary state of inactivity

iii Reckon – calculated or figured out

iv Spectre – ghost