lost
consciousness; Mr. Rabbit sailed clear over the blackberry-patch, and
landed in a boggy place, which was soft enough, but quite splashy; Mr.
'Coon went straight up into the little tree they had hit, and grabbed
some limbs and hung on, while Mr. Crow just opened his wings, though he
hadn't used them for ever so long, and went sailing over to a nice
grassy place by the road, and wasn't injured at all.

[Illustration: MR TURTLE TOOK MR. 'POSSUM ON HIS BACK, AND EVERYBODY
SAID IT WAS FINE]

There wasn't really anything fatally damaged except the automobile. When
Mr. 'Possum came to, and Mr. Rabbit cleaned some of the bog off of
himself, and Mr. Crow came back, and Mr. 'Coon climbed down, and the
others caught up with them, they all looked around to see what they
could find of Mr. 'Possum's invention. Some of it was in the bushes and
some in the tree, and two of the wheels they couldn't find at all. Mr.
'Coon said his trunk-strap was as good as ever, which was more than Mr.
Crow could say for his wood-box. Mr. 'Possum, who limped and seemed
suffering, said, when he looked at what they had gathered, that he felt
just about as his car looked--a good deal broken up and hardly worth
carrying home. Then he said that very likely Mr. Man had had the same
experience with his first car, and that next year's model would be
different in several ways.

Then Mr. Turtle took Mr. 'Possum on his back, and everybody said it was
very fine for the first time, and certainly most exciting, and the
Hollow Tree people invited all the others to the Hollow Tree to
celebrate Mr. 'Possum's great invention. They stayed quite late, and
when Mr. Rabbit started home he said he would certainly write a poem on
all the events.

HOW MR. 'POSSUM'S TAIL BECAME BARE

MR. 'POSSUM RELATES SOME VERY CURIOUS FAMILY HISTORY

ONCE upon a time, when it was a very pleasant afternoon, and the Hollow
Tree people were sitting along the edge of the world, hanging their feet
over and thinking, Mr. 'Possum went to sleep, and would have nodded
himself off into the Deep Nowhere if his strong, smooth tail hadn't been
quite firmly hooked around a little bush just behind him. All the others
noticed it, and said how lucky it was that a person of Mr. 'Possum's
habits had a nice, useful tail like that, which allowed him to sleep in
a position that for some was thought dangerous even to be awake in.
Then they wondered how it happened that Mr. 'Possum's family had b