Ol' Mother Nature made Brer Trade Rat in the beginning and turned
him loose in the Great World, he was just plain Mistah Rat and nothing
more, same as his no 'count cousin, Robber the Brown Rat," continued Ol'
Mistah Buzzard. "He had to win a name for hisself same as ev'ybody else.
He had mighty sharp wits, had this Mistah Rat, and directly he found he
had to shift for hisself he began to study and study and study what he
gwine to do to live well and be happy. He watched his neighbors to see
what they did, and it didn't take him long to find out that if he would
be respected he must have a home. Those without homes were mostly no
'count folks, same as they are today.

"So Brer Rat made a nest close to the trunk of a tree on the edge of the
Green Forest, a soft, warm nest, and in collectin' the stuff to make it
of he learned the joy of bein' busy. Person'ly, yo' understand, Ah
thinks he was all wrong. Ah never am so happy as when Ah can take a
sun-bath with nothin' to do. But Brer Rat was never so happy as when he
was busy, and when he got that li'l nest finished time began to hang
heavy on his hands. Yes, Suh, it cert'nly did. Just because he didn't
have anything else to do he began to add a little more to his house. One
day he stepped on a thorn. 'Ouch!' cried Brer Rat, and then right away
forgot the pain in a new idea. He would cover his house with thorns,
leavin' just a little secret entrance for hisself! Then he would be
safe, wholly safe from his big neighbors, some of whom had begun to look
at him with such a hungry look in their eyes that they made him right
smart uncomfortable. So he spent his time, did Brer Rat, in huntin' for
the longest and sharpest thorns and in cuttin' the branches on which
they grew. These he carried to his house and piled them around it and on
it until it had become a great pile with sharp thorns stickin' out in
every direction, and the hungriest of the big people of the forest
passed it at a respectful distance.

"When Brer Rat had all the thorns he needed and more, he began to
collect other things and added these to his pile. Yo' see, he had found
that it was great fun to collect things; to find the queerest things he
could and bring them home and look at them and wonder about them. So
little by little his house became a sort of junk shop, the very first
one in all the Great World. Bright stones and shells, bones, anything
that caught his bright eyes and pleased them, he brought home. W