said that, now he came
to think it over, he supposed it was a pretty good trick, though it
really hadn't seemed so specially great to him at the time. He said he
didn't think it half as smart as Mr. Tortoise's trick on Mr. Rabbit's
Grandpaw Hare, when he beat him in the foot race and went over the fence
first, taking Mr. Hare's tail with him. And then they wondered if that
had all really happened as Mr. Rabbit had told it--all but Mr. Turtle,
who just sat and smiled to himself and didn't say anything at all,
except "Please pass the biscuits," now and then, when he saw the plate
being set down in front of Mr. 'Possum.

Then by and by they all got through and hurried up and cleared off the
table, and lit their pipes, and went back to the fire, and pretty soon
Jack Rabbit began to tell

HOW THE REST OF THE RABBITS LOST THEIR TAILS

"Well," he said, "my twenty-seventh great-grandfather Hare didn't go out
again for several days. He put up a sign that said 'Not at Home' on his
door, and then tried a few experiments, to see what could be done.

[Illustration: HE TRIED TO SPLICE HIS PROPERTY BACK IN PLACE]

"He first tried to splice his property back into place, as Mr. Tortoise
had told him he might, but that plan didn't work worth a cent. He never
could get it spliced on straight, and if he did get it about right, it
would lop over or sag down or something as soon as he moved, and when he
looked at himself in the glass he made up his mind that he'd rather do
without his nice plumy brush altogether than to go out into society
with it in that condition.

"So he gave it up and put on some nice all-healing-ointment, and before
long what there was left of it was well, and a nice bunch of soft, white
cottony fur had grown out over the scar, and Grandpaw Hare thought when
he looked at himself in the glass that it was really quite becoming,
though he knew the rest of his family would always be saying things
about it, and besides they would laugh at him for letting Mr. Tortoise
beat him in a foot race.

[Illustration: GRANDFATHER WOULD LIGHT HIS PIPE AND THINK IT OVER]

"Sometimes, when there was nobody around, my grandfather would go out
into the sun and light his pipe and lean up against a big stone, or
maybe a stump, and think it over.

"And one morning, as he sat there thinking, he made up his mind what he
would do. Mr. Lion lived in the Big Deep Woods in those days, and he was
King. Whenever anything happened among the