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The Amazing Adventures Of Master Rabbit
by
One would think that by this time Master Rabbit must have had enough of helping, but all the stories of him show that he never gave up anything which he had once begun. So he simply said to the old man, “Catch hold of me round the waist;” and when this was done he gave another leap, and brought the prisoner out. But the man, being heavy, had slipped down, and almost broken Rabbit’s back. So it came to pass that since that day Master Rabbit has had a very short tail and a slender waist.
The old man was on his way to marry a young girl. But she was in love with Mikumwess, the forest fairy. However, the old man married her, and invited Master Rabbit to the dance, which in old times made the ceremony. And the guest dressed for the occasion by putting ear-rings on his heels–for Rabbits or Hares dance on their tip-toes–and a beautiful bangle round his neck, and he danced opposite the bride. Now the bride had on only a very short skirt, and in crossing a brook it had got wet. So that as she danced, it began to shrink and shrink, until Master Rabbit, pitying the poor girl, ran out and got a deer-skin, and hastily twisted a cord to tie it with. But it seemed as if Master Rabbit’s efforts to oblige people always got him into trouble, for he twisted this string so rapidly and earnestly, holding one end of it in his teeth as he did so, that he cut his upper lip through to the nose, for which reason his descendants all have hare-lips to this day.
Now having dressed the bride, she was so grateful to Rabbit that she danced with him all the night. The old man, seeing this, was so angry at her fickleness that, without saying a word, he walked away, and left her to Mahtigwess, with whom she lived very happily until she ran away with Mikumwess; with whom, if she has not run away again, she is living yet. This story is at an end.
VI. How Master Rabbit Gave Himself Airs.
It happened once that Lox was living in great luxury. He had a wigwam full of hundreds of dried sea-ducks, moose meat, maple sugar, and corn. He gave a dinner, and among the guests invited Marten and Mahtigwess, the Rabbit.
Now it is a great weakness of Master Rabbit that he is much given to hinting at one minute, and saying pretty plainly the next, that he has been in better society than that around him, and has lived among great people, and no one was quicker than the Marten to find out that wherein any one was foolish or feeble. So when Master Rabbit, smoothing down his white fur, said it was the only kind of a coat worn by the aristocracy, Marten humbly inquired, “if that were so, how he came by it.”
“It shows,” replied Master Rabbit, “that I have habitually kept company with gentlemen.”
“How did you get that slit in your lip?” inquired Marten, who knew very well what this Indian really was.
“Ah!” replied the Rabbit, “where I live they use knives and forks. And one day, while eating with some great sagamores, my knife slipped, and I cut my lip.”
“And why are your mouth and whiskers always going when you are still? Is that high style?”
“Yes; I am meditating, planning, combining great affairs; talking to myself, you see. That’s the way we do.”
“But why do you always hop? Why don’t you sometimes walk, like other people?”
“Ah, that’s our style. We gentlemen don’t run, like the vulgar. We have a gait of our own, don’t you know?”
“Indeed! Well, if you don’t mind a question, I would like to know why you always scamper away so suddenly, and jump so far and so rapidly when you run.”
“Aw! don’t you know? I used to be employed in very genteel business; public service,–in fact, diplomatic. I carried dispatches (weegadigunn, Micmac; wighiggin, Pass.)–books, letters, papers, and so I got in the way of moving nimbly. Now it comes naturally to me. One of my old aristocratic habits.” [Footnote: This droll dialogue occurs in the middle of the Micmac story of Lox, or Badger, and the Ducks and Bear, where it evidently does not belong, or has been interpolated to make length. In the original, Marten carries his inquiries much further into certain physiological details, all of which Master Rabbit naively explains as the result of the delicate diet and the wine to which he as a gentleman had been accustomed.]