The Velveteen Rabbit

List of Illustrations

Christmas Morning
The Skin Horse Tells His Story
Spring Time
Summer Days
Anxious Times
The Fairy Flower
At Last! At Last!
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THERE was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really
splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was
spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears
were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged
in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his
paws, the effect was charming.

There were other things in the stocking, nuts and oranges and a toy
engine, and chocolate almonds and a clockwork mouse, but the Rabbit
was quite the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved him,
and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great
rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the
excitement of looking at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was
forgotten.

Christmas Morning

For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor,
and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and
being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite
snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down
upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended
they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and
lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an
opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit
could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that
real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust
like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and
should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed
wooden lion, who was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have
had broader views, put on airs and pretended he was connected with
Government. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel
himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who
was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others.
He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the
seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled
out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long
succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and
by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they
were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery
magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that
are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all
about it.