The Velveteen Rabbit is the journey of a fat and bunchy rabbit-toy -- whose coat was spotted brown and white, had real thread whiskers, ears lined with pink sateen and stuffed with sawdust -- into being Real.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit”?
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Of course we do not want to be one of those mechanical toys, very superior, looking down upon every one else and full of modern ideas; or those model boats who never miss an opportunity to refer to their rigging in technical terms; or even those jointed wooden lions made by disabled soldiers who should have had broader views but put on airs and pretend they are connected with the Government.
Somewhere along the journey from being a velveteen toy to Real-dom, the Rabbit, however, asks himself, “Of what use was it to be loved and lose one’s beauty and become Real if it all ended like this?” He had just earlier been placed into a sack with old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house. He was shivering a little for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him.
And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground.
But the nursery magic Fairy arrives just in time and the seasons change.
“Autumn passed and Winter, and in the Spring, when the days grew warm and sunny, the Boy went out to play in the wood behind the house. And while he was playing, two rabbits crept out from the bracken and peeped at him. One of them was brown all over, but the other had strange markings under his fur, as though long ago he had been spotted, and the spots still showed through. And about his little soft nose and his round black eyes there was something familiar, so that the Boy thought to himself: ‘Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!’. But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.”
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit”?
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Of course we do not want to be one of those mechanical toys, very superior, looking down upon every one else and full of modern ideas; or those model boats who never miss an opportunity to refer to their rigging in technical terms; or even those jointed wooden lions made by disabled soldiers who should have had broader views but put on airs and pretend they are connected with the Government.
Somewhere along the journey from being a velveteen toy to Real-dom, the Rabbit, however, asks himself, “Of what use was it to be loved and lose one’s beauty and become Real if it all ended like this?” He had just earlier been placed into a sack with old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house. He was shivering a little for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him.
And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground.
But the nursery magic Fairy arrives just in time and the seasons change.
“Autumn passed and Winter, and in the Spring, when the days grew warm and sunny, the Boy went out to play in the wood behind the house. And while he was playing, two rabbits crept out from the bracken and peeped at him. One of them was brown all over, but the other had strange markings under his fur, as though long ago he had been spotted, and the spots still showed through. And about his little soft nose and his round black eyes there was something familiar, so that the Boy thought to himself: ‘Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!’. But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.”
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