Sleepy-Time Tales

Fatty Coon was so fat and round that he looked like a ball of fur, with a plumelike tail for a handle. But if you looked at him closely you would have seen a pair of very bright eyes watching you. Fatty loved to eat. Yes-he loved eating better than anything else in the world. That was what made him so fat. And that, too, was what led him into many adventures. Close by a swamp, which lay down in the valley, between Blue Mountain and Swift River, Fatty Coon lived with his mother and his brother and his two sisters. Among them all there was what grown people call "a strong family resemblance," which is the same thing as saying that they all looked very much alike. The tail of each one of them-mother and children too-had six black rings around it. Each of them had a dark brown patch of fur across the face, like a mask. And-what do you think?-each of them, even Fatty and his brother and his sisters, had a stiff, white moustache! Of course, though they all looked so much alike, you would have known which was Mrs. Coon, for she was so much bigger than her children. And you would have known which was Fatty-he was so much rounder than his brother and his sisters. Mrs. Coon's home was in the hollow branch of an old tree. It was a giant of a tree-a poplar close by a brook which ran into the swamp-and the branch which was Mrs. Coon's home was as big as most tree-trunks are.