In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets – when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta – there lived a tailor in Gloucester.
Once upon a time there were three kittens, and their names were Mitten, Tom Kitten, and Moppet. They had dear little fur coats of their own; and they tumbled about the doorstep and played in the dust.
So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.
I have just made stories to please myself, because I never grew up.
I fear that we shall be obliged to leave this pudding.
I am worn to a raveling.
If I have done anything, even a little, to help small children enjoy honest, simple pleasures, I have done a bit of good.
One place suits on person, another place suits another person. For my part, I prefer to live in the country, like Timmy Willie.
I remember every stone, every tree, the scent of heather... Even when the thunder growled in the distance, and the wind swept up the valley in fitful gusts, oh, it was beautiful, home sweet home.
There’s something delicious about writing those first few words of a story. You can never quite tell where they will take you. Mine took me here, where I belong.
At a quarter past four to the minute, there came a most genteel little tap-tappity.
For behind the wooden wainscots of all the old houses in Gloucester, there are little mouse staircases and secret trap-doors; and the mice run from house to house through those long narrow passages; they can run all over the town without going into the streets.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit Table of Contents.
WHAT a funny sight it is to see a brood of ducklings with a hen!
Presently Peter sneezed “Kertyschoo!
The collie-dog Kep met her coming out, “What are you doing with those onions? Where do you go every afternoon by yourself, Jemima Puddle-duck?” Jemima.
I am persuaded that the knots would have proved indigestible, whatever you may urge to the contrary.
From all the roofs and gables and old wooden houses in Gloucester came a thousand merry voices singing the old Christmas rhymes – all the old songs that ever I heard of, and some that I don’t know, like Whittington’s bells.
What a thing it is to have an unruly family!
They led prosperous and uneventful lives, and their end was bacon.
Beware of gunpowder, and ships cooks, and pantechnicons, and sausages, and shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax.