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instead of going on his knees as he used to do. When the flies
bit him he broke off the branch of a tree and used it as
fly-whisk; and he made himself a new, cool, slushy-squshy mud-cap
whenever the sun was hot. When he felt lonely walking through
Africa he sang to himself down his trunk, and the noise was
louder than several brass bands.

He went especially out of his way to find a broad Hippopotamus
(she was no relation of his), and he spanked her very hard, to
make sure that the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake had spoken the
truth about his new trunk. The rest of the time he picked up the
melon rinds that he had dropped on his way to the
Limpopo--for he was a Tidy Pachyderm.

One dark evening he came back to all his dear families, and he
coiled up his trunk and said, 'How do you do?' They were very
glad to see him, and immediately said, 'Come here and be spanked
for your 'satiable curtiosity.'

'Pooh,' said the Elephant's Child. 'I don't think you peoples
know anything about spanking; but I do, and I'll show you.' Then
he uncurled his trunk and knocked two of his dear brothers head
over heels.

'O Bananas!' said they, 'where did you learn that trick, and what
have you done to your nose?'

'I got a new one from the Crocodile on the banks of the great
grey-green, greasy Limpopo River,' said the Elephant's Child. 'I
asked him what he had for dinner, and he gave me this to keep.'

'It looks very ugly,' said his hairy uncle, the Baboon.

'It does,' said the Elephant's Child. 'But it's very useful,' and
he picked up his hairy uncle, the Baboon, by one hairy leg, and
hove him into a hornet's nest.

Then that bad Elephant's Child spanked all his dear families for
a long time, till they were very warm and greatly astonished. He
pulled out his tall Ostrich aunt's tail-feathers; and he caught
his tall uncle, the Giraffe, by the hind-leg, and dragged him
through a thorn-bush; and he shouted at his broad aunt, the
Hippopotamus, and blew bubbles into her ear when she was sleeping
in the water after meals; but he never let any one touch Kolokolo
Bird.

At last things grew so exciting that his dear families went off
one by one in a hurry to the banks of the great grey-green,
greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to borrow
new noses from the Crocodile. When they came back nobody spanked
anybody any more; and ever since that day, O Best Beloved, all
the Elephants you will ever see, besides all those that you
won't, have trunks precisely like the trunk of the 'satiable
Elephant's Child.


I Keep six honest serving-men:
(They taught me all I knew)
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five.

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