The Velveteen Rabbit
By Margery Williams

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.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side
by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the
room. "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 often 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."

So that was a short story that was told by my Photography Prof , a swell and slightly eccentric man, who matches his T-shirts with the frame of his specs , has a wiry beard, the bearing of a saint and the smile of a devil and comes to college in shorts!!!!!!!!Whew! I m developing withdrawal symptoms, I have not written a post for a whole month. Plus a writers block! I am doing a summer job and that is so much of a work. The only thing I can think about is headlines and word counts! So it was finally a great relief that I could complete my second story and also think of something to post on this blog. Talk about literary constipation and then suddenly verbal diarrhea as I found myself sitting in front of my beloved computer and typing away to glory.