Alan Alexander Milne

. It is the best way to write poetry, letting things come.”

It was a fine spring morning in the Forest as he started out. Little soft clouds played happily in a blue sky, skipping from time to time in front of the sun as if they had come to put it out, and then sliding away suddenly so that the next might have his turn. Through them and between them the sun shone bravely; and a copse which had worn its firs all the year round seemed old and dowdy now beside the new green lace which the beeches had put on so prettily. Through copse and spinney marched Bear; down open slopes of gorse and heather, over rocky beds of streams, up steep banks of sandstone into the heather again; and so at last, tired and hungry, to the Hundred Acre Wood. For it was in the Hundred Acre Wood that Owl lived.

‘And if anyone knows anything about anything,’ said Bear to himself, ‘it’s Owl who knows something about something,’ he said, ‘or my name’s not Winnie-the-Pooh,’ he said. ‘Which it is,’ he added. ‘So there you are.’

Winnie-the-Pooh read the two notices very carefully, first from left to right, and afterwards, in case he had missed some of it, from right to left. Then, to make quite sure, he knocked and pulled the knocker, and he pulled and knocked the bell-rope, and he called out in a very loud voice, ‘Owl! I require an answer! It’s Bear speaking.’ And the door opened, and Owl looked out.

‘Hallo, Pooh,’ he said. ‘How’s things?’

‘Terrible and Sad,’ said Pooh, ‘because Eeyore, who is a friend of mine, has lost his tail. And he’s Moping about it. So could you very kindly tell me how to find it for him?’

‘Well,’ said Owl, ‘the customary procedure in such cases is as follows.’

‘What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?’ said Pooh. ‘For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words

Bother me.’

‘It means the Thing to Do.’

‘As long as it means that, I don’t mind,’ said Pooh humbly.

‘The thing to do is as follows. First, Issue a Reward. Then—’

‘Just a moment,’ said Pooh, holding up his paw. ‘What do we do to this – what you were saying? You sneezed just as you were going to tell me.’

‘I didn’t sneeze.’

‘Yes, you did, Owl.’

‘Excuse me, Pooh, I didn’t. You can’t sneeze without knowing it.’

‘Well, you can’t know it without something having been sneezed.’

‘What I said was, “First Issue a Reward”.’

‘You’re doing it again,’ said Pooh sadly.

‘A Reward!’ said Owl very loudly. ‘We write a notice to say that we will give a large something to anybody who finds Eeyore’s tail.’

‘I see, I see,’ said Pooh, nodding his head. ‘Talking about large somethings,’ he went on dreamily, ‘I generally have a small something about now – about this time in the morning,’ and he looked wistfully at the cupboard in the corner of Owl’s parlour; ‘just a mouthful of condensed milk or what-not, with perhaps a lick of honey—’

‘Well, then,’ said Owl, ‘we write out this notice, and we put it up all over the Forest.’

But Owl went on and on, using longer and longer words, until at last he came back to where he started, and he explained that the person to write out this notice was Christopher Robin.

‘It was he who wrote the ones on my front door for me. Did you see them, Pooh?’

For some time now Pooh had been saying ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ in turn, with his eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying, and having said, ‘Yes, yes,’ last time, he said, ‘No, not at all,’ now, without really knowing what Owl was talking about.

‘Didn’t you see them?’ said Owl, a little surprised. ‘Come and look at them now.’

So they went outside. And Pooh looked at the knocker and the notice below it, and he looked at the bell-rope and the notice below it, and the more he looked at the bell-rope, the more he felt that he had seen something like it, somewhere else, sometime before.

‘Handsome bell-rope, isn’t it?’ said Owl.

Pooh nodded.

‘It reminds me of something,’ he said, ‘but I can’t think what. Where did you get it?’

One day, when Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet were all talking together, Christopher Robin finished the mouthful he was eating and said carelessly: ‘I saw a Heffalump to-day, Piglet.’

‘What was it doing?’ asked Piglet.

‘Just lumping along,’ said Christopher Robin. ‘I don’t think it saw me.’

‘I saw one once,’ said Piglet. ‘At least, I think I did,’ he said. ‘Only perhaps it wasn’t.’

‘So did I,’ said Pooh, wondering what a Heffalump was like.

Piglet meets a Heffalump

By and by Piglet woke up. As soon as he woke he said to himself, ‘Oh!’ Then he said bravely, ‘Yes,’ and then, still more bravely, ‘Quite so.’ But he didn’t feel very brave, for the word which was really jiggeting about in his brain was ‘Heffalumps.’

‘Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.’

‘Can’t all what?’ said Pooh, rubbing his nose.

‘Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush.’

‘Oh!’ said Pooh. He thought for a long time, and then asked, ‘What mulberry bush is that?’

‘Bon-hommy,’ went on Eeyore gloomily. ‘French word meaning bonhommy,’ he explained. ‘I’m not complaining, but There It Is.’