Velveteen Rabbit’
“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 happen often 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.”
%u2015 Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
