The next thing I must tell you about is the Prize Story Competition: The fame of the Puddleby fireside-circle, where the Doctor had amused his pets with so many interesting tales, had become quite a famous institution. Too-Too had gossiped about it; Gub-Gub, Jip and the white mouse had boasted of it. (You see, they were always proud that they could say they were part of the great man's regular household.) And before long, through this new post office of their own, creatures all over the world were speaking of it and discussing it by letter. Next thing, the Doctor began to receive requests for stories by mail. He had become equally famous as an animal doctor, an animal educator and an animal author.  
From the Far North letters came in by the dozen from polar bears and and foxes asking that he send them some light entertaining reading as well as his medical pamphlets and books of . The winter nights (weeks and weeks long up there) grew frightfully , they said, after their own supply of stories had run out—because you couldn't possibly sleep all the time and something had to be done for amusement on the lonely ice-floes and in the and beneath the blizzard-swept snow. For some time the Doctor was kept so busy with more serious things that he was unable to attend to it. But he kept it in mind until he should be able to think out the best way of with the problem.
 
Now his pets, after the post office work got sort of settled and regular, often found it somewhat hard to amuse themselves in the evenings. One night they were all sitting around on the of the houseboat wondering what game they could play when Jip suddenly said:
 
"I know what we can do—let's get the Doctor to tell us a story."
 
"Oh, you've heard all my stories," said the Doctor. "Why don't you play Hunt-the-Slipper?"
 
"The houseboat isn't big enough," said Dab-Dab. "Last time we played it Gub-Gub got stuck by the pushmi-pullyu's horns. You've got plenty of stories. Tell us one, Doctor—just a short one."
 
"Well, but what shall I tell you a story about?" asked John Dolittle.
 
"About a field," said Gub-Gub.
 
"No, that won't do," said Jip. "Doctor, why don't you do what you did sometimes by the fire in Puddleby—turn your pockets out upon the table till you come to something that reminds you of a story—you remember?"
 
"All right," said the Doctor. "But——"
 
And then an idea came to him.
 
"Look here," he said: "You know I've been asked for stories by mail. The creatures around the North Pole wanted some light reading for the long winter nights. I'm going to start an animals' magazine for them. I'm calling it The Arctic Monthly. It will be sent by mail and be distributed by the Nova Zembla branch office. So far, so good. But the great problem is how to get sufficient stories and pictures and articles and things to fill a monthly magazine—no easy matter. Now listen, if I tell you animals a story to-night, you'll have to do somet............