Speak to the Earth [antikvár]

PREFACE When you gave me Out in the Blue, dear Vivienne, I remember exclaiming after I had read it: 'Oh, please write another book as enchanting as this one, but in which nobody wants to kill an animal, and they all live happily every afterward!' A rash request, I thought on reflection; not that I doubted your ability to produce another enchanting book, but that I feared there might be little more to say about big game untroubled by human violence than about countries similarly blessed. . . . Well, my fears were unfounded, and I ought to have known it; for after all (and unless you guessed it, I can't imagine why you chose me for this preface), after all, I too, have lived that life and stammered that language, though my mountain tent was only the hbrary lamp-shade, my wilderness a garden, my wildebeest stealing down to drink two astute and arrogant Pekingese; and as one of the initiated I was aware that those who know how to talk with animals know also how to talk about them. And beautifully indeed you have proved it in these sunlit windswept pages. From the elephants romping with their friends, or twinkling at you ironically through the trees, to the least little bird hopping in at your hut door, they all had so much to tell that they had evidently been awaiting such a confidant for ages; and you would never have been able to pack all their yarns into one book if the Angel of Fire had not suddenly driven you out of the Paradise where you and