Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match — A Closer Reading

A Conversational Preface and Its Claims

Woodworth’s preface establishes the book’s tone and limits. He explicitly declines to write a “generic or specific history” of any animal, preferring instead to present selected facts and anecdotes. His language is plain and self-deprecating: he says he has been “generally content when I have judged a particular story to be, in the first place, a good story.” The preface also reveals his broader plan—to eventually cover birds, reptiles, insects, and fishes—but he hedges, noting that circumstances may thwart such plans. This careful, almost legalistic framing contrasts with the informal, sometimes playful voice of the stories themselves. The preface thus functions as a contract with the reader, promising entertainment and instruction without scientific pretension.

Pacing Through Anecdotal Evidence

The excerpts show two distinct pacing strategies. One is the rapid-fire accumulation of short, punchy anecdotes, as in the rat stories: a rat colony decamps after a terrier visits; a clergyman sees a blind rat led by another holding a stick; Chicago rats kill a mother cat and her kittens. These are told in quick succession, each a self-contained marvel. The other strategy is the extended, almost ethnographic description, as with the trained rats. Here Woodworth devotes several paragraphs to the performance: the box, the wand, the calling of names, the upright posture, the biscuit reward. The detail is precise—“he held a wand in his hand, and called by name such of his pupils as he wished to appear”—and the pace slows to match the deliberate actions of the animals. This variation keeps the reader engaged, shifting between the shock of a rat massacre and the wonder of disciplined rodents.

Voice and the Implied Audience

Woodworth’s narrative voice is that of a friendly, slightly old-fashioned storyteller. He uses direct address (“my young friends”) and colloquial asides (“rats are accustomed to hold councils, it would seem”). He also inserts his own judgments: a story is “pretty tough” but “said to be authentic.” This creates an intimacy, as if the reader is being let in on a secret. Yet the voice is also that of a compiler, not a participant. He rarely claims firsthand knowledge; instead, he cites sources like the Chicago Democrat or an English clergyman. The effect is to position Woodworth as a curator of wonders, mediating between exotic animal behaviors and a youthful audience. The language remains accessible, with short sentences and concrete nouns, but the vocabulary occasionally rises to words like “decamped” and “counterfeiting death,” suggesting a reader expected to stretch a little.

Woodworth’s collection rewards a reader who enjoys both the swift punch of a surprising fact and the slow pleasure of a well-told anecdote. Pay attention to how he signals the reliability of his sources—often with a phrase like “upon the authority of”—and note the moments when his own voice breaks through, as when he calls a story “pretty tough.” These small touches reveal the editor behind the tales, shaping the material for a young audience without ever talking down to them.

This book's unhurried tales of clever quadrupeds brought me back to afternoons on my grandfather's porch, watching a squirrel outwit the bird feeder. He never lectured, just pointed. Reading Woodworth felt the same—quiet attention, not instruction. That patience returned in On the Seashore Cassell's "Eyes and No Eyes" Series, Book VII — Reading Notes, where tide pools held whole dramas if we only stilled ourselves to see.