For apart from that hint of _The Deserted Village_ in the “Introduction”, it has living characters, natural speech and incidents of genuine comedy. The playful tenderness of the first chapters suggests Goldsmith’s treatment of children, and the whole theme is near enough to his idea of a story “like the old one of Whittington _were his Cat left out_”[56]. For if he ever had written such a story and managed to keep the cat out of it, he would certainly have repented and introduced some other animal in its place, or with native inconsistency, might have multiplied it into a menagerie such as Goody Two-Shoes kept. The idea of talking animals had once attracted him, and if he could write a good Fable, why not a “History”?