You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The case history of Ferdinand the bull, so far as he may be considered to be an individual and not an animal or social event, can be told in a few words:
“Once upon a time in Spain there was a little bull and his name was Ferdinand.” All the other little bulls would run and jump and fight, “but not Ferdinand.” He liked to sit quietly under his favorite cork tree and smell the flowers. His mother was worried about him but she understood him and let him sit there and be happy.
Ferdinand grew and grew, became big and strong, but still he liked to sit under the cork tree and to smell the flowers while the other bulls fought each other and nursed their ambitions to be picked for the bull fight. One day five men came to select the roughest bull to fight in the bull fight in Madrid. Ferdinand didn't care. Quietly he sat down — on a bumble bee which, in return, stung him. Ferdinand jumped up, puffing and snorting, behaving as if he were crazy. The five men were deeply impressed and took him away to the bull fight. The matador was scared stiff. When Ferdinand got in the middle of the ring he smelled the flowers in all the lovely ladies' hair and he sat down, quietly, and smelled. He would not fight and be fierce “no matter what they did.” And so they had to take him home. “He is sitting there still under his favorite cork tree, smelling the flowers just quietly — he is very happy.”
The illustrations show Ferdinand in his Spanish environment, a powerful towerlike castle in the back ground; — the small Ferdinand and the cork tree; Ferdinand and the bumble bee, his