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''The Tailor of Gloucester'' is an early story by Creator/BeatrixPotter.

It is about an impoverished tailor ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin who lives in Gloucester]]) who is hired to make a suit for the Mayor's wedding.

He runs into trouble when he falls too ill to work and his cat, Simpkin, hides the right kind of thread to finish the suit's button-holes, but fortunately he receives some unexpected help from the mice living in the wainscoting of his shop.

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!!This book provides examples of:
* ArcWords: The tailor keeps mentioning that he has "no more twist!" in his despair at lacking the necessary thread for a suit, then later, the mice add it into their song.
* ButtMonkey: Simpkin gets snowed on, which he hates, and spends most of the story very hangry because the mice he wanted to eat got away and the tailor is too sick to feed him, then the mice taunt him with their songs.
* CatsAreMean: Simpkin doesn't give the tailor his twist, just because he's angry that the tailor set free the mice he planned on eating (However, he does feel bad about it later).
* CivilizedAnimal: Simpkin is a mixed example; he can only speak in meows, but he also wears clothes, walks on two legs, and runs errands for the tailor. The mice also wear clothes and sew, but live like real mice.
* TheCobblersChildrenHaveNoShoes: The tailor makes fancy clothing, but his own clothes are described as "threadbare".
* CostumePorn: The descriptions of the tailor's creations are gorgeous. Of course, this being a Beatrix Potter story, even the mice get in on the CostumePorn action.
* DreamingOfAWhiteChristmas: The story takes place around Christmas, and it's snowing.
* FullyDressedCartoonAnimal: Simpkin, when he goes out, wears a coat, pants, and boots.
* HalfDressedCartoonAnimal: The first buck mouse to be seen wears only a fancy coat.
* HaveAGayOldTime: While sick, the tailor periodically declares, "Alack!" which is an older version of the somewhat more familiar term "Alas!"
* JokeAndReceive: The tailor jokingly remarks that nothing could be made out of his scraps except "waistcoats for mice"... and then some actual mice make waistcoats out of the fabric.
* MadLibsCatchphrase: The tailor, when complaining about his poverty, describes himself as "worn to a ___".
* MusicalChores: The mice sing rhymes when they're sewing the buttonholes.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: When the mice are busily sewing and teasing Simpkin with rhymes, he feels bad about having hidden the twist.
* NeedleworkIsForOldPeople: Zigzagged. The tailor is old, but the mice also do needlework and their ages vary.
* NiceMice: They help the tailor when he's bedridden with illness and on a time crunch.
* NoNameGiven: The tailor is unnamed.
* NurseryRhyme: When Simpkin temporarily gains the ability to talk due to vaguely-defined Christmas magic, he says, "Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle".
* OffWithHisHead: Discussed when the mice, while teasing Simpkin with a song, claim he'd bite their heads off.
* SpecialOccasionsAreMagic: Animals are granted the ability to speak on the night of Christmas Eve through some vaguely-defined magic.
* StockAnimalDiet: Simpkin wants to eat the mice, and it's implied he regularly does so when they haven't escaped or outsmarted him.
* TalkingInYourSleep: The story uses the "sleep-talking as illness symptom" version of the trope when it says that the tailor having a fever is the reason for his sleep-talking.
* TwistedChristmas: Subverted. It's getting close to Christmas, and the tailor is sick and bedridden, including on Christmas Eve... but when Simpkin arrives home from his late-night stroll, he finds that the tailor has made a full recovery. It also seems that the Mayor won't get his coat, but then the mice finish it up with no time to spare.
* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: The story is based on the tailor John Prichard, who arrived at his shop having found the mayor's suit completed over night. Although in real life, the work was done by his assistants, rather than mice, and he obviously didn't have a semi-anthropomorphic cat as a pet.
* YourTomcatIsPregnant: While it doesn't involve an animal getting pregnant, it does involve a character being mistaken about the sex of an animal -- the mice refer to Simpkin as "she" in the song and call him "Miss" Pussy, when he's actually a tomcat.
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